You’ve probably seen Aya Cash before. Even if you haven’t watched her as one half of the central couple on FX’s phenomenally funny You're the Worst—and if you haven’t, what do you think you’re doing with your life?—you’ve likely glimpsed her in guest appearances on The Newsroom, The Good Wife, Modern Family, or Law & Order (both SVU and Criminal Intent); or in the 2012 film version of Sleepwalk With Me, or as Jordan Belfort's zero-bullshit assistant, Janet, in The Wolf of Wall Street. (See? Told you.)

Last year, You're the Worst creator Stephen Falk introduced the world to a spectacular new kind of TV love story—the kind that starts with casual boredom sex between two selfish, self-destructive millennials and then takes a turn when they unexpectedly fall for each other. At the end of last season, music publicist Gretchen (Cash) jumped into de facto cohabitation with her unmotivated novelist boyfriend, Jimmy (Chris Geere), after a fire destroyed her home. Tonight, the show picks up where it left off, its infuriating yet irresistible main pair proving hilariously toxic to everyone around them (and sometimes to each other)—and Cash spoke to GQ about the upcoming season, her “dirty hippie” upbringing, and how a onetime aspiring repertory Shakespeare actor ended up the star of TV’s best sex comedy.

So the first few episodes of You're the Worst’s second season are pretty great, and it looks like once again you guys are just having the best time together. Has it been fun returning to this role?

Oh, absolutely. Gretchen is one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever gotten to play; I always want to come back to her. I think her freedom is really fun—her lack of need to people-please is my favorite part. She sort of lives out your inner fantasies of how you want to behave but can’t because of social norms and common decency, and I appreciate that about her.

What felt different about this time?

This season the writers take things to a place where I would say is very unexpected. Especially in comedy. And that’s what I like about our show and about the writing—that the comedy and drama are so closely related. Just because we’re doing a sitcom doesn’t mean the humor doesn’t come out of pain and reality.

Also, the cast—we’re all very good friends, and we live in different places. Kether [Donohue] moved to L.A., I live in New York, Chris [Geere] lives in Manchester, Desi [Desmin Borges] lives in New York, but he’s always traveling. So to get to come back together with everyone was just really fun. We started end of April, first week of May, and then we shot until August, so it was like summer camp. With fifteen-hour days.

“Gretchen sort of lives out your inner fantasies of how you want to behave but can’t because of social norms and common decency.”

Your character Gretchen is, like you mentioned, very liberated and also very entitled—and I feel like she’s very of this moment, culturally. I’m always curious: How do you describe your character to, say, your family or your parents? Or your elderly relatives?

Well, my parents are not your typical parents—my mom is a poet and a novelist, and she writes quite a bit about sex and about drinking. [Laughs] So this is very much the sort of culture, actually, that she writes about! And my dad was a hippie who lived on a commune and did naked street theater during puppet shows, so I don’t think he’s really that shocked by anything, either. His street-theater group would come out—they were called Pageant Players—and a puppet would say, “Give him all your money, you bourgeois pigs!” And then he was a musician for many years and played in the Polynesian Gamelon. He met my mom by fixing her flute. And now he’s a Buddhist priest.