Lili Taylor Is 'Drawn to Darker Roles' but Would Love to Tackle a Musical Comedy

Lili Taylor doesn’t shy away from playing complex characters – she actually embraces them.

The breakout star of American Crime tells PEOPLE that, although her role on the hit show was emotionally and physically draining last season, it was one of her “favorite jobs.”

“I was hard, but really fulfilling,” she says. “It hurt. My heart was broken for the six months we were filming. I love what I do and that’s part of the price. I just find ways to connect and navigate through those feelings, but it just really hurt.”

Last season on American Crime, Taylor played Anne Blaine, a mother who struggled to protect her teenage son (Connor Jessup) after he was sexually assaulted by one of his male classmates.

Her character initially was written to have a daughter, but right before starting, creator John Ridley switched it up – a move Taylor fully supported.

“About a month before we started, John said, ‘I’m going to change it.’ He just knew that it was going to be a lot more complicated,” recalls Taylor, 49. “In a way, I think if it was a girl, it would have felt a little like an open-and-shut case, even though it’s clearly not – as we can see with the Stanford case.”

“It’s by far not even close to being an open-and-shut case. I think that when you enter a boy into the mixture, it starts to open up a whole bunch of stuff we haven’t even looked at as a society,” she adds.

Six episodes in, fans watched her on-screen son head down a dark path. While strung out on drugs, he stole a gun and shot one of his attackers outside of their school. Following the shooting, he then headed to the diner to be with his mother – a pivotal scene for both fans and the actors.

“[That diner scene] we did that in one shot,” Taylor says. “That was eight minutes long and that took a lot of work with the camera crews. It was like a dance, we rehearsed it for four hours. It had to be perfect because there’s nothing to cut into. So that was challenging.”

“I love that kind of thing. That’s where I feel like I am firing on all cylinders and that’s when I’m happiest,” she adds. “John wanted it to move really fast this season, so sustaining that kind of intensity took skill, energy and concentration. During the days of filming it was as if I was walking on a tightrope all day. I was just really tired at the end.”

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But it’s these types of dark roles that Taylor loves to explore: “It’s tricky. I’m drawn to the truth, and I find that the truth a lot of times can be a little on the darker side,” she says. “But I do love comedy and I would love to do a musical comedy. I just think that I can do drama really well. I love horror movies, and I love musicals. I think both of them are a different way of feeling something.”

“I think music, of course, is a whole other thing unto itself with what it does to human beings,” she adds. “I like what they do for people and what they do for me, and I’d love to be apart of that and express myself that way. If that doesn’t happen, I will keep doing the more dramatic stuff.”

So, will we be seeing Taylor in an upcoming live television musical?

“I hope so,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t have a perfectly trained voice, but I could do something that’s very emotional and the singing is the second part of it, then totally.”