This is the year of Jessy Schram. The actress has worked consistently through the years on series like Life and Crash, but these days, she’s everywhere. This Sunday, Schram will be seen again in Falling Skies: Season 2, as we find out more about what happened to her character, Karen, after she became harnessed by the alien “Skitters” in Season 1. And this fall, she's a regular on Last Resort, easily one of the very best of the new fall pilots I’ve seen – an exciting series from Shawn Ryan (The Shield, The Chicago Code, Terriers), about the crew of a US nuclear submarine becoming enemies of the state, after refusing a highly suspicious order to fire. Oh, and on top of that, Schram has a recurring role on Once Upon a Time as Cinderella!

I recently sat down with Jessy for an in-depth conversation about all three of her current TV series roles. Plus, as a big Veronica Mars fan, I couldn’t resist talking to her about her days playing Hannah on that late, great series…

Yeah, she’s very much independent, has no family - the 2nd Mass is hers. They’re all in this together trying to figure out what to do. Very early on, she’s dragged away and you see she becomes harnessed like the other kids. What makes her different though, is because I think of her personal connection with the 2nd Mass, the aliens are able to use that. So she’s become the vocal cord of not just the Skitters but the overlord. She’s become the voice and the vessel for them to talk through and get a message through. And because Karen is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl, there’s a factor that everyone calls way creepy and almost manipulative because it’s deceiving. This is a girl that you’ve come to love and care for, and yet at the same time, ‘Who are you working for?” So what’s so fun and interesting with Karen is that she goes from the dirt bike-riding, all-American scout -- fighting for the team -- then to being completely not of her own and then you meet up with the 2nd Mass again and there’s that question you have with Tom and Ben and Rick and everyone else that’s been under the control of how much blood is yours and how much is the aliens? So in Falling Skies, I kind of get to play all these different personalities and things that are human and not. I’ve gotten the opportunity to create something that’s new, with the notes that we’ve been given from TNT and DreamWorks and the directors and producers. I’ve also been given the opportunity to create someone that you haven’t seen before. So it’s really, really interesting.The opening of Season 2 is where you leave off on in Season 1. You’re taking Noah [Wyle] onto the spaceship, and then Season 2 starts out with us on the spaceship. So you get to see a little bit indoors, where we live and where we are. And I think about three months have passed that Tom’s been captive with us. In that time period, Karen’s done whatever job she’s needed to do. But finally, Tom does get to speak through Karen to the aliens. His character has evolved so much because he has so much knowledge, and he’s become less of this professor that kind of sits to the side and more of that gut-wrenching, heart-filled, “I’m gonna take back what’s ours. This isn’t fair. Give us what we want.” So the first episode of the second season starts out where we left off, and then jumps three months later. So a lot of time has passed in the 2nd Mass, in that group, and a lot of time has passed on the ship. Tom has changed, and Karen has definitely advanced in the chain of command, to being a servant of one of the higher-up aliens. She’s not just collecting scrap metal like everyone else. Even though she’s unable to control it, she has the insight and the plans they do because she’s a vessel for them. So she carries what they’re giving her.It was really hard. I was very hard on myself when the scripts came in -- especially for the season finale because there really wasn’t anyone I could go off of as an example. I knew that the notes said she was not her own and she was not herself, but we also don’t want to her to be mechanical. She doesn’t have a mind of her own, and yet she does. You’re given all these notes and you really don’t know how much to play. How vacant am I? How much of a human am I? One of the interesting notes I had gotten from [director] Greg Beeman was it’s almost like a flower child to a certain extent in the sense of, here is my master, here’s what I love so much about it -- don’t betray that because if you do, it changes like this. But Karen plays on human emotion because that’s what the aliens do. They don’t have them themselves. What they feel is completely different from us. So in order to relate to Tom and the people they’re talking to, they play on human emotions, and me being almost a servant means that I’m playing on those emotions, yet I do have so much love for my caretakers and my masters. So it’s a very trippy line to play. How vacant am I? Who are they? Do we have an accent? [Laughs] Where do we come from? We haven’t seen this yet. So we’ve definitely played with different ideas. In Season 2, I can’t give away anything yet, but it was definitely a challenge. I was very confused at many points in time. What happened was we had to just take it scene by scene and feel where it was. And I was actually given the opportunity to make choices, which isn’t always the case. So I was able to make choices and create this character with what they gave me, and they guided me along. But I really had a free range of how far to play things.You most certainly will. I mean, harnessed kids, their bodies are no longer their own because this harness becomes a spine to you. You’re injected with health and strength and mobility -- just superhuman powers. Your body is no longer your own. So that’s one of the reasons Rick loved it so much because he wasn’t sick anymore. And Ben, when his harness is off, he still has some abilities in Season 1 of a harnessed kid, someone with these powers. So Karen definitely possesses extra strength. She was already a strong tomboy -- a girl that could hang with the guys -- but now she’s got more than the guys. Now she’s got some special skills. I think after you’ve been harnessed there are certain things that run in your veins and blood that you will always possess. With her, she’s definitely physically able to do things that we don’t do.Yeah, that’s definitely safe to say. The first season was so much about introducing things and, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to turn into a Skitter,” or something of that sort. You learn so much about just the initial factors of what’s going on. In the second season, we have so much more knowledge. New things are introduced, but now we’re based in this world where the other things are normal. I know that there’s so much more activity in the sense that we’re always on the go. There was no set stage for anything. So you always come across things that are on the journey and the path. Season 2 is just pretty awesome. [Laughs] I keep thinking of it. Yeah, you discover so much, but what’s really neat in Season 2 – more so than Season 1 -- you get to see the growth of the characters more and the relationships between them, but even more so you sense that they’ve gone through hardships. You see the development of their knowledge of what they’ve been going through, and connections are made. I think half the reason you’re able to see the hardships, too, is because there was no set set. We were literally on-the-go in negative 20-celsius weather. And in the middle of a shot that’s not supposed to have snow, you’ve got snow falling down and you’re shoveling things. You’ve got rain, and you’re always outside, so it just has a completely different feel and a completely different heart to it. I think because of what you have to go through on set everyday, entrusting that the other person has their lines,so you don’t need to sit there and freeze your arse off, there’s a connection that’s made between all the actors that isn’t acting. It comes from the experience of the hours that we work and the hardships of filming, let alone whatever else you’ve given us in the scene. I think it’s grounded in something way more than just a script.Very much so, and you have to rely on them. Any show that includes guns or machinery or stuff like that, you need to trust who’s around you because blanks are flying. You get one in your eye, you get one down your shirt… You need to know that0. you can trust the person that’s next to you and that everyone’s going to keep control and not lose their cool. You need to be able to listen and have one person in command. You really do take on the characters in a different way when you actually have all this physical activity going on.

Jessy Schram talks Last Resort on Page 2.