Over the years, we’ve gotten to know Alison Brie in Type-A roles like Trudy Campbell on the hit AMC series “Mad Men,” Annie Edison on “Community,” Ruth Wilder on “GLOW” and Diane Nguyen in “BoJack Horseman.” Brie is now taking on the challenge of becoming Amy Delaney, who she describes as “a total mess,” in the new star-studded Peacock series “Apples Never Fall” — and revealing another side of herself in the process.

When I talked to Brie about playing Amy, she said, “There's certainly aspects of her that I connected with on a personal level that I feel like are parts of me that people don't know about because I haven't played characters that are like that, even though I'm not as much of a mess as her.”

“Apples Never Fall,” based on Liane Moriarty’s acclaimed novel of the same name, is the seven-part drama about an extremely dysfunctional family of tennis coaches and players. Their lives unravel after the matriarch Joy Delaney (Annette Bening) disappears after an unexpected visitor, Savannah, shows up. Unlike most of the members of the Delaney family, Amy is not a hyper-ambitious tennis star, or wannabe mogul. She lives with graduate students and operates as a carefree spirit, until she is forced to change in an effort to help her family. But can she?

“The show is highlighting how in moments of crisis, rather than a family coming together more than ever, often people just fall into their roles in a more firm way. Especially in this show, there's a lot with inter-family dynamics and alliances,” Brie said.

Watch my "Salon Talks" episode with Alison Brie here, or read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about complicated family dynamics, Brie’s latest collaboration with husband Dave Franco and the difference between acting in movies and television shows.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Congratulations on the new show. Do you have extra anxiety when something new is about to come out?

Sometimes. It's probably different with every job and probably the older I get and the more I work the stakes lessen. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm wrong about that. I guess it just depends job to job.

Take our viewers into the world of “Apples Never Fall.”

“Apples Never Fall” is based on a book by Liane Moriarty, and she wrote books like “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” which have also been made into shows.

If she writes a book, it's going to turn into a show.

Honestly, I have read like eight of her books. I love her books. It's true. I'm like, what could I adapt next? This book is about the Delaney family. They're a tennis family. They own a tennis academy. The parents, played by Annette Bening and Sam Neill, are just going into retirement. They have four adult children played by myself and Jake Lacy and Essie Randles and Conor Merrigan Turner, a couple of very talented newcomers.

Basically mom goes missing. A stranger comes into the family's life and then Mom goes missing, and it really fractures the family in a lot of ways in terms of trying to figure out what happened to Mom and who's responsible.

And you play Amy Delaney.

I play Amy Delaney, the eldest Delaney child. Amy is a really fun character to play. She is a bit spiritual and a bit go with the flow, but she's also highly emotional and can be a bit of a catastrophizer and is a bit of a hot mess, doesn't have her life together. Even though she's the oldest of the siblings, she lives in a house with graduate students. She doesn't have a real job.

"It's so different from the type-A characters that I am often known for playing."

I think that aspect of her really is her rebellion against the Delaney family. Growing up in this really competitive tennis family, they were totally result-oriented. The biggest step away she could take from the family is to not plan her life, is to have no goals at all.

It was a really fun character to........

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