I try to keep things as varied as possible in my career, and after playing something as fun and over the top as Maryann on 'True Blood,' I wanted to find something antithetical to that.

As an actor, you want as much variety as you can muster up. Otherwise you just keep playing the same chord over and over again.

So often in TV, when you have an antagonist who's supposed to be the 'big baddie,' it's so easy for them to become cliched.

I did a show called 'Wonderland' a few years back, and I was fortunate enough to spend a full-on two weeks - I'm talking 13-15 hours a day - with the doctors and patients at Bellevue in New York. That served me well for 'Durham County.

When I do watch shows, or projects that I've been a part of, I'm pretty good at watching them objectively. And that's mostly because I want to see how it came out overall, what the overall story was and how it came together visually, what my mates were doing.

There's a feeling of immortality you have in youth. You just don't see the dangers around you, or, if you do, maybe you're even excited by them.

I thought a vegan diet would be too difficult, being on the road so much, but it's been far easier than I thought.