There's also these moments when you're like, oh, I really want to do different things. Not instead of this show [The Big Bang Theory]. It's just a hunger to do something else, too.

I did not want to be the accompanist to an operatic star. But I was at a very high level for a 16-year-old, and I maintained that. So really good, but more impressive than classically trained. So I had to take a crash course in classical technique because I really wanted to get away with playing this character [in Florence Foster Jenkins] without people saying, "That's not really accurate."

We all have those dreams of going back in time and seeing what it was like when our parents were younger. Maybe we don't all have that dream. I don't know. Getting to role play or step back to a different moment in time and see things through a different lens is something that resonated with me, for sure. We don't get to do that, generally, but when the right neurological disorder lines up with the right unstable woman, that moment presents itself. Getting to know where we come from is a really profound way of getting to look at who we are.

That is what's disconcerting about working on the show, you can't seem to get an instinct about what works and what doesn't. It happens a lot, and in different ways.

It's not really about confidence. It's just something that isn't really in the vocabulary of what goes on at work. The writers write and the actors act.

Well, I think that everybody is kind of a nerd at heart.

I actually struggled through teaching myself to cook because I'm completely ignorant in the kitchen. So I did really macho things like trying to make my own curry. Really hardcore stuff.