Troian Bellisario stars as Spencer Hastings, the classic overachiever, on ABC Family's smash hit Pretty Little Liars. We recently had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Troian, where she discussed everything from who could be "A" to how well she plays guitar.

Spencer, who balances school, internships, charity work, sports, popularity... oh, and constantly having her life threatened by the mysterious "A," is an impressive example of trying to keep things under control. But with an upcoming season of Pretty Little Liars promising even more thrills and drama than ever, we asked Troian what advice she would give Spencer if she could.

"Chill out," Troian laughed, "Seriously, take a chill pill. Life is too short and you need to spend one night maybe going to the movies instead of like sneaking around the house and trying to find Ian. Maybe sleep, maybe find time to do your homework. I don't know how Spencer maintains such good grades and like literally never does her homework."

Still, Troian has grown very close to Spencer over the past season which lends to the new excitement of the role for her. So when we asked if she gets surprised just like her character does when those huge oh-my-gosh moments arrive, her answer was "absolutely!"

"Now I've spent over two years as Spencer and so when something happens to her it's very close to my heart," she continued. "Even when something happens to the other girls that I really love, I love being surprised and the great thing about the show is that I'm guaranteed one of those oh-my-gosh moments when I'm alone reading the script all the time. That's why we're always so excited and so antsy to get the script."

She was just as excited to be talking about her role and the show as she seems to be when reading the scripts. Check out what else she had to say in the interview below!

We've certainly seen a really great evolution for Spencer's character since Season One. Not even just with her family, but of course through relationships with her friends, the Liars, and of course with Toby as well. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about the evolution of Spencer through those three aspects?

It's funny, it's actually kind of difficult for me to speak about her evolution just because I'm steeped in it and I just feel like there is so much more that she can do. I think Spencer's biggest evolution has been being able to let go in terms of she's learned through getting her friends back how to keep friends and how to be supportive. I think Spencer because of the family that she grew up with has a very strong and black and white sense of what is right and what is wrong and she sometimes thinks that she can control other people.

She's learned to kind of just be supportive of her friends and not let that get in the way of their friendship. I still think she has a long way to go with that in terms of being judgmental of other people and I think her biggest lesson in that was her relationship with Toby. She really ran the gamut as far as thinking that he was the one who killed Alison; he was the one who might be involved with A, and he was their mortal enemy and now there is nobody she holds closer than her friends and Toby.

Last episode we found out that Ian might still be alive. How does that change the dynamic between Spencer and Melissa?

Well, it's funny because I totally understand where Melissa is coming from. This is the father of her child. This is the man that she saw herself being connected to for the rest of her life. To hear the possibility that he could have killed somebody in the past and attempted to kill her sister-there is almost a safety and finality in his being dead.

If he is alive-if she does, and he comes back and she now has the opportunity to choose between believing me and absolving him and choosing to go with him or believing me and getting away from him or you know destroy her relationship with her sister and leaving with a murderer. Her allegiance is to this man. It just makes things a lot more complicated than if he were to be dead and then we would just be dealing with Melissa mourning him. It only makes things more twisted, as all things in Rosewood end up being.

Do you think that Spencer tries to put herself away from the girls or tries to hide who she is a little?

I don't know, I guess I feel like their relationship is a myriad of different things. Of course, when you consider it from a bunch of different aspects, I think when you consider Spencer's coolness factor in the group she's probably a bit of a pariah. As I'm coming to realize throughout the script, Spencer is really the sort of Nancy Drew of the group.

She's the one who's always got a dedication to and she kind of plays that by default especially because of the things that are going on in her family with Melissa and Ian, but there is a lot of-with Aria and her relationship with her family, the family's problems that are going on, but also her relationship with Ezra. Hanna is struggling with relationship issues and finding herself within the relationship with Caleb, and also the relationships with her mother and father. It's the same thing with Emily.

Spencer definitely, I think, has these familial issues that there is something that she's not willing to let go of in regard to Alison's death. I think Spencer, because she's a control freak, she's the one who takes A the most harshly. She cannot stand having someone play her like a puppet. I think in that sense that's where Spencer kind of fits in with the group, is that she's always the one who's willing to run out into the woods in the middle of the night if it means finding another clue. Where I think some of the other girls might just want to forget about it, leave it alone, let's not play this game anymore and that she just can't let that go.

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