by Emma Loggins

In Plain Sight follows the story of a Federal Marshall with the Witness Protection program who must hide her high-risk, high-impact job from her family. To those that know her, Mary Shannon is a glorified meter maid, but her real job is much more dangerous. She must oversee federal witnesses who have been relocated through the Witness Protection program and make sure that they stay safe.

We had the honor of sitting down with the star of the series, Mary McCormack. Here's what she had to say:

What has been the most challenging part of your role?

M. McCormack: 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 13 to 19-hour days and for me that was the most challenging part was just staying afloat.

How did you come into the part? Did you audition like normal? And why did you decide that you wanted to do this part?

M. McCormack: 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. And 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.

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?

M. McCormack: 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.

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?

M. McCormack: 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.