One of the most complicated female characters on television is Bellamy Young's first lady, Mellie Grant on ABC's thrilling Scandal series. Love her, hate her, admire her, despise her - she probably doesn't care. As long as you don't get in the way of her political ambitions. Young, 44, who recently attended the White House Correspondent's Dinner this weekend, sounds off on her complicated character.

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Young actually attended the dinner with her on-screen presidential husband, Tony Goldwyn who plays Fitz. She wore a red Romona Keveza dress and was every bit as poised and ravishing as she is in the show.

In the show, Mellie comes across at first as a perfect Stepford Wife - a Jackie Kennedy-esque first lady --prim, proper, articulate and discreet about her husband's illicit affair with fixer Olivia Pope. But behind that charming smile, coiffed bouffant and lace gloves lies a crouching political tiger who just wants "to see [Fitz] head in the fire and... want(s) to see him burn." Along with that, she wants to see him win his second presidential election, because she likes the White House.

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"It's so easy to disregard or underestimate Mellie," Young told BuzzFeed on March 6. "She can be so hyperbolic. She has big hair. But she is a smart, smart woman. She is often the smartest woman in the room."

Smarts isn't all Mellie brings to the room. Don't ever forget her many sacrifices:

"If you knew the sacrifices that I have made, the things that I have given up and the pieces of myself that I have given away for you, and you treat me this way," Mellie told Fitz in an emotional scene. "You declare war on me and you shame me and you make me beg for scraps when I have done nothing but fight for you."

And fight she has. Mellie hid being raped by Fitz's father, Big Jerry, for years in order for him to attain the presidency. The truth came out, after she was caught having an affair with Veep Andrew - yet another scandal. For all these things and more, she is both deeply sympathetic and deeply vitriolic. Underneath her smile she is seething with rage, hurt and often hooch.

"Mellie is not the 'scorned woman' or the 'bitch wife' she's sometimes reduced to," writes BuzzFeed. Her flaws and complicated moral grounding make her fascinating and upredictable to watch.

Young knows that playing a flawed, thorny character is difficult for viewers to swallow - especially since that flawed character happens to be female. To play her, she doesn't "judge her a bit. I love her to death."

But misogyny in society still wants women to fit a certain comfortable mold - one which Mellie certainly does not.

"Shonda pushes that envelope in terms of normalizing not just a gender narrative but also an ethnicity narrative," Young reflects. "We just haven't had a history of watching complicated women...The flaws are the juicy bits. But it's stretching people's comfort."

Due to that complexity, Young has had what she calls a "crazy year,"  with her character being pushed to the limit:

"It's been a crazy year - last year was the pregnancy and the birth and everything, but this year was the rape and the affair and my son dying, and oh! It's been a lot," Young said, per an earlier Enstars report.

Scandal concluded its thrilling season 3 conclusion with Mellie Grant comforting her husband after the tragic loss of their son. The win of his presidency is overshadowed. Fans are looking forward to an exciting season 4 of ABC's Scandal.

Tags: scandal ABC television Mellie Grant Bellamy Young