While writing and executive producing Breaking Bad, Moira Walley-Beckett helped chronicle the arc of antihero Walter White from milquetoast and monochromatic to an incredibly complex character in a hopeless predicament of his own making. And with Starz’s Flesh and Bone, the Emmy-winning writer set out to track a character on a somewhat opposite journey—a person laden with complicated emotional baggage who works toward normality. As such, she created the character of Claire Robbins (Sarah Hay), a fragile ballerina who, in the first moments of the premiere, feels compelled to padlock her bedroom door from her familial hell and flee to the dysfunction of the big city. In the final moments of the episode, it is revealed why Claire felt the need to bar herself from her family—because of sexual abuse she is suggested to have suffered from her brother.

“As women, we have conversations with our friends all the time—everybody has a story about having been aggressed upon sexually or a rape story, as awful as it is. Unfortunately, it's rather common,” Walley-Beckett explains of her decision to incorporate the storyline on the phone last week. “Incest is a very different situation because you know and love the perpetrator. I was really interested in shining light and giving it a thorough exploration, and also wondering how these things can happen.“

Exploring the motivations of Claire’s brother recalled a lingering investigation from Walley-Beckett‘s Breaking Bad days: “I was very interested in the complexity of how that situation originated, and how monsters are made. How the vulnerabilities, and need, and despair, and prison of that situation can occur in the first place.”

Walley-Beckett says that she interviewed an incest survivor during her research and wasn't interested in covering the subject because it is taboo but because “it's a difficult subject, and I want it to be meaningfully explored. I care about how it attaches to the survivor. I care about trying to understand how it can happen at all, and that you can't just put it into a category, and the kind of specific difficulties and shame, and complications that are in the result.”

Compounding the difficulty of Walley-Beckett’s emotional balancing act is the fact that Hay, a soloist with the Semperoper Ballet in Dresden, Germany, had never acted onscreen before Flesh and Bone. To prepare, the 27-year-old tells us that she consulted with her parents, who are both psychologists.

“I spoke to them about their experience and knowledge of that situation as far as abuse victims, incest, these kind of behavioral problems, and why they happen,” Hay explains, during a phone call last week. “I basically had to say somehow that it was okay in my head while I was acting out these scenes because I wanted her to look like it was okay for her.”

When it came time to appear on-screen with Josh Helman, who plays Claire’s brother, Hays says, “The subject matter wasn’t easy for us. We tried to make jokes about it because it’s so hard to not feel bad about the subject even though we were just playing these characters.” Hays ultimately found a way to relate to the character on a human level: “I just feel like I know what it’s like to be confused. Claire just had no direction [at home] and unfortunately it turned out for the worst for her. I had to research and understand why that happens in order to portray it correctly.”

When it came time to watch the series, though, Hays says she had a more difficult time watching herself in the dance sequences than she did in the intimate scenes.

“I am always a bit put off, because I know too much about dancing and I can’t appreciate it for what it is,” she says. “I’m a perfectionist and say, ‘My arm would have been better if I did this.’” But Hays says that seeing herself in the dramatic sequences pleased her. “Maybe it’s because I’m new as an actor, I didn’t know what to expect as far as my performance and I was pleasantly surprised and really just taken back by the whole series because it’s so beautiful the way it’s shot. It’s moving and it‘s so dark and blue, and there’s so much atmosphere to every scene. When I was watching the show, it never felt like it wasn’t a piece of art.”

Related: How Breaking Bad's Walter White Inspired Starz's Disturbing Ballet Drama Flesh and Bone