I think the idea of family and protecting the family is something that ties a lot of these women together.

The whole press thing and who you are in the media, or what you have to project yourself to be, it feels very much like another person. People say to me, "Oh, your life must be changing," and I'm like, "Uh, I guess?" For me, it's such a gradual change, and I don't see it from the outside like everybody else does. It's weird, I see my face on a bus or online or somebody has my picture as their picture on Twitter and it's all a bit weird and I feel very disconnected from it and very much, "I guess that's me." It's very surreal.

All the foundation work you plant in the early seasons pay off in stronger storylines deep into our seasons. I think that only aids in performance.

I love nerdy work. I love writing notes. I try to go back, as much as I can, to feed what happens and why they do what they do.

My brothers and I always did improv stuff in our basement with our friends; we're super nerds, and that was our way of spending a Friday night.

I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone. There's an amazing interaction with the audience that happens because they are very much another scene partner. How they respond determines the kinds of stories we tell.

It's a daunting thing to be playing a real person and to have contact with her and meet her and be in her circle a little bit. It's an odd thing. There's so much responsibility to tell the story honestly and truthfully, and at the same time, you start to develop a friendship with this person - or I did.