Emerson Brooks on ‘The Last Ship’ Season 5: ‘It’s Gritty. It’s Dark. It’s Real’ [Exclusive Interview]

The long-awaited final season of The Last Ship is upon is, and it’s pulling out all of the stops.

The Last Ship Season 5 has the United States Navy facing a new type of threat — a cyber attack. I recently had the chance to chat with Emerson Brooks, who plays Captain Meylen on the series, about how that attack will affect the characters, why this theme hits close to home, and what else we can expect from the final season.

Brooks said the news that Season 5 would be the final season of the series wasn’t exactly a surprise.

“We knew back before the start of Season 4 I think. That’s when it became clear it was likely the last season because we were shooting. Now nothing was confirmed, and Steven Kane, the showrunner, wouldn’t even confirm it because, at the end of the day, nothing is confirmed until the studio does it. So when they had us shoot Season 4 and Season 5 back to back with just a little break in between — that usually means they’re front-running stuff and it’s probably going to be the end.”

There’s something a little more frightening about the focus of this final season. Not that the idea of the Red Flu isn’t scary, but a cyber attack feels like it hits closer to home.

“It’s definitely topical if you consider all the cyber attacks going on nowadays — the consideration that maybe cyber attacks affected our own elections in real life. I mean we are talking about an issue that affects United States Federal Government all the way down to the average person that can be cyber attacked and have their entity or their identity stolen from someone sitting inside of a computer screen 5000 miles away,” Brooks noted.

“It’s something that we’re dealing with in real life. Which, I don’t know, that seems like an amazing amount of foresight by the writers and by the producers of the show to create the theme for Season 5 before people were really, really talking about hacking the country, so to speak.”

“I think its scarier in a lot of ways. One because it can really happen right now,” Brooks continued. “Imagine if you were locked out of all of your computer accounts and all of your phone accounts right now. What would you do? I mean if you did not have access to the internet on a personal level for your emails, your social medias, your files, what would you do? Your phone. Who would you call? How many phone numbers do you remember that aren’t from your childhood? I can remember my phone number and my best friend’s phone number from the eighth grade, but I can’t remember my best friend’s phone number now.”

“So imagine that just happening a bit large, on a national scale where there’s a cyber attack so massive that it affects the country. That’s pretty scary, and it’s in no way outside of the realm of reality, and it’s not like when the show started and it was a virus. I mean, you understand, you see the simple. You can understand that this is the virus issue. So let’s go through and let’s find a [way] to cure this virus. We know how to attack this thing. Where with a cyber attack, it’s so nebulous. You can pinpoint where it came from and how it started, but once it spreads, it’s like wildfire. So it is very scary, it is very topical, and it’s very real,” Brooks said.

We’ll see the beginnings of just how drastic the cyber attack will be on the season premiere, and it’s going to be a challenge for the characters to adapt to not being able to use the technology they typically rely on.

“That’s where creativity comes into play. That’s when you hope that the people in charge during the crisis are creative and level-headed and can come up with some creative solutions, because I mean that’s what happens. We lost all of our technology, we are like, ‘Okay well we don’t have internet. We don’t have digital communications. We can’t pull up Google Maps or whatever military system we are using to map the world. Get me a map, get me a paper map. Do we even have paper maps? Give me a radio, like a good old-fashioned radio.’ And then once we assemble that stuff, go into storage, dust that stuff off, once we assemble it let’s figure out a way to keep America safe.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this crew face seemingly impossible challenges, but Brooks hinted that this season would reveal more than ever how that’s taking a toll on the characters.

“There’s sort of a culmination of all the different seasons of the show and we’ve been through this. The characters on the show have been through this time and time again, and that’s what they do. When the country calls they step up and they fight. But doesn’t that ultimately take an effect? Isn’t there a weariness that comes with that? Isn’t there a depletion of one’s own humanity when they are constantly being sent out to face the worst of humanity? To fight against it. To keep it from hurting the innocent. And I think that’s a big theme of this season as well. It’s gritty. It’s dark. It’s real. At the end of the day we are dealing — it sounds like we are saving the world, but we’re dealing with wars. And this is the biggest one yet and it has a negative affect. And we are going to show that. We are going to show that it breaks you down, that it breaks down the souls who go out there and put their lives on the line for us on a daily basis.”

The good thing about the writers knowing ahead of time that the show was likely ending is that they had the opportunity to write the ending they wanted, which Brooks also discussed. So will audiences be satisfied with the conclusion of the series?

“The producers and the writers were actually able to write a last season [and] write a show that tied everything together and it was really able to take the characters — to really push them to their limit, to really reveal everything left that they had to reveal about them, to reveal who they were, to be able to have intensely dramatic things that affected some of the characters on the show more than others,” Brooks explained.

“I think everyone is going to be thrilled from a dramatic standpoint. Everyone is going to love where it goes because you are going to tell a real story that has an ending that’s just not a typical short story like a regular season would be with the expectation of another season,” he continued.

“There is an end, and we treat it like such. I think they are true to the scenarios, are true to the realities of war, and they are honest with the portrayal, and sometimes there’s casualties.”

Brooks said he had an amazing time working on The Last Ship, and that was largely due to the group of people he was able to work with.

“You just had a group of people who you know just got along really well. There just weren’t any issues between cast members, which is rare because you have a situation where you have a lot of people generally working under very tight schedules and there tends to be a lot of stress that comes with that,” he noted. ” That was just not the case here. Everyone got along great. You can go on other shows and in between shoots there will be no one in the cast area because the cast will be off in their own trailers or doing their own thing while setting up for the next shot, and for this show, everybody just hung out. When that happens five years into a run, that means that something’s going on pretty well. And I generally think that attitude comes down from the top.”

Brooks was a fan of the show before he was a part of it, and he actually auditioned for the role of Cameron Burk before landing the role of Meylan.

“I auditioned to play Jocko’s [Sims’] brother, the role that LaMonica [Garrett] eventually got, but that was my first audition for the show. It was serendipitous that I got another audition and I got to come back. But yeah I read for that, which to the producers’ credit, I think that they did a fantastic job hiring LaMonica. I think he was much better in that role than I would have been. I thought he was a brilliant choice he’s a brilliant actor and has a million abs,” Brooks laughed.

One of the reasons Brooks enjoyed the show was that he appreciated how the military was represented.

“I expressed to my representation that I was a fan of the show. I felt they represented the military very well. I’m ex-military myself, and I appreciate when shows represent it well and don’t paint us as 100% heroes or villains, because at the end of the day, it’s just your neighbor. I think a lot of people don’t realize that it’s your next door neighbor who decided to put on a uniform and fly halfway around the world and possibly die so we can go about living our lives. So we can go out to dinner unimpeded on a Friday night and not have to worry about foreign threats. I just think that they did that well.”

After that first audition, Brooks said he expressed that he’d be interested in anything else that might come up for the show and that he would love to be a part of it in any way.

“So something came up. It was three episodes,” Brooks remembered. “They were nice enough to give me the job. I had such a great time doing it [and then] I found out I was written in two more episodes. The last two episodes of Season 3. A tremendous honor. And I went and I talked to Steven Kane, and I’m like, ‘you know what, I need you to thank whatever writer it was to keep writing me in because I’ve had the most amazing time.’ He said, ‘It was my idea. We really enjoyed having you here.’ And I’m telling you that it’s the biggest vote of confidence that you can get as an actor. When you come in to do your job, and they are like, ‘You know what? We want to keep this person around a little longer even though it was never part of the plan.'”

“So it was this little job on this great show that I just really wanted to do a little part on, and it turned out to be an over two-year journey that I’ll remember for the rest of my life as being one of my best experiences in this town thus far.”

When Meylan first showed up, he wasn’t exactly a character we wanted to root for. Brooks spoke to that a bit and the way his character, and the perception of his character, has evolved since.

“I mean, when you show up and you arrest captain Tom it’s going to make some enemies, because there’s going to be some people that do not like you and find a way to communicate that to you, usually via Twitter. But in the end, I think because of the way they wrote it and because that they let my character remain and evolve people can look back and understand it,” he stated.

“He was doing what he thought was right,” Brooks continued. “He just didn’t have the full picture, and we’ve all been guilty of that in some way, shape, or form.”

Just because The Last Ship is ending doesn’t mean you won’t be able to see Brooks on your television screen.

“This fall and this winter you can catch me on a few shows. I will be on Arrested Development on Netflix, I will be on Seth Macfarlane’s show The Orville, and I will also be on MacGyver. I’m a return on MacGyver and my character will be coming back in Season 3,” Brooks said.

“They are all completely different characters. On The Orville, I play an alien military commander. In Arrested Development I play a very colorful fixer for the mafia, and on MacGyver I play one of MacGyver’s best friends and I’m a bomb genius, so whenever he comes up against a situation where he has to deal with a bomb or a bomber he calls me, and I bring my super nerd bomb skills to the table to help save the day.”

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Be sure to catch Emerson Brooks on The Last Ship, which returns tonight at 9/8c on TNT. You can also check out our preview of the The Last Ship Season 5 Episode 1.

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