The reason I was excited to talk to actress Bellamy Young wasn’t that I watched all seven seasons of Scandal but because I saw her on Broadway in 1997 playing a prostitute in The Life, a little-known Cy Coleman musical I was obsessed with as a teenager. Still, a great deal of our conversation revolved around the beloved ABC series she starred in. How could it not?

During her episode of “What I Wore When,” Bellamy explains what she wore to audition for Scandal—and how she had a precise vision for the way she wanted the character to look. I learned that, in its early stages, Mellie was written as a “tiny little part” and Bellamy was reading for the role the day before she’d be hired to work, but still wanted to nail it. All she knew was that she’d be playing opposite actor Tony Goldwyn who, she told me, directed her a few years earlier on an episode of “Dirty Sexy Money.” So going into the audition, she used him as a jumping-off point.

“I just thought to myself, “Who is the partner for Tony Goldwyn? That’s sort of all I had to go on because [Mellie’s] language was so thin,” Bellamy said. As for the outfit: “I just had a very specific vision. I had a blue upscale work shirt, but I want clam diggers and I wanted a scarf and I wanted pearls … I wanted to do an updo, a french twist.” It sounded to me she was going for a take on the eternally classic Kennedys-on-Hyannis Port vibe, which she concurred.

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