Photo by Robert Todd Williamson/h Magazine

I can recall the exact moment I fell in love with Mary-Louise Parker. It was during an Emmy roundtable last year hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, featuring Emmy-nominated actresses like Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler, Sarah Silverman, and of course Parker. She discussed her occasional guest stint on The West Wing, and how some devoted fans of the show made it very clear that they didn’t like her. “They probably have to fuck with the lights off,” she muttered about her detractors. And then her eyes widened and she covered her mouth, as if she’d momentarily forgotten she was on camera. It was snarky and crude and may’ve been pre-meditated, but it was also a refreshing contrast to the eyelash-batting “please love me” attitude of so many Hollywood actresses.

Mary-Louise Parker isn’t America’s sweetheart. She isn’t Julia Roberts or Drew Barrymore. She isn’t bubbly and effusive and adorable. She’s rough around the edges and a little surly, the kind of woman who could probably handle herself in a bar fight. (A real bar fight, not the movie kind with breakaway bottles.) And she isn’t just like that in real life. On her Showtime series Weeds – currently in its sixth season, which you can catch every Monday at 10 p.m. ET – she plays a widow named Nancy Botwin who sells marijuana to support her family and is involved in a messy relationship with a Mexican drug lord who shares her enthusiasm for rough sex. It’s a role she reportedly took over a plum gig on Desperate Housewives (which eventually went to Teri Hatcher), choosing Weeds because, in her words, “it was uglier.”

I called Parker to talk about the new season of Weeds, and our conversation was probably more awkward than it needed to be, for which I take full responsibility. I probably shouldn’t have tried quite so hard to impress her with my knowledge of marijuana minutiae. As it turns out, name-dropping “Alaskan Thunder Fuck” is not a foolproof way to win her heart.

Eric Spitznagel: You know how sometimes watching a TV show about food can make you hungry? Whenever I watch Weeds, it always makes me feel like I need to get stoned immediately.

Mary-Louise Parker: Yeah, so many people tell me that.

Does the same thing happen for you? When you finish shooting an episode, do you feel an urge to light up a joint?

I don’t do drugs, but I’m really suggestible. So I imagine if I did, that’s exactly what would happen. I’d be smoking all day long.

Wait, you don’t smoke marijuana, or you’ve never smoked it?

I’ve never smoked it.

Wow. That’s like finding out Tommy Chong never touched the stuff. I feel so betrayed.

I guess if it was going to happen, it would’ve happened when I was younger. But that was never an effective or interesting form of rebellion for me. Because everybody did it. Marijuana was just a social thing. It wasn’t dangerous or frowned upon. If I’d been popular in high school, I’m sure I would have wanted to do it. But I wasn’t.

So you didn’t smoke pot because nobody was offering it to you?

Oh no, it was definitely offered to me. All the time. I was hanging around a lot of musicians, so I definitely had access to drugs. It just never appealed to me. Everybody was doing it, and I didn’t want to be part of the crowd. There was no part of me that wanted to fit in.

You should do a P.S.A. You’ve almost convinced me that pot is boring.