“Our mother has an obsession with great love stories,” Luke Thompson’s Benedict warns in season three of Bridgerton. But there is a method to this matchmaking matriarch’s madness. By season’s end, Ruth Gemmell’s Violet Bridgerton has married off two more of her eight children (she’s halfway to an empty nest!) and inched toward a second chance romance of her own.

“It’s a real privilege to play Violet because I’ve read all nine novels, and I know what kind of linchpin she is,” the actor tells Vanity Fair days before the season’s second half premieres. “I’ve only ever played really shit mums or murderers, so it was quite nice to be someone of some merit for a change. I wish I was like Violet. I’m nothing like her, other than the love for those children.”

Gemmell, who broke out opposite Colin Firth in 1997’s Nick Hornby adaptation, Fever Pitch, went on to play mean mommies in projects like Tracy Beaker: The Movie of Me and EastEnders. Though she has no children of her own in real life, Gemmell lights up when speaking about her onscreen offspring, whom she calls “a lovely bunch of kids”: “I absolutely love them. We have such a laugh.”

Each season, it is Violet Bridgerton who must guide the show’s central love story along—aiding Phoebe Dynevor’s Daphne in season one, Jonathan Bailey’s Anthony in season two, and now Luke Newton’s Colin. But at the start of the Netflix series’ third season, Violet is treading lightly. “Considering I messed up quite badly with Eloise last season, I’m very nervous about her,” says Gemmell. “And I’m nervous of not pushing Francesca enough because she’s the quiet one. So in some respects, she’s beside herself that she can meddle with Colin.”

And meddle Violet does. Gemmell’s favorite scenes of the season place her in the crosshairs with Newton’s Colin as he comes to terms with his romantic feelings for Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope, who has been a perennial presence in the Bridgerton household thanks to her close friendship with Eloise (Claudia Jessie). “With all her children, she understands them well enough that she knows them better than they do, and she just waits for them to catch up,” Gemmell explains. “For example, in the books she’s always pushing her sons to go and dance with the wallflower Penelope. And in that scene in that ball when [Colin’s] supposedly asking about what I wish for Francesca and [there is] the realization that the object of his desire is Penelope, it’s lovely for Violet to realize, Right, we’re there now. I just need to navigate a little bit more.”

In the season’s third episode, Colin asks Violet if friendship can ever bloom into something more; a few eagle-eyed fans have noticed that a barely visible Violet is standing in the background as Colin then approaches Penelope from across the ballroom. That episode’s director, Andrew Ahn, later revealed that Gemmell “wanted to be there because it was important for her character,” calling her a “generous” and “dedicated” actor. “It was important for me that, even if you don’t really see me, she’s clocking everything that he does,” says Gemmell, “so that she can prompt and push him in the right direction until he wakes up and realizes it himself. Those are the things written between the lines—and they’re important to me.”

In the following episode, a hungover Colin—hell-bent on messing up his own romantic future—briefly snaps at his mother. “I do not blame you for putting on armor lately,” she tells him, “but you must be careful that the armor does not rust and set so that you might never be able to take it off.” She then gently points out that should Colin choose to stay home, he may miss Penelope’s proposal from another suitor. “I really relished being the cross mum who thought he was being a bit of an idiot,” says Gemmell. “I clearly quite enjoy taking my children down a peg or two.”

Violet also notes similarities between Colin and Penelope’s love story and the one she shared with her children’s late father, Edmund. With that in mind, which one of the Bridgerton children does Violet see the most of herself in? “Oh God, that’s…blimey,” Gemmell begins. “I’m often asked the question of, who’s your favorite? Going back to the books, she misses the one who isn’t there. So they can all be an irritant and a balm to her all at the same time. But who is most like her? This is a really rubbish answer, but probably all of them in a very different way. That’s a real cop-out, isn’t it?”

It’s evident that Violet does struggle to find common ground with her daughter Francesca, played this season by Hannah Dodd, who takes the role over from Ruby Stokes. (“I feel like I have nine children, not eight,” says Gemmell.) Violet doesn’t understand why the quieter Francesca settles for a steady marriage to John, Earl of Kilmartin (Victor Alli), rather than seeking the kind of impassioned love affair the other siblings have enjoyed. “This season, Violet admits that Francesca is teaching her a thing or two. And there’s a very lovely bravery that she sees in her daughter,” says Gemmell. “That’s necessary for Violet. She’s finally letting go a bit. There’s always that thing, isn’t there? When you have the firstborn, everyone worries. By the time you get to number five, you tell them to go and make their own way.”

Then again, she adds, “I mean, ironically, her mother had a point.” Shortly after Violet remembers how she couldn’t even speak her own name when she first met Edmund, Francesca becomes similarly flustered upon meeting Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza), cousin to her new husband.

In the Julia Quinn novels on which Bridgerton is based, after John’s tragic death, Francesca ends up with his cousin—who is named Michael Stirling. But Gemmell is eager to see how Bridgerton explores the queer identities of at least two of her children—including Benedict, who this season is engaged in a male-female throuple. “That’s the whole point of how Shondaland navigates this [format], to have everybody see themselves within a historical—I mean, we’re not a history lesson by any stretch of the imagination, but in that genre, if you like,” says Gemmell. “I’m all up for that.”

Gemmell is similarly embracing the unfolding flirtation between Violet and Marcus Anderson (Daniel Francis), the rakish brother of her best friend, Lady Agatha Danbury (Adjoa Andoh). “Grown-ups need kisses too,” Bridgerton’s new showrunner, Jess Brownell, previously told VF, “and it felt like the right time for Violet to open up.”

The seeds for Violet’s romantic storyline were first planted in Netflix’s Queen Charlotte, a prequel series featuring Connie Jenkins-Greig as young Violet. In scenes flashing forward to the modern day, Gemmell’s Violet refers to her newly reawakened sexual appetite as a “garden in bloom,” humorously admitting to Agatha, “I almost asked a footman to lie on top of me today.” But his services need not be rendered—by season’s end, Violet has set her gardening sights on Marcus.

“They had mooted the idea at one point,” Gemmell says of getting her own onscreen love interest, “and I wanted to be as respectful to the books as possible. But it was really exciting…. There’s something about two mature people coming together when they’ve lived a full life and they’ve understood what grief can do to you and what family can do to you. It’s there that she sees a side to him that is worth pursuing.”

But before Violet can get her groove back, she must reckon with Lady Danbury over both their current dynamic and their shared history. (In Queen Charlotte, a younger Agatha has a brief love affair with Violet’s father, Lord Ledger.) “One thing that’s definite is that she will navigate this tentatively because her children mean the world to her, and also her friendship with Lady Danbury means everything to her,” says Gemmell. “She means it when she says that no man will ever come between our friendship. But she’s just seen two of her children marry, and it’s been like having a mirror put up in front of her—seeing the void that Edmund left is as present as it ever was, and that she wants to feel alive again. And Daniel is just a delight and so lovely. It’s been a lot of fun getting all shy. I’m enjoying flirting.”

And how would Gemmell navigate potentially steamy scenes involving Violet and Marcus? “I’m not getting my ass out for anyone—I can tell you that,” the actor says. “I think I might show an ankle or two. The rest is in the hands of the writers, I’m afraid.”

Gemmell says she has yet to see a script for the show’s upcoming fourth season, but she’s eager to reacquaint herself with the Bridgertons’ bustling drawing room. “Well, it’d be nice to see how my flirting goes,” she says. “I’d also quite like to have my children all together and all of the grandchildren. That would be mayhem, but it would be very nice.”

That includes a now blended family of Bridgertons and Featheringtons, led by Polly Walker’s Portia. Throughout the season, these matriarchs stand in stark contrast when it comes to the way they approach their children’s future happiness. While Violet encourages Colin to seek “passion, excitement, a love that is thrilling,” Portia decries her daughter’s hopelessly romantic sensibilities: “Oh, do not tell me you’re holding out for love,” she whines. While Gemmell admits that their unified family dynamic could get “complicated,” she’s hopeful that Violet and Portia can someday see eye to eye.

“I should imagine that Violet absolutely understands. She can’t identify with it, but she understands the need that Portia has to act the way she has because she wasn’t in a loving marriage,” says Gemmell. “She has had to battle to put her children where they are.”

That level of compassion also extends to the third season’s reveal of Penelope as Lady Whistledown. In the season finale, Violet receives a letter from her new daughter-in-law outlining her secret, but viewers aren’t privy to her immediate reaction—the one Nicola Coughlan herself has said she was most nervous to see. Gemmell says that Violet can sometimes view Lady Whistledown as “a gossipmonger,” but “on the other hand, she absolutely thinks the world of Penelope, and the fact that this woman has managed to navigate that all for herself will be extraordinary. She’ll be ultimately proud but quite shocked.”

As evidence of this unconditional acceptance, Gemmell points to one of the season’s deleted scenes, “a very tiny part of the engagement party where Violet says, ‘I think Portia’s being nervous about the marriage [between Colin and Penelope].’ [Portia] was quite nervous about not getting to the wedding, and Violet’s just saying, ‘We’re family now.’ That’s very important to Violet, and it’s important to Violet that Penelope knows that—that it’s one family now. Violet will do anything to look after her family, whoever it is.”