Julie Ann Emery On The Highs And Lows Of Five Days At Memorial — Exclusive Interview

Your character is pregnant during this disastrous situation.

And she chose. She's seven months pregnant, and she chose to show up to the hospital and take care of her patients and try to get her staff safely through the storm during what was forecast and turned out to be the hurricane of the century. That takes such an extraordinary person.

She also leads with such a beautiful combination of compassion and grit. I have so much respect for my character and for the circumstance that she's in in those five days.

Did the fact that she was pregnant influence your performance and how you chose to portray her?

In every way. There was something about the prosthetic belly, which was 12, 13 pounds and had weight and hung. Our costume designer, Deborah Hansen, did a beautiful job making that feel real for me. Once you put yourself in that circumstance, suddenly all the stakes are, I'd say, doubled is a massive understatement. Every decision you make, you suddenly realize, "Oh, there's two of us here."

I have a cousin who's an ob-gyn, and I talked to her a lot about the physical circumstances and what that means for a pregnant person. A pregnant person needs about twice the amount of water as a non-pregnant person. I didn't know that. So severe dehydration would set in much sooner. That has physical ramifications that I really tried to incorporate into the performance. She had to be mightily struggling physically, and to see her still try to put on a brave face or a happy face or a good face for her staff and a compassionate and empathetic face and attitude for her patients, I find it extraordinary.

Also, every time she made a trip down those stairs to the Memorial staff to fight for her patients for evacuation, that really cost her something physically. So [at] every level of understanding Diane, I have such overwhelming respect for the character. She's just extraordinary.

We all took a deep dive. We all wanted to live up to the story. We all wanted to live up to the artistry of Carlton Cuse and John Ridley. We all wanted to live up to the extraordinary journalism by Sherry Fink [who wrote the book the show is adapted from], or none of us would be talking about this right now — we wouldn't even know about it — and to each other. The cast is wildly talented, and we have great love for each other, and none of us wanted to let the other down in a scene. We all wanted to take it to the next level and then take it to the next level and then take it to the next level again.