Tv extra: Emily Watson on portraying a Soviet nuclear physicist

And like many of her peers, the Apple Tree Yard actress, 52, is clear that the small screen - far from its one-time 'poor relation' tag - is increasingly where the best work is.

"It's like going to a book shop now. You go in every night, you turn on the telly, you look around the shelves and you go, 'Oh, I'll read that tonight and then I'll read that tomorrow'," she muses of the viewer experience.

"And it's become a much wider, broader, much more diverse and interesting place to work - it's beginning to represent a lot of different interests."

More than that though, she sees the changes in television as helping women get proper recognition.

" 'They've' also clearly worked out that the audience is more women than men, and that the women are in control of the buttons... Finally!" she quips with a mischievous laugh. "Because everything used to be, 'The men get paid more', 'The men are the leads', 'Men, men, men'.

"It was all about movies and opening weekends," she adds, mimicking: "It was 'only Bruce Willis who can open a movie every weekend and there aren't any women who can do that - or very few'.

"And the whole system was stacked by that, but actually it was a self-supporting system, which is now being completely undermined by television."

Watson is certainly in a position to comment, having earned her stripes across the board, from her early days on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, to securing a BAFTA win for her stirring performance in Fred West biopic Appropriate Adult, and eventually an OBE for services to drama.

But fame was somewhat late coming for the Islington-born star, whose screen breakthrough came in the form of the devoutly religious-yet troubled Bess McNeill in 1996 drama Breaking The Waves.

Securing the Grand Prix prize at Cannes, the film - headed up by Danish director Lars von Trier - put Watson on an international stage and landed her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. She would repeat the feat two years later, when she was nominated once again for her turn as cellist Jacqueline du Pre in Hilary And Jackie.

She has worked tirelessly ever since. Proving she's unafraid to take risks, undeterred by sex scenes and nudity (there's been plenty of it!), and at the top of her game when it comes to emotionally taxing, complex roles.

The latter will stand her in good stead for her next outing in Sky's brand-new drama, Chernobyl.

Based on the events of the 1986 nuclear plant disaster, the five-part mini-series - written and produced by Craig Mazin - brings to life the true story of the unprecedented tragedy, and the brave men and women who made incredible sacrifices to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.

Watson plays Ulana Khomyuk, a Soviet nuclear physicist committed to getting to the root cause of the deadly man-made accident.

It was an opportunity she simply couldn't turn down.

"When you get a script like this, you devour it and go, 'Oh my God, this is amazing. I really want to do this!'" she recalls excitedly.

"But then they said to me, 'OK, so you have to be away in Vilnius [Lithuania] for seven weeks or something' and I was like, 'Well, I can't do that, sorry'.

"It was too much time away, I have a young family," confides Watson, who lives in London with her two children - Juliet and Dylan - with her actor-turned-writer husband, Jack Waters.

"So there was quite a lot of toing and froing while we broke it up into bits," she adds. "It's just at the stage I am in my life [where] I can't just drop everything and go, even if it is as amazing as this.

"But luckily they wanted me enough to make it work!"

Her character, she explains, was created in tribute to a number of scientists and people in that community who worked towards solving the mystery of what had happened and helping in the clear up.

"In a way I had a bit of a clean slate because I could make of her what I felt was the best way to serve the narrative," she states, having teamed up with co-stars Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard and Jessie Buckley for the part.

"To me, she's a character who comes from Belarus - and you don't have to know very much about Belarus to know that it's probably one of the worst places to have lived in the 20th century.

"I saw her as somebody who had grown up in a place where you had to be incredibly tough to survive," Watson continues. "Which would've given her the right tenacity to go, 'OK, that is my calling. I am going to beat it'.

She follows: "I've played a lot of real people in my career [too] and you still have the point where you have to go, 'OK, that's them. This is me. And this is an interpretive act that I'm engaged in. I'm making dramatic choices'."

But that's not to say she doesn't question her work: "You have to. It's not a good job to do without fear; it's like any job that is high adrenaline, fear is part of it, and self-doubt," she warns.

"But you also have to get to a point where you completely believe who you are, because otherwise you couldn't do your job."

Did the themes feel relevant in today's divisive world?

"It felt very timely when we were making it," Watson admits. "The whole announcement about climate change and that there are these 12 years before we reach a critical point - and that we are in crisis but that nobody in power is treating it as a crisis..." she tails off.

"It has extreme close similarities to this situation; a nuclear reactor exploded and everybody in power around it said, 'Oh it's nothing. It's fine. We've fixed it'. The parallels couldn't be clearer."

She offers: "I went with my children on the recent climate strike and it was very powerful, but until somebody actually starts to act..."

So what will she take away from this experience as a whole?

"I think the importance of, just on an individual level, speaking your truth," Watson says, gently.

"And not sitting by and allowing things to happen or to be done to you - [in] so many walks of life and so many areas of life that is just so important."

Chernobyl will premiere on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on Tuesday May 7.