Off hours, Ms. Davis is up to her elbows in large pots of regurgitated fur and bones found in owl pellets, which she reconstructs into mythical creatures out of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Book of Imaginary Beings.” “I was always a little macabre,” she said.

Ms. Davis, whose scary side is tempered with a warm intelligence, spoke with Kathryn Shattuck about the pressure to be pretty and a certain provocative word. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Q. Cameron Howe is your first lead in a TV series. What drew you to her?

A. I view Cameron as embodying the hacker ethos in a very literal way. Hacking is manipulating and working within an already existing system to get something else that you want out of it. I think Cameron enters this system, Cardiff Electric, and hacks it, and it becomes a different thing. And there’s this whole world and a history and a future and really strong ideas that are rooted in this character. She’s flawed in a way that I don’t think women often get to be.

Yet she does bring heat to the series. Do you have any qualms about doing sex scenes?

No, I’m always surprised when actors say they don’t like sex scenes. It’s like a freebie. It’s fun to make out with someone. So yes, thumbs up on that. It was a little awkward watching it next to my dad at the premiere. I think I was just curling in a ball, like “Dad, don’t look.”

What about Cameron’s distinctive style?

Cameron’s wardrobe and haircut are motivated by utility. Would she be wearing black nail polish? No. I can’t imagine this character taking time out from her day to paint her nails. She does everything the easier way, because she is so addicted to and obsessed with coding. We thought, “She has a passion in her life, so let’s not make it about her looks.”