Posted at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11

Juliet Aubrey is having a good time playing bad.

The award-winning British actress (right) stars as Helen Cutter in BBC America’s sci fi series “Primeval,” which has its first season finale at 8 p.m. Saturday. The new season begins at the same time Sept. 20.

“She’s very ambitious. She’s very driven. She’s a brilliant scientist,” Aubrey told me at San Diego Comic-Con in July. “Helen gets a lot more wicked as time goes by. She gets quite detached from the real world really in her ambition to strive for this perfect future. She takes no prisoners. She’s pretty tough.”

So far this season, Helen has traveled back in time through space-time anomalies and lived among the dinosaurs who also have stumbled into the present. Helen has refused to help her husband, Nick (Douglas Henshall), and his team of experts stop the dinosaurs. She lends a hand only when its convenient to her secret plans.

“She’s got a mission; she’s got a motive and an aim to find out about the future, what’s going to happen in the future, and that is what drives her,” Aubrey said. “That’s what drives everything with her.”

When she returns to the present in Saturday’s season finale, a new kind of predator follows her: It’s a seemingly unstoppable creature from the future.

“This future predator is faster and stronger and more deadly than any predator that’s been let in,” Aubrey said. “And so we need to find a way to control this animal.”

Again, Helen spends more time fulfilling her needs—including trying to convince her husband’s best friend to time-travel with her and tricking the team in another surprising twist in the show. In the Season 2 premiere next week, she even plants a spy in the government agency that is backing Cutter.

“From my perspective, she just wants to try and make the world a better place—without humans if necessary,” Aubrey said. When her co-star Karl Theobald expressed doubt about that statement, Aubrey laughingly added: “You have to love your character.”

Don’t miss what else Aubrey and Theobald had to say about their characters and filming “Primeval” on the jump.

Nick Cutter faces down beasts from the past and future (top).

I talked to Juliet Aubrey and Karl Theobald about "Primeval" at San Diego Comic Con in July. Here's what they had to say about the show.

On Helen’s costumes:

JA: We had big discussions on the costumes. I was all for the mink bikini but we decided to be a bit more conservative. In Series 2 my outfits change quite a lot—more buckles and belts and things like that. She becomes slowly more involved with her pursuit of the salvation of the universe as she would like to see it.

On why Helen came back to bother Nick, her husband:

JA: She’s lonely and wants Nick to come [travel through time] with her. She fancies a little bit of human company, which is why she tries to persuade [Nick’s firend] Stephen (James Murray) to come with her as well. It’s also a manipulative way of getting to Nick by getting close to Steven. There’s a whole triangle thing.

On Oliver Leek, the character played by Karl Theobald (left), who we meet in Season 2:

JA: He’s my man. I employ Leek to help me. I go visit the future and by accident I let in a future predator into the present day. We need to find a way to control this animal. I employ Leek to help me do that, but I need to do it secretly without the government knowing. He works for the government.

KT: I’ve been working for the government as a clerk or something and I’ve been head-hunted by Helen. I become an assistant to Lester. I take over for Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown). I shadow Sir James Lester (Ben Miller) and smarm my way in. He’s quite good as his job and quite intelligent. [Helen and my character] meet in the back of cars and secret little cabins. [There’s] a lot of whispering and winking and touching noses.

JA: He seems to have a demeanor that he can be manipulated—which is false because he is very clever and the opposite is true I believe.

KT: There is a sense that he’s kind of an everyman ... He’s anonymous, I guess, and kind of through his anonymity he creeps into a position of power.

On their feelings about “Primeval”:

JA: The dinosaurs are kind of secondary really. Obviously it’s called “Primeval” and there the reason why these people have been brought together, but there’s some really interesting relationships in there …

KT: Lots of manipulation in there and lots of kind of politics. Who’s manipulating who?

On shooting on location in the Canary Islands:

JA: It was really, really tough. It’s really exciting to go but it was tough. When we were in La Palma [in the Canary Islands], it was so hot. It was like being under a hair dryer. People couldn’t believe we were filming in the day. A lot of time the hard part was getting to the locations. We climbed ropes to get to places that were really remote. I’d find myself down in the bottom of a ravine with my backpack full of water. No one else could be seen and no supplies could be seen. It was quite heavy-going and the terrain was really rocky. It really looked prehistoric. They didn’t want trucks to disturb the sands. So rather than driving I would have to walk far out in a shot. “Just a bit further Juliet, just a little bit further.”

KT: No, no, not at all. I was stuck in an office.

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