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In a new interview with The A.V. Club, Mary McDonnell discusses some of the many iconic roles she’s had through her career.

Mary McDonnell: Captain Sharon Raydor came to me through James Duff, the creator of The Closer, and the task at hand was to do a three-episode arc, bringing in an antagonist to give Brenda Leigh Johnson someone to tangle with. And little did I know the surprising future that was in the making. Little did any of us know. [Laughs.] So it’s a really great, fun job where I got to come in and push people around, and I thought, “Oh, that’ll be fun. I don’t do that very often.” Honestly, before I could really say “boo,” it grew into other things. And never in a million years did I expect it would end up journeying into a complete dance from antagonist to protagonist, to a new show and all of this. I will say that, if there’s a word to describe it, it’s “surprising.” It’s continually surprising playing Captain Sharon Raydor.

The A.V. Club: What was the process of transitioning you from The Closer to Major Crimes? When did they pitch you the idea?

MM: Somewhere in the second season of when I was doing The Closer. The first time I did three episodes, the next season I think I did five or seven, and somewhere toward the end of that, I think the spin-off started to be “in the air,” as they say. And then the way we went about it was, I came on the last season of The Closer as a regular to give us the platform through which to spin it off.

AVC: Was a full-time series role something you’d been interested in taking on? Certainly you’d done it before, but—

MM: I like hour dramas. I like the format, I like the lifestyle, I like creating at the character’s edge episode by episode and discovering. I love the discovery process, and I like working fast. So having finished Battlestar and taken a break, I was kind of interested. I was interested in developing something, actually. That’s what I was working on, developing another piece that would move into that format, when this all happened. And one thing I’ve learned as an actress over 30 years is that when it’s happening, go with it. [Laughs.] It’s really worked for me!

AVC: So how did Captain Raydor evolve after you transitioned onto Major Crimes? Certainly the writers fleshed her out a bit more. 

MM: Oh, yeah, she’s continually evolving. I mean, one of the main ways in which we started to see more of her was vis-à-vis the young boy, the character of Rusty, who ended up living with her. That allowed us to see Sharon’s personal life and allowed us to understand that she’s been a mother for many years and has all kinds of energies in the maternal arena that she doesn’t necessarily expose at work or utilize. It started to expand primarily that way; that knowledge or that awareness of her—or her awareness of herself that way—sort of became more integrated into her work as a cop, and then things started feeding each other. And now we’re almost finished with the second season, and I’ve got to say, I think she’s a really good cop. That was always there to be discovered, but I think it has been discovered this season.

Read the full article for Mary’s thoughts on Stands With a Fist, Laura Roslin, and on her role on two shows called ER.