Face it, working in a morgue could be creepy for some. Not Eliza Dushku.

Dushku’s character in the new Fox drama "Tru Calling" lands a gig on the midnight shift at the city morgue, where she hears a murder victim asking for help.

Dushku, it seems, was around corpses at a very early age - long before she was around network suits.

"My best friend in elementary school, her father owned a funeral home in Watertown (Mass.), the MacDonald Funeral Home, and we were these kind of crazy, high-energy 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds," Dushku said. "Every day after school we would go there because her grandmother lived upstairs."

Never would she have dreamed that a decade later she would be starring in a series in which dead people - and soon-to-be dead people - make up a key component.

"Bernadette MacDonald, she introduced me to my first morguish experience," Dushku said.

The twist in the show is that after hearing the cry for help from the dead folks, Dushku’s character, Tru, wakes up 12 hours earlier. Knowing what’s ahead, she sets out to prevent tragedies.

"Tru Calling," which launches Oct. 30 at 8 p.m., is Dushku’s first outing as a lead in a prime-time series. But she’s no stranger to television viewers or moviegoers. Dushku played Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," and has appeared in the big-screen films "Bring it On" and "City By the Sea."

Dushku said she immediately identified with the young woman at the heart of "Tru Calling."

"It was kind of surprising, yet comforting," Dushku said. "I felt if I get the opportunity, and they want to get this to me, we do have so many similarities."

After Fox scheduled the show, the cast and crew went back to reshoot parts of the pilot. The original got generally weak buzz from critics who saw it, and even Dushku agrees the new version is better.

"In the pilot, you don’t know if you’re picked up yet - you’re trying to give as many story lines as possible," she said. "There was too much going on in the first one. I think it lost some of the initial direction. The second one was much more clear and concise."

Being the lead means Dushku is also carrying a heavier load than she had in the past.

"In other shows, I used to get to hang out with the Teamsters and kick back," she said.

She also wouldn’t mind getting a shot at a guest part on "Angel," either. She said she loves the world that series creator Joss Whedon has made and never wants to be out of it.

But for now, of course, she’s got to worry about hearing dead people.