Until KITT rode into her life, Deanna Russo was probably best known for her role as Dr. Logan Armstrong on US soap opera The Young and the Restless. Now the actress stars as Sarah Graiman in the long-awaited remake of the 80s classic Knight Rider. "I get to beat up bad guys!" she tells Abbie Bernstein...

How did you become involved in Knight Rider?

Personally, watching it on TV as a little girl was how I got involved with Knight Rider (laughs). I think everybody was a fan as a kid – when I was a kid, certainly everyone watched it, or at least knew about it. But as an adult – now this new generation’s going to know about it – I just got involved when they sent me the casting breakdown.

In the series, your character, Sarah Graiman, is the daughter of KITT’s inventor, who seems to be pretty preoccupied with KITT. Do Sarah and KITT have any kind of sibling rivalry for Dr. Graiman’s attention, since in a way they’re both his offspring?

I don’t think it’s that much of a sibling rivalry, because KITT’s [Sarah’s] baby, too. She worked on him, so I think she has almost a motherly instinct with this car, and so when Mike's around or behaves irresponsibly [she gets angry], because this is something she helped to create.

Is KITT ‘alive’ for Sarah? Does she think of the car as a kind of person, or does she think of it as something she made, like a sculpture?

I think she thinks of it more like a sculpture. That’s why when KITT does what he does – throughout the series there are hints of artificial intelligence and there are questions as to what we define it as. Does he gradually become more and more human? I have moments like, ‘Wait a minute. You were worried? KITT, you’re a car. You’re a computer!’ She doesn’t chastise him, she’s bewildered. But that’s her creation – she’s made something that can learn.

Do you find yourself talking to your own car when you get off set?

I do. There are a lot of near-misses driving around the freeways of Los Angeles! When I get to my destination, I touch my dashboard and say, ‘Thank you, your brakes are working…!’ (laughs)

Is there any sense that Sarah is competing with Mike for respect?

It’s more about being seen as strong and powerful, so that [people around her] will see that she can do missions and accomplish what she needs to. I think that’s what she wants to prove, not only to her father, but to everyone else too. She’s not an Army Ranger, she’s a book nerd. She’s training to be a badass – she can throw down, but [the others have questions] about whether she should go on missions.

Is Sarah more of an action heroine than she was in the pilot?

Oh, heck, yeah. My character, in between the two-hour TV movie and the series, has gone through extensive training. In real life, we’ve been doing fight-training, weapons training, stunt-driving training. So I get to beat up bad guys now!

Do they have a gyroscope device for when KITT is spinning around, with CGI of the background added later?

That’s actually two different things. You have the green-screen area, where we film a lot. That’s one location. And then we have what we call the gimbal, which causes the car to rotate. We’re not usually in the car when it’s rotating (laughs) – that would make us sick. We’ll do whatever we can in the car that insurance will let us do, and then it’s our doubles!

You know, before I started this show, I said, ‘Let me at it, I want to do it.’ Not only does the driving usually need the double, but they’re usually shooting [first-unit scenes with the leads] at the same time [that second unit is shooting the stunts] in order to make the schedule. We have great stunt people to work with. It’s not easy – these people thrive on adrenaline and they see getting bruised as proof they’re doing their jobs. For me, if I get a paper cut, it’s awful.

Is there any part of the action training you particularly enjoyed?

All of it. I especially liked training with guns. I would never hunt, but I want to see how good I can be with targets.

How was the stunt driving course?

The stunt car doesn’t have a windshield and I didn’t have a helmet on, and going at speed with no windshield is scary.

Did you exercise caution when driving home afterwards?

I did. I met a friend for lunch and he asked if I was alright – I had asphalt on my skin. When you’re pulling 180-degree turns, it comes off the road and onto your face.

You were on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, where you had to learn almost an hour’s worth of dialogue every working day. How does that compare to the production pace on Knight Rider?

On soaps, every scene is so similar that you have to stay really focused on the differences between the last monologue and this monologue, so it’s very challenging. On Knight Rider – this is my first action show – it’s more demanding hours and physical. It’s like we’re doing an action movie every week.

It’s more demanding on all of us, because we’re all involved in the action and I’m doing it in high heels (laughs). And it’s never fast enough, is what I’m learning. No matter how fast we go, there’s always something else.

Anything else you’d like to say about Knight Rider?

I’m having a great time!

Knight Rider is currently airing on NBC.