You don't realize how much a part of your character is part of yourself until you are no longer playing that character.

It's really interesting - I wanted to become an actress when I was young because I wanted to do romantic comedy. And I did a lot of comedies very early on, but then my career took kind of a left turn with Joss Whedon, and I discovered that doing genre work is actually more interesting as an actor, because the given circumstances are more extreme. And it really is creatively more challenging.

I just don't think [Payne] was the right time to do it, maybe. It was timing, not so much that it was executed wrong.

[John Larroquette] is one of the smartest men I've ever met. He's very cerebral and book-smart. He would say things and I'd have to go look them up, thinking, "That can't be true!" And they'd be true.

The hardest thing to do as an actor is to be simplistic, and to just be.

When I first started I was always known as The Girl on the Sitcom with the Funny Voice.

So it's nice to know that Rita had that impact, and it was nice to end a character on a high note like that. But, again, in the moment... I always say, nobody was more devastated than me [from Rita's death in Dexter]!