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"I don't get it at all," she says. "I know love is blind, but he isn't a great person. He's selfish, but he can turn on the charm to get what he wants and she doesn't see that. She thinks it's one of his endearing qualities. But Carol is in it the whole hog, she is totally in love and wants to be with him and the fact he is married to a woman who happens to be blind doesn't affect her plan to capture him. She is five years into the relationship and a little frustrated it is not going anywhere. She has one goal in mind to end up with somebody and have babies with them, and that happens to be Merc."

Much as Kathleen finds Carol's attitude baffling, she admits there are plenty of people just like Carol in Hollywood.

"I have experienced every type of person they have written in Episodes – Carols are everywhere in this town – whatever they do, they do it with a big smile on their face. Everyone hears rumours – ‘so and so is sleeping with her boss', or ‘he got his job by sleeping with that person' - and a lot of them are true. It's scary when it's real, but it's really fun when it is fake. This industry is made up of an absurd group of people."

"And it doesn't mean Carol isn't smart or ambitious – in fact she has an amazing ability to never commit herself too far to one opinion, in case it is politic to change her mind, which sees her going straight to the top.

She knows she has to go where the wind blows and turn on a dime. She has to, that's survival of the fittest."

She admits that in the beginning she was worried that, if the TV world in Los Angeles didn't get the show's joke and took offence, she could be out of a job when she went home. But luckily the first series was a big hit and she received some sage advice from David Crane.

She says: "I may have burnt a couple of bridges, but David said no matter how scared you are that people think we are making fun of them, nobody thinks they are the diabolical character or the schizophrenic character. They laugh and they go ‘I know a guy just like that', but they don't know it is them."

One of the running jokes in the first series was that Matt LeBlanc doesn't know who Carol is - and nothing has changed by series two.

"Matt has never spoken to Carol, he doesn't know her name and he barely knows she exists even though she has his job in the palm of her hand. In the few scenes we have together, he never registers Carol at all. The real Matt is nothing like that. He is really professional, he's down to earth and he can joke around with the best of them."

Filming meant spending months living in London and Kathleen used the opportunity to explore.

"I really love London, my thing was going to Columbia Road market on Sunday mornings and I also went to Rome, Paris and Venice in my time off. I'm back in LA now and really missing London."