When Scott Speedman's publicist calls and asks if you can do an interview a little earlier than scheduled, you take the call. No matter that you happen to be driving down Bayview Avenue in Toronto during the morning rush. To make matters worse, the questions you’ve prepared are in the laptop bag in the trunk and the back-up digital recorder from the glove box is low on battery power.

But Speedman, whose new series Last Resort premiered Thursday, is patient, gracious, even bemused.

“You’re not going to get into an accident, are you?” he asks as you fumble about, thinking to yourself, I’m glad he’s Canadian.

Speedman grew up north of where I am, he tells me, at Bayview and Sheppard Avenue. I recall that he went to Earl Haig Secondary with actor/director Sarah Polley from an April 2005 feature article from TORO that included a photo spread, shot while he was in Vancouver filming vampire flick Underworld: Evolution. His jump to film came after a run as Ben Covington on the successful TV series Felicity.

What drew him back to television for Last Resort, which follows the exploits of the crew of an American nuclear submarine gone rogue?

“What drew me back? I don’t know,” Speedman says. “I was very intrigued by the show. I thought the pilot itself was very good. I was very excited by the size, the scope of the show. I’ve been looking around for something interesting to do and this one just came up at the right time.”

The pilot is intense. After picking up a crew of Navy Seals, Captain Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher) gets orders to fire nuclear weapons at a foreign country. The command comes through a channel designed for use only when the U.S. homeland has been wiped out. With no indication that is the case, Chaplin questions the order and is quickly relieved of his command. The sub is then turned over to XO Sam Kendall, played by Speedman, who similarly requests confirmation. The crew then quickly finds itself under attack from its own government and seeks refuge on an exotic island. Needless to say, loyalty and duty are called into question, and rival factions emerge.

“Not a lot of laughs, that’s for sure," Speedman says of Last Resort. "It’s been extremely tough to shoot but fun to do.”

It helps, of course, to be shooting in Hawaii. And to have such a great cast, including veteran Braugher (Homicide, Men of a Certain Age).

“That was really when I was full on committed to the show,” Speedman says. “When he came on and I re-read the pilot with him as captain, everything just started to make sense. The qualities he has as an actor really came through in the part.”

And no, Braugher is not always as intense as the characters he often portrays.

“He’s an incredibly nice man and very, very, very cool,” Speedman assures. “He’s intense, but I mean, it’s not that steely intensity that comes across all the time.”

As for Speedman's character, Sam Kendall, we’ll be curious to see how he evolves. In the second episode, we learn that he was once a military prisoner, a fact he apparently didn't bother sharing with his wife.

“With such a huge cast, trying to accommodate all those storylines is a challenge to say the least, but it’s going pretty well,” Speedman says.

“I definitely like the way they’re developing my character. We’re still trying to figure it out. That’s what’s interesting about doing a television show. A character expands and can really grow from week to week, so I’ve been excited to see what they’ve been doing with him.”

If you’re hooked by tonight’s premiere, you’ll no doubt want to be along for the ride.

Watch Last Resort on Global, Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT

Scott Speedman talks Last Resort (and Goosebumps with Ryan Gosling) on Jimmy Fallon ...