There will be no smelly cats when Lisa Kudrow pops up on this season of Scandal.
"She's got a great arc on the show," Darby Stanchfield, who plays Abby in Olivia Pope's office, tells me. "She gets to play a character that is not funny. I mean, there are funny elements…but her character has a temper! Abby gets to interact with her a lot."
Including a run-in with said temper. "I help gladiate that temper a little bit," Stanchfield said.
The former Friends star is reportedly playing a politician in the Kerry Washington-led drama.
"It's such a testament to Shonda Rhimes and Linda Lowy, our casting director, to take a queen of comedy and put her in this super-dramatic show," said Katie Lowes, who plays Quinn. "She's been given an amazing role with amazing lines and amazing hashtags." (Scandal fans are known to flood Twitter during broadcasts of each episode with hashtags of memorable lines.)
Of course, Stanchfield and Lowes are forbidden to give too much away.
"Shonda Rhimes has a very strict policy of not spoiling anything," Stanchfield said. "In fact, a bunch of us didn't know this…So the very first press thing that we had, a bunch of us told a whole bunch of plotlines. We got this email [that said], 'You do not spoil! You can tease.' So it's the art of teasing."
Kudrow will make her Scandal debut on Oct. 27.