Carla Gugino: Woman With Answers

In the new CBS series "Threshold," Dr. Molly Caffrey and a team of experts are the best defense against an alien invasion.

Her team first infected the crew of an alien ship and, since then, Molly, played by Carla Gugino, has been tracking them to unlikely places.

"Threshold" is not only the name of the show. It's also the name of Dr. Caffrey's mission to save the world.

On The Early Show, Gugino explained more about the premise of the show and her role to co-anchor Julie Chen.

"I play a contingency analyst," she said, "and, basically, one of the plans I've drawn up is, if alien life were to come to the planet Earth, what do we do? I wrote it as a theoretical exercise, not expecting it to happen, and my character gets swept up in the middle of the night with running this group of people, this team to save the world. And it's much more complicated than we think."

The aliens on "Threshold" are already on Earth, and they're slowly mutating and taking over humans. So you don't know if you're talking to an alien or a human.

"The theory is: If there was another intelligent life form and they were so much smarter than us," Gugino said, "they probably wouldn't come in the way we imagine, not as a spaceship or little green men but something much more insidious. In this case, they're altering our DNA so anyone among us could be one of them."

The show is designed to have the "feel" of a major motion picture. Said Chen, "When I'm watching it, I feel like I'm in the movies."

Gugino agreed. "That was one of the things that really drew me to the show … It's very ambitious and very unique and feels huge," she said. "The writers are so creative. Every time I read a new script, I literally think: 'How are we going to solve this? It's moving so fast.' So it is. It is very expansive … To me, there are elements of 'Silence of the Lambs,' elements of those big movies that we grew up on. That kind of primal fear."

Are there contingency analysts out there? Does this job really exist? "Or," quipped Chen, "if you tell me, would you have to kill me?"

"Exactly! No, I think I'll let you in on it," Gugino playfully replied.

Then, on a more somber note, she said that during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the public has become more aware of contingency analysts and the work that they do. Obviously, in the case of "Threshold," she said, "we have taken artistic license. The interesting thing is now Molly (the character she plays) is no longer doing what you would do as a contingency analyst. Now I'm basically sort of running this team of experts and am much more active in the field.

"Originally, I did research on what my history would be as a character and what my training would have been. Then it became: What would I do in this situation? … I think this character is very much one of those people who is the calming within the storm. Whenever everyone is running around screaming, she is, 'OK, this is what we're going to do' and gets in her power, which is a fun character to play."

As a matter of fact, during the pilot episode of "Threshold," Molly is referred to as "the most powerful person on the planet," which Gugino said is "something very hard to live up to, I might add."

Gugino, who is 34, might be familiar to viewers of such comedies as "Spin City" on the small screen, as well as the title role in the series "Karen Sisco," and, in movie theaters, in "Spy Kids."

Gugino said she moved to such a dramatic turn because strong female roles attract her.

"But, inevitably, I hope by the time I'm 80, I've gotten to play almost every role," she said. "This is a genre I have never done, with people who are really good at it, and it's also a character I was really fascinated by, a woman who would choose worst-case scenarios as her profession. That seemed something I could explore for a long period of time.

"That's the thing with a television show. You have time to collaborate on a character and find out who she is rather than having a defined piece of material from the beginning. And I just fell in love with the people. All of my concerns and interests seem to be in sync with them."

Catch "Threshold" Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central on CBS. Gugino will also star in "Rise," a movie with Lucy Liu and Michael Chiklis, and in "Even Money" with Kim Basinger and Danny DeVito.