The up-and-comer is so excited about her new TV series, Dietland (the beauty-industry-set revenge-fantasy drama adapted from Sarai Walker’s 2015 bestseller of the same name), that she’s willing to wake up for an early-morning interview while on a girls trip in Las Vegas. Here’s what we learned about her.

 

1) She was convinced she wasn’t going to get the role of ghostwriting advice columnist Plum Kettle on the AMC show. (Coles Notes version: Plum is recruited by a feminist activist group to help challenge our diet-and-beauty-obsessed world.) “The book was the best thing I’d read in forever. I wanted to be involved in any way possible. I decided to make a tape because I thought I wouldn’t get an audition. I hadn’t had one in forever!”

 

2) Julianna Margulies (who plays Plum’s catty editor-in-chief, Kitty) schooled her on the importance of being prepared. “She’s such a pro. She taught me that there are a hundred people involved in any given take, and any one of them could screw it up and we’d have to do it all over again. I’m not going to be the reason that we’re there for so many extra hours.”

 

 

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3) She just wants women to stop being so hard on themselves already. “I follow people on social media who look like me—plus-size women who are happy and fat. Looking at other women can invite comparison, but I don’t think it has to. You can be yourself and somebody else can be herself and that’s fine. Let’s be collaborative, not competitive.” 

 

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Elle Canada. 

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