Earlier in the week, we gave you a tiny taste of our exclusive interview with The Last Ship co-creator and showrunner Hank Steinberg, but today, we bring you the whole thing. In his time with us, Hank discusses what it was like to work with Michael Bay, how often we’ll see the crew get off the ship and what role he would have in the event of a global pandemic.
Nerdist: One of the things I find most interesting about The Last Ship is – similar to the way Falling Skies feels very Steven Spielberg – I feel this way about Michael Bayâs name being on this show. Itâs got that same level of excitement. Iâm curious how much involvement heâs had in the show so far.
Hank Steinberg: Michael was extremely involved in the pilot from the beginning. I came to it because it was already something he wanted to do. I was fortunate enough to have my agents put me in a room with Michael and his producing partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller, and they talked to me about the idea and I thought it was super cool. Michael was very, very involved. He was involved in all the casting. He was involved in the production plan. He provided us with his visual effects supervisor who did all the visual effects, which was super, super important. He shot second unit on the action sequence in the ice.
N: Really?
HS: Yeah. That huge shootout on the ice with the helicopters, Michael shot that.
N: [laughs] Thatâs amazing.
HS: Yeah. He was very, very involved in the pilot. It was very, very important to him. He has a deep and long relationship with the military and really wanted to make sure not only did he open those doors for us, but that we did everything correctly, that we have the military advisors heâd used on all of his other movies assigned to us to help us make sure that everything looked and felt real. One of the reasons I thought it was a great thing just to undertake was I saw the idea and I thought, âthatâs a great idea and it fits really well into the Michael Bay brand. I see that, within that, I can bring what I do to the table, which is try to focus on suspense and characters and longer term storytelling,â which is obviously a whole different thing from making films. So when I was presented with the idea I saw there was a great opportunity.
N: With that long form storytelling, Iâm curious, among other things, how often are we going to get the crew off the boat?
HS: The crew gets off the boat quite a bit. Thereâs a pretty good balance between the turmoil and the conflicts that happen on the ship with Captain Chandler having to hold that crew together and keep them believing in the mission, but then they’re constantly in need of resources, whether itâs food, and fuel, and supplies or itâs when Doctor Scott believes that she has a vaccine prototype thatâs wroth testing; whoâs she going to test it on? Itâs not going to be on humans, so they have to go into the jungles of Nicaragua to find monkeys. What are the adventures and struggles they get into in going to do that? What happens if they get a radio call that thereâs someone in distress nearby? What do they do about that? And it is a trap? Should they reveal themselves? Should they jeopardize the larger mission they have in order to go help someone whoâs 20 miles away?
So there are lots of opportunities to get off the boat. I think probably in the first season I would say 50-60 percent of the action takes place actually off the boat.
N: Something else in relation to that: it feels like a very global show. Iâm curious if youâve run into any problems thus far shooting the first season with one episode weâre in Cuba, another episode weâre in Nicaragua. Do you have any problems recreating those environments, especially now that you’re past the pilot and have way less money to work with per episode.
HS: It’s a very global show. The premise is itâs a pandemic and we wanted to make it feel that itâs taking place around the world. But we were able to, I think through our really gifted line producers and production design team, able to go and find locations in LA. Not in urban LA, but one of the great things about shooting there is there are a lot of different environments. There are mountains, there are lakes, there are rivers, thereâs even jungle. Thereâs plenty of water. Thereâs desert. All within a 45 minute to an hour radius from the zone.
So we were able to accomplish everything shooting there with the enhancement of incredible CGI. And again, we have Michael Bayâs visual effects supervisor who makes sure that everything looks real, because nobody wants to get that call from Michael Bay sayingâ¦
N: No one wants to get the call from the guy that made fighting robots look real that they screwed up.
HS: Exactly. Especially when itâs something like a helicopter flying through the air, or a gunshot, or just moving on the water when youâre on the ship. Nobody wants to get that call. That keeps everybody on their toes. The show, I think, looks totally and completely⦠everything looks real.
N: Regarding how far out youâve thought this show through, how extensive is your series bible and how far have you planned out in terms of seasons?
HS: We [Steinberg and co-creator Steve Kane]Â had a very firm idea of what we wanted the first season to be. And then we had a very firm idea of how we were going to turn the series around at the end of the season and launch the series into a different direction and a different idea. Thatâs what we hope to do, God willing, the next 7, 8, 9 seasons. The story of how to save the world and how to get the world back on its feet is a story thatâs got a lot of legs. And the worldâs a big place. So we feel pretty confident about it as long as the audience falls in love with our characters, which I think they will, we can continue to sustain the idea and keep turning it in interesting directions.
N: When it comes to these characters, have you hit a point yet where youâre having a lot of fun writing one character over another? Have you picked your favorite one to write yet?
HS: They each have their own little flare to them. Obviously, Chandler is kind of the center of it all. Thereâs this new character we introduce in the second episode named Tex whoâs a lot of fun to write because heâs unbridled and untamed and heâs just very out there. So thatâs always fun to write. But itâs also been really fun to discover the new smaller characters that we start to introduce, the enlisted people that werenât very heavily featured in the pilot, but who emerge through the series as kind of the heart and soul of the crew and the show. Theyâre the people that Chandler has to lead and who heâs fighting for and the people that he has to make sure he keeps focused and on mission. So itâs been fun to sort of find those newer, younger characters as weâve emerged, as we cast really great character actors and supporting actors and then start writing for them. Thatâs the fun of writing for television, it becomes this fluid thing where you invent the role, you hire a really great actor to embody that role, and then all of a sudden a six-line part becomes someone that you go, âOh, thatâs going to be a six-episode arc.â Thatâs the fun and the fluidity of writing for television. Itâs an evolving piece. Itâs what makes it so dynamic, I think.
N: One of the main things the pilot teases is this threat of a possible nuclear holocaust. Without spoiling too much of it, a nuclear weapon does come into play. Iâm curious if that idea of a nuclear threat is going to play into the future of the series as well, or was that just something you guys did where, âOK, weâve done the pilot. The nukes exist, but itâs not something weâre going to focus on.â
HS: It gets revealed that was a Russian admiral chasing them and thatâs who fired that at them in order to slow them down. Weâre not headed towards a nuclear holocaust. One main problem at a time, being the pandemic, is enough. But what that nuclear detonation indicates is just how chaotic and crazy the world has become. people are willing to unleash a nuclear weapon as a tactical device or as a ploy. We alluded to, in one of the episodes, that the Chinese turn on their own people to try to quell the spread of the virus by turning their own weapons on them. Thatâs the kind of topsy-turvy world that we live in.
And yes, down the line if thereâs loose nukes – I mean thereâs loose nukes now in the real world in 2014 – so there are going to be loose nukes in an apocalyptic world where the governments have fallen apart. That will be, potentially, a big problem.
N: Last question: a deadly virus breaks out, whatâs your role on the ship?
HS: Whatâs my role, like me, Hank Steinberg?
N: Yeah, whatâs your job on the ship?
HS: I would become the journalist, I think, keeping track of the story.
N: You would be making the found footage movie of the virus.
HS: Yes. Iâd be interviewing people and trying to keep a record and a log of everything that was happening for posterity. I donât think Iâd be out in front on the weaponry.
The Last Ship airs Sundays at 9/8c on TNT.