In the past I'd always felt like 'the girl' in the show or the movie. On 'Friday Night Lights' there were a bunch of girls, and I was the woman. Initially there was a little struggle with my identity around that. But now there's a sense of ease.

I grew up singing. My mother was a music teacher.

I was born in Boston, but then I went down to Virginia. We spent a little time in Maryland, and then were in Virginia by the time I was seven. What struck me the most was that my mother thought that she had gone to the middle of nowhere, and we would still drive four hours for her to get her hair cut in Washington, D.C.

My twin sister, my cousin, and I used to write and perform plays for my family. We raided the closets for costumes and fought over parts. I'm sure I was the bossiest one.

I always want to stretch myself and do something that I haven't done before.

It’s funny – my married friends tell me all the time, 'What you have is so much easier.' When you’re doing it on your own, you don't have to [argue over] how you're raising the kids.

In terms of American Horror Story and Nashville, what attracted me to those, and Friday Night Lights, for that matter, is that they felt like something innovative and something that we hadn't seen before. As an actor, that's exciting.