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" We brought you a chat with Scandal star Kerry Washington yesterday, and today it&amp;#039;s the turn of executive producer Betsy Beers! Along with Shonda Rhimes, Betsy is the one behind all those cruel twists, gaspworthy moments and romantic scenes, so we kind of owe her a lot. Anyway, we had so much fun chatting to Betsy about our new TV obsession that we&amp;#039;ve split our interview with her over two days. Below is part one, with some Fitz and Olivia chat, Mellie love and talk of torture. And then check back tomorrow for talk of sex scenes, Quinn Perkins and Olivia&amp;#039;s stunning fashion sense...  Scandal feels like such a watercooler show - I don&amp;#039;t feel like we&amp;#039;ve had something like that recently with the twists, the turns, the shocks. Do you think that&amp;#039;s why people are so hooked? &amp;quot;You know what, I think it&amp;#039;s a couple of things. The plotting is incredible and there are incredible twists and turns, but I think the thing about Shonda&amp;#039;s shows and the shows that we try to produce is that at the core there are these incredibly emotional, relatable, damaged characters who are vulnerable and have flaws but are really, really human. &amp;quot;At the core of it, to me, is this insane relationship between Fitz and Olivia and how emotional and fraught and impossible that is. We always like to say that Shonda&amp;#039;s actually figured out one of the only external obstacles left for two people to get together. When you think about it, the main reason you don&amp;#039;t get together is, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m anxious&amp;#039;, or, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m neurotic&amp;#039;, or, &amp;#039;My mother doesn&amp;#039;t like you&amp;#039;, or, &amp;#039;I live in a different country&amp;#039;. They&amp;#039;re these very sort of seemingly neurotic or certainly surmountable obstacles. And she figured out what I would say is maybe the trickiest obstacle for a relationship - he&amp;#039;s married and he&amp;#039;s President.&amp;quot; It doesn&amp;#039;t get much bigger than that! &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t get much bigger than that. That&amp;#039;s rough.&amp;quot;  How do you see the relationship between Fitz and Olivia? Are they soulmates? Are they meant to end up together? Or is it a long road? &amp;quot;I think that this is a long journey. That this has to be a long journey. And I don&amp;#039;t know the answer - that&amp;#039;ll be up to where Shonda thinks that they will be. But it&amp;#039;s a very fraught relationship and it&amp;#039;s not a happy one.  &amp;quot;When you see season two, you&amp;#039;ll see that it gets - and if you&amp;#039;ve only seen season one, you are in for such a treat - I think you get a lot more insight as to why these two people fell in love and why these two people are connected, but also why this is such a painful and difficult thing. During the course of season two there are some choices that will have to be made which are incredibly painful and very shocking.&amp;quot; Well, I have to say that one of the best characters on TV for a long time, for me, is Mellie. I love her. &amp;quot;Isn&amp;#039;t Mellie awesome?&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s amazing! Are we going to be seeing more of her? &amp;quot;Oh, you see a lot of her in season two. And the thing about Mellie, Shonda and I always like to say - there&amp;#039;s a very interesting thing in the States where people initially were like, &amp;#039;Well, Mellie&amp;#039;s bad&amp;#039;. We both actually really sympathise with Mellie.  &amp;quot;Mellie&amp;#039;s an amazingly strong, intelligent woman who gave everything up to support her husband, to help him become the man that he became, only to wake up one day and have the victory in a way snatched away from her. And she&amp;#039;s had to sublimate and subsume everything she is to be this person. She&amp;#039;s ambitious and she&amp;#039;s strong and she&amp;#039;s honest about it, and yet every day she&amp;#039;s reminded of the fact that she&amp;#039;s just not enough. I think that&amp;#039;s incredibly emotional.  &amp;quot;Mellie&amp;#039;s both going to come into her own and amaze you in season two, and Mellie will be pushed to very dramatic lengths and depths.&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s so interesting, because she&amp;#039;s the wronged woman and yet we&amp;#039;re not siding with her. &amp;quot;She is the wronged woman! Isnt that amazing? Shonda&amp;#039;s created a television show in which everyone&amp;#039;s rooting for the mistress to get with the husband, which is not a great situation for anybody involved. Not healthy.&amp;quot; I was thinking about this, because you do root obviously for Olivia and the team. But they do horrible things! &amp;quot;Yes, they do!&amp;quot; Why are we rooting for these people? How do you sell that? &amp;quot;Why do you think they are rooting for those people? I mean, it&amp;#039;s a good question. Because they are human and you identify with them and we all do things. Now, there&amp;#039;s levels, and there&amp;#039;s certainly the levels writ large on television, but I think what&amp;#039;s amazing about the show is that you can identify with the fact that we&amp;#039;ve all done things that we&amp;#039;re not necessarily proud of, but that we&amp;#039;ve done and we are still trying to be good people.  &amp;quot;I think that Olivia Pope &amp;amp;amp; Associates, they operate by their own code - and they have a code, it&amp;#039;s just not everybody else&amp;#039;s code, necessarily. But their job is to serve the client. They need to do what the client needs, so sometimes that involves disposing of a body as you saw in the [first] season finale. Sometimes that involves Huck inappropriately touching somebody with a drill. But I&amp;#039;ve got to be honest - when Huck did that I was going, &amp;#039;You go, Huck!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; That blew me away! I was not expecting it to get so dark, but in the best way. I loved it. &amp;quot;I know! I know! And I think it gets darker in season two.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s more of that torture? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s more of that. It&amp;#039;s terrific.&amp;quot;  I did hear some people criticised the torture - what would you say about that? &amp;quot;I felt as though it&amp;#039;s an incredibly emotionally arresting episode of television.&amp;quot; I think it&amp;#039;s interesting, because again we&amp;#039;re rooting for Huck who&amp;#039;s this incredibly damaged person. But I don&amp;#039;t think we&amp;#039;ve seen a character like Huck before. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think so either. I think Shonda created this very original idea of this guy who was so broken by his service that Olivia literally found him on the streets and built him back up again, and you will learn more about Huck&amp;#039;s history and his backstory in season two. And one of the really delicious and delightful things about season two is that we do play more with time and the past and you&amp;#039;ll get a lot more insight as a viewer in each of these characters that will actually make you invest in them more.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a wonderful thing to watch - and you&amp;#039;ll get more of messy hairy Huck! Huck is funny. Huck you just want to take home and take care of.&amp;quot; Exactly - and yet he does these awful things. &amp;quot;And yet he does these things. And how does one actually reconcile that? That&amp;#039;s the fun of TV, you know - I think that&amp;#039;s the fun of it.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s the same with Olivia as well. Can you imagine anyone playing her as well as Kerry Washington? It&amp;#039;s like she was made for this role. &amp;quot;Isn&amp;#039;t she terrific? I think she&amp;#039;s just terrific, and she has this amazing combination of strength and vulnerability constantly, where in one moment you can see both of these things going - where she&amp;#039;s fully accessible yet she&amp;#039;s incredibly strong. And even at a relatively young age she&amp;#039;s fully and totally believable as the world&amp;#039;s top crisis manager to the point where you kind of want Kerry to take care of you.  &amp;quot;Kerry, just for the record, is the nicest, smartest - she&amp;#039;s whip smart, she&amp;#039;s incredibly talented, and could not be a lovelier, more generous person. That cast is the closest, most emotionally bonded cast I&amp;#039;ve ever seen on a show, which is nice.&amp;quot; Scandal season two premieres in the UK on Thursday (July 4) at 10pm on More4. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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