Young has a lot to say about how she became an actor instead of a physicist and what's next for Mellie Grant on ABC's breakout drama.
Actress Bellamy Young, who stars in ABC’s drama Scandal, interviewed with TheCelebrityCafe.com about her absolute love for her time-consuming job, her time at Oxford studying acting in college and why she thinks her character has become a fan-favorite.
Southern-born in North Carolina and Ivy League-schooled at Yale, Young plays ambitious and crafty U.S. first lady Mellie Grant in the sophomore hit. Mellie appears forever entangled in a love triangle between her husband (Tony Goldwyn) and his former campaign manager, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), who's now a D.C. crisis manager. The series has attracted a huge online fan base in its current second season, BuzzFeed writes, partly due to its cast’s regular interaction with so-called "gladiators" on social media.
Young, 43, also has guest starred since 2011 in CBS’ Criminal Minds as Beth Clemmons, the supportive girlfriend of Thomas Gibson’s Aaron Hotchner. Young says she also will appear again in the end of the crime drama’s eighth season this May.
TCC: First of all, what is Mellie’s actual full name, because there’s been some freaking out about it on Tumblr as of late.
BY: [Laughs] Oh yeah! There’s been of bit of drama! You know, I’m gonna let the mystery ride, I really am. [Showrunner] Shonda [Rhimes] has gone on the record as saying it’s Melody, so we’ll go with Shonda.
I really don’t know why, but I enjoy the sort of Schrödinger’s cat of it all, right? That it’s all possibilities, that it just stays Mellie. Like, I sort of dig it, I don’t know why. Because even the first season … I never even pressed her for it. I really enjoy it just being mysterious that way, I don’t know why, but I do.
TCC: Maybe they could turn that into a plot point later on?
BY: Yeah, exactly!
TCC: So, anyway, you went to Yale, and then studied at Oxford in England, which I am so jealous of, but how did you catch the ‘acting bug’ that led to it being what you studied?
BY: Well I always sang growing up. I’ve always been a singer. [case in point in this interview here] And so when I was growing up in North Carolina, that was just sort of my mom availed herself of any opportunities she could to give me those opportunities, and that included some summer stock and different, community theater productions.
And I chose Yale because — well, bless them because they chose me back — but I wanted to go to Yale because I knew I could sing and I could still get a great education because they have all those great a capella groups. I thought I was going to do physics; I wanted to be a physics major … I’m a failed physics major. I wanted that more than anything to be a theoretical physicist. So it was really the singing that got me into Yale.
And when it turned out I was not so good at physics on the world stage, my mom is an English teacher, she’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life, I felt very comfortable in the English department. And of course the English department at Yale is amazing. I did a double major because I thought people might confuse it, honestly, for the school of drama. I thought it would be good on my resume. The undergraduate degree is very rhetorical — it’s a lot of English, and papers, but there’s more glorious acting class a semester, so those were formative.
And the summer in England was with British Dramatic Academy of Arts, and that was a real turning point just because it’s such a tradition. Being an actor is not a get-rich-quick-scheme in England. It’s very loyal; it’s very much a family. We were taught by such incredible teachers and even the people who come for the day and guest-lecture, like Jeremy Irons and Maggie Smith, who really just blew your mind and came as such equals and with such passion to share their love of the craft and to welcome you into the family.
TCC: Could you walk me through a normal workday on the set of Scandal — you know, quote-on-quote “normal.”
BY: Well, yeah, every day is of course is a little different, and that’s the greatest part of my job. But sort of the template is, if I’m in the first scene, let’s say if crew calls at about 7 on a Monday, I’m there at 5 because it takes two hours to get girls in their hair and their makeup.
We do maybe five-six scenes a day, which winds up being seven-eight pages a day, and you want it to take 12 hours. It’s 14 hours for me because I have to get there two hours before, but maybe sometimes it takes more like 16. It just depends on the work and the day … and then you sleep and wake up and do it again. [laughs]
TCC: Were you surprised by the fan reaction to your character? There’s Twitter all over it, and you’re very great with responding to your fans, Tumblr posts defending her and YouTube videos just about Mellie.
BY: I have to say, I’ve been surprised by the whole ride, Alex, I really am. Because I had two lines in the pilot, and I hoped I’d be around for three episodes, you know, I was just really grateful to be there. It was the best script I read that pilot season. I’ve worked with Tony [Goldwyn, who plays husband President Grant] before seen him so much, and Kerry [Washington] of course, and Shonda. And so, the whole ride has been amazing — an amazing blessing.
But the way they built the character last season, the way it sort of snuck up on you, because you’re pulling for Kerry and Tony, but the way the empathy sort of snuck up on you was such a gift in the writing. Because I did anticipate people being like, ‘Just get with her! Why do you wanna be with that lady?” Like, “The mean lady! Get away from the mean lady!” But they haven’t because the pain is underneath the anger, and it really resonates with people. There is nobody alive, nobody who has loved that hasn’t felt betrayed or haven’t felt that loss of unrequited love or a love that has turned. There is no one who has loved that doesn’t empathize with that. So even 5 percent, all of those for Liv and Fitz being together ultimately, there’s still that little bit of them that says, “God, but it really hurts when that happens to you.”
And then the tweeting, God I am such a Luddite, I am so backward. It was Kerry’s idea, the live-tweeting, and it has proven genius on so many levels. I think it has kept the show alive in the beginning. It really gave us a community, a family of fans, and it was a living, breathing entity, that community. And now it’s just grown, and it’s such a thrill for us because we love our jobs. Like, I’ve tweeted Syria and Mozambique and Argentina and Italy, it’s really, for my small mind, mind-blowing.
But it’s been phenomenal. And like you say, we give them an hour of television, and they give us back their art. They sing songs, they do recaps that are songs, or monologues … or drawings or anything. They give us back their art and their time and their hearts and their allegiance, and it’s really humbling and overwhelming and thrilling and wonderful.
TCC: What can we expect from this new batch of episodes (starting Thursday) from Mellie, leading up to re-election time and another new feud with Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry), the president’s chief of staff?
BY: In a few episodes, it will be becoming time to announce [re-election], that pressure will be upon us. When we get back on Thursday, it’s not quite there yet. But for sure Mellie and Cyrus are jockeying for positions, jockeying for loyalty — like, “Is he cheating on me? Is he ‘cheating on’ Cyrus?” Who has Fitz’s attention? And we’re both claws-out kind of girls, but we also have great respect for each other, like we know we can rely on the other to get something done. We know we can call upon that person, but as adversaries are formidable.
And Defiance [the recently revealed election-rigging scandal] will keep playing out, that giant betrayal, that will still keep rippling in terms of who loves whom and who trusts whom.
TCC: Mellie is kind of like the “desperate housewife” of the United States, if you think about it. So even though she’s this tough cookie, she’s very different from other ambitious political wives like you’ve played before like as Ellen Darling on ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money, who’s really been affected by her husband’s transgressions. So then why is [Mellie] so different?
BY: I think a lot of it has to do with how much she loves Fitz. She really loves him. So that makes the twist of the knife even more sharp. It makes the stakes so high because it’s not just theoretical, it’s deeply personal. I don’t know that in our lives we can parse our ambitions and our hearts so easily, because Mellie’s are definitely intertwined, and I know in so many ways it’s a political marriage. Because no one gets to that office in a sort of innocent way, there are a lot of pragmatic steps taken. But Mellie loves Fitz, deeply. It also has her identity in this marriage, in this man and in this path they built together — and for so many years it went so well. They were partners in their professional life and in their private life. They were parents together, but they were also politicians together.
She’s a smart woman, every bit his equal, but gender politics makes it that she fall into the first lady role and he fall into the president role. But they very much governed as a unit. And everything’s changed now, and it’s so confusing, first of all, and it’s so gutting, second of all. I think that’s why it feels not so icy, it has a little more blood in it because her heart is there.
TCC: That’s a good way of putting that, I like that. OK, wow you just kind of blew me away with that statement there.
BY: And you know what, I never know because I could get a script Friday that tells me everything I believed up till now is wrong! So all of us give interviews with trepidation … really because they have such a gift with the writing. They just turn it upside-down all the time, and so everything you’ve been telling yourself or any backstory you’ve been building, it can be pulled out from under you in an instant like a rug. But that’s what I believe, that’s what I’ve been playing! [laughs]
TCC: You’ve said you learn more about yourself through learning about your characters (in an interview with Zap2It). What about Mellie and her development over two seasons we’ve had so far has done that?
BY: I love her, it’s a joy. Because I’m just nothing like that at all. So I just get to go and live that for 17 hours, it’s amazing. Amazing.
TCC: That’s good to hear!
BY: I admire her long view. Every decision I make I make for about two weeks, like “those shoes…” But these little things that might be enormous things that are happening in the present day, she spends thinking through them because she knows where she’s going in the long game. And that I admire, greatly.
On the other side of things, she just doesn’t care if you’re comfortable, at all, and that I could never take that on. I just want people to be comfortable. People around me, I want them to feel good about themselves … and Mellie doesn’t have an iota of that, and that I don’t want to pick up.