Written By Rick Ellis, Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

The star of the new hit USA Network drama "In Plain Sight" talks to us about the show and what she likes best about the character of Mary Shannon.

Q: What has been the most challenging part of your role?

A: Well, the role is such a nice fit for me. Honestly, I think the most challenging part of this job was just how much I’m in it. I’ve never really experienced that kind of workload before. You know it’s challenging and fulfilling, it’s sort of you know one of those things, be careful what you wish for. It’s such a great part and it’s – you know you see her at work and you see her at home.

The sort of challenge for me was I went to Albuquerque with an eight-week old and was working sort of thirteen to nineteen-hour days and for me that was the most challenging part was just staying afloat.

Q: How did you get the part? Was it something that you helped develop or did you audition for it?

A: You know I was looking for a show to do and I was reading just lots of scripts and I just picked it up and it was in a stack of scripts and I read it. I remember just laughing out loud a bunch of times, which I rarely do, even with really funny scripts – just because I don’t know when I’m reading you know you almost sort of clock a joke in your head more than you laugh out loud. And this one, I just remember actually sitting in my living room just laughing.

I just called my agent and said I really, really want to go in and meet on this one and who are they after? And do I have a chance? And you know just expressing a bunch of interest. And so then I went and met with Paul and David and they didn’t ask me to read actually. I was willing to read, but they didn’t ask me to read. We just sat and talked for a long time. And then, yes, they offered it to me after that.

Q: From the pilot, I think you mentioned at one point that Mary was from New Jersey. Do you know much about your character background; how she ended up in New Mexico or was it basically that’s where the job was at the time?

A: Yes, that’s what we talked about – David and I. The trick of TV, of course, is that you can make a bunch of that stuff up and you know it all might change one day when the writer decides to write something else, you know because with television things get revealed slowly. That’s something a lot of actors hate about the medium, but I kind of like it.

But you know we just discussed that, yes, with the Marshal Service it’s usually a matter of placement and that her relationship to Albuquerque and sort of the southwest is that she went there under protest. And so her energy is so different than the mellow, you know sort of relaxed place she’s been put in.

Q: You’ve done a lot of work in theater, I was just wondering if you could compare and contrast that experience – like the live experience with doing a show like "In Plain Sight."

A: Well, you know the acting is the same. I mean acting is always sort of the same – like you want to be - you know you’re pretending and you want to make it as real as you can. That’s the similarity. The mediums other than that are completely different. I mean you know with camera work you’re doing really small detailed work and you know if you do anything too big you’ve sort of failed. And with stage, especially with the play I’m doing right now, I’m doing a farce, and it’s so over the top that you can't actually be too big.

So it’s just completely different. And it was actually challenging for me to do the play because I’ve spent the last – I don’t think I’ve done a play in seven or eight years. So for me to remind myself to be enormous and to be brave enough to be big, it was actually a real challenge.

Q: Obviously the other women in the Shannon family have a much looser concern about law and order than Mary. How do you think that she got involved in law enforcement with a background like that? And what are Lesley Ann and Nikki both like to work with?

A: Well, I love working with both of them. I mean I think it’s so interesting. I mean to me, you know I had a mother, my mother was always, and I think I can say this without hurting her feelings, my mother was always late and is often late, and I’m always 15 minutes early to everything.

So I think we’ve all experienced sort of becoming who we are as a reaction to what we come from. And I think Mary Shannon sort of raised herself and had to look after herself from day one and probably is really, really - I think in my mind this is how I explained it – is really, really frustrated and really, really angry about not having a mother who was into the law and into structure and rules and all that. So she went as far as you could go with that and keeps everybody in line, and keeps a to-do-list on her you know dashboard. And all of that is sort of a reaction to what she comes from, I think.

Q: We were talking to your co-star a couple weeks ago – Fred Weller – and he was saying that the tech advisors got really weird when you would ask them questions when you guys were training for the role. Did you find that being the case – how they get a little shady?

A: No, we only had one guy, we were only allowed to have one guy. The Marshals Service actually allowed us to have a technical advisor. These Witness Protection Marshals take an oath, a lifetime oath to never to talk about their service, ever. So even after they retire, until their death they’re not allowed to tell their wives, they’re not allowed to talk to anybody about any of it.

So it’s impossible to get information, of course. But the Marshals Service did allow us one retired Marshal. I think probably it was a dual function. I’m not sure it was for us as much as it was for them to sort of know what we were doing and to know if we were going to present it properly. And I mean they actually were excited about the show and read the script and liked it and all that.

But they gave us this man who is lovely, named Charles Almanza, who was our technical advisor, and there were situations where he wanted us to tell the story properly and he wanted us to sort of tell the story the way the Marshals would do it. But once in a while if the details got too specific, he couldn't get involved. Like we’d say, “What about – Charlie, in this situation where would I take this person? What would be the name of the place I would take them?” He’s like I can't tell you the name. I’m like okay, is it a house? And he’s like, yes. And I’m like, Charlie, is it like a basement of a school? What is it? Is it like the back of a warehouse? And he’s like maybe.

You know so sometimes it was a little bit of a guessing game, but we were always happy to have him. I mean I was thrilled to have him just so we don’t look like idiot cops - you know just with all the gun stuff and arrests. And there are so many people doing that badly on television that it is nice to have someone around to say you’d never push a guy in a car like that. Here’s how you’d do it - you know.