After the longest, most coincidentally maddening hiatus possible, Matthew Weiner’s Emmy-winning AMC drama Mad Men returned for its fifth season last night. And surprisingly, the star of the season premiere was not Jon Hamm or January Jones (who was not even featured) but Jessica Paré, better known as Megan Calvet, Don Draper’s secretary and new bride, who in the opener alone, threw her new husband an unwelcome surprise 40th-birthday party, performed a bizarrely sexy rendition of Sophia Loren’s “Zou Bisou Bisou” (which will be available on Amazon later this week) for Don in front of their colleagues, and then closed the episode with a dose of aggressive, power-positioning floor fornication with her groom.

To celebrate the new season and answer a few unsolved premiere mysteries, Paré participated in a conference call this afternoon with news outlets including VF.com, during which she talked about last night’s song, the bra-and-underwear scene, her character’s relationship with Peggy, and much more. The highlights follow.

The Floor Sex: “Is there really any problem that can’t be solved that way?” Paré responded when asked about the “angry floor sex” shared by Megan and Don. “The way I saw it is that Megan is Don’s equal in a lot of ways,” she continued, explaining her character's motives. “One of the ways that she has some kind of power over him is that they are such a great match sexually and physically. I think that this is sort of her trying to regain her upper hand in that sense.”

The Ups and Downs of This Draper Marriage: “It’s not a show about everyone having what they want and just being happy. There will be some friction between them, and I think the seeds of it are pretty well sown in the first episode. . . . Definitely [Megan] is a lighter person. She has more light to her than most of the characters in this show. There’s a lot of sarcasm and darkness in [Don’s] character.”

Whether She Knew She Was Auditioning to Be Mrs. Don Draper: “I did three auditions for this [role]. I did scenes from previous seasons. There was nothing written for Megan at the time, although I’m sure it was all in Matt’s head. I didn’t know what I was auditioning for. It was vaguely described as a female brunette. I had no idea. I thought that if I was able to do four or five episodes with a few lines, I would be very satisfied with that. Obviously, it was a great surprise.”

Preparing to Sing “Zou Bisou Bisou”: “Well, I listened to it a whole lot and Matt gave me some pretty comprehensive notes to go along with it. And then I worked with David Carbonara, who does the music for the show, and I got to go into a real grown-up recording studio and actually sing a song like a professional, which was an amazing opportunity. . . . It was a gutsy thing to do and certainly a lot of the awkwardness and embarrassment was definitely felt [on set]. I think it takes a lot of courage to do something like that. I don’t know that I would gear up to do something like that myself [in real life].”

Megan and Peggy’s Growing Relationship: “I think that you see in this episode especially that Megan and Peggy are friends. At the end of last season, when Peggy and Joan were laughing about this—that [Don] was marrying his secretary—it kind of set it up as they could have an antagonistic relationship. But they’re not. They are friends, and in fact Peggy has taken [Megan] under her wing in a certain way that is not totally unlike the way Don took Peggy under his wing.”

The Fear of Appearing in a Bra and Underwear: “I was probably less nervous about doing [that] than I am doing this [conference call], actually. That was such a beautifully written [scene] and such a beautifully crafted piece of work that when I read it, I totally forgot about the fact that I would be doing it in bra and underwear. But I think it’s an interesting choice that Megan makes, and I think it also takes an amount of power.”

On a Possible Betty-Megan Encounter Later This Season: “I can’t speak too much about what’s going to come in this season but, yeah, I’ve worked a little bit with everyone.”