FORMER MISS UNIVERSE IN THE TV SWIM

Her right hand fisted below her sculpted chin, her mouth slightly open, Shawn Weatherly watched a tape of herself, clumsily bolting from one side of an underwater cage to the other as three great white sharks circled and bumped the cage, circled and bumped, and circled some more.

It was the first time the former Miss Universe had seen the video footage of her first (and, she hoped, last) up-close and personal contact with the great whites. And even though she’d already been through that harrowing experience and several others during the course of shooting five episodes of a documentary miniseries called “OceanQuest,” Weatherly still got the chills reliving the moment.

“You have no idea, the power of those things when you’re both in the water and they’re so close . . . it’s a tangible thing, the threat of them,” the actress said, her blue eyes widening with the memory.

But then a bright smile came to her face, and she added, “But you know what? I wouldn’t have missed it for anything--the sharks, the Antarctic, the isolation, all of it. I guess it was fantastic.”

These shifting emotions, a penchant for risk and athleticism, and a figure that really filled out a swimsuit were what executive producer Peter Guber and producer/director/cameraman Al Giddings were looking for when they started auditioning young actresses to take the miniseries’ leading role--what Giddings termed “the human being in the natural frame.”

“OceanQuest” will run for five consecutive Sunday evenings on NBC, beginning Aug. 18. Weatherly, Giddings and the production crew scoured five of the seven seas and spent almost a year on the water, filming great white sharks, moray eels, sea snakes and strange sea creatures living under the ice pack in Antarctica. There’s enough gorgeous underwater camera work to satisfy even the most diehard Cousteau fan.

But the central notion of “OceanQuest,” according to Guber and Giddings, was to use the novice Weatherly as an empathetic focus for the viewers, allowing them to experience the mysteries of the deeps in an emotional, not just educational, way.

“We wanted to engage the audience not just through scenic beauty, but through Shawn’s emotions and discoveries,” said Giddings, who was responsible for the underwater cinematography on such films as “The Deep” and two James Bond films--”For Your Eyes Only” and “Never Say Never Again.”

“And I think we hit it: When you watch the tape, you really feel it, in a way I’ve never been familiar with before,” he said.

What Giddings and his crew were familiar with, though, were the rigors and discipline involved in deep-sea diving, exploring and filming. After all, this team had not only worked on feature films but on National Geographic TV specials as well. Some of the crew had been together for 15 years.

But Weatherly was not familiar with these rigors--not in the slightest.

“I’d been diving once before ‘OceanQuest,’ and it was a very negative experience for me, almost claustrophobic,” she said, grinning at her former discomfiture. “But after the first six weeks or so, I didn’t even think about it.” Yet in a moment her face had clouded over, and she murmured: “It was real hard, though. Being on the edge all that time, out in an environment I didn’t even understand or appreciate. . .”

Yet great effort has been made by the production team to ensure that the viewer can appreciate--perhaps for the first time--the real flavor of being exposed, vulnerable to an alien environment. The figure of Weatherly undergoing her various hardships adds another narrative line to the miniseries, one which the actress said was as difficult as all the physical rigors.

“I think that this story is dramatic, too,” Weatherly said. “There was quite a bit of re-enactment on top of all the action. It took quite a bit of acting involved in re-creating the feeling of the first take, even if it was the 10th and there were poisonous sea snakes swishing all around me.”

But Weatherly insisted that all the dangers she exposed herself to were part of the job. She said she wasn’t ignorant of what she was getting herself into.

“When I first interviewed for the show, it was my idea of a great adventure,” she said firmly. “Then, when I accepted the job, it was my idea to take the risk, to go under water and see what there was to see. I really did it for myself.” She laughed, and added, “I was no Fay Wray caught in the monster’s clutches.”

Weatherly noted that she had gotten her diver’s certification as a result of the show and has bought her own scuba gear.

“But after spending a day in the Antarctic Ocean,” she added with a smile, “it’s going to be warm water diving for this girl from now on.”