A fairy-tale time for 'Once' star Lana Parrilla

NEW YORK — Lana Parrilla, whose dual roles on the fantasy drama "Once Upon a Time" include the fearsome Evil Queen, wasn't satisfied just knowing her character was evil.

"You can also see she's a tortured soul," says Parrilla, "and I made a very conscious choice to reveal the pain underneath."

While she prepped for her audition, she asked herself: What caused that pain?

"So I did a meditation, and I saw a lot of her past and tapped into it," discovering in the process that "a major betrayal and the loss of someone she deeply loves are what caused the darkness to overtake her, and what caused her need to punish everyone in her life. She doesn't want anyone to be happy, because HER happiness was taken from her."

Parrilla shared her epiphany with the show's co-creators, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, "and they had their own vision which was totally in line with mine. Maybe I tapped into THEIR psyches!"

The ABC freshman hit, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. EST, has a mind-bending premise ("every time I try to pitch this show," Parrilla laughs, "it sounds like I've just smoked something really strong").

In a nutshell: Thanks to the Evil Queen's curse, a number of fairy-tale characters were transported to the contemporary village of Storybrooke, Maine, where they have forgotten their pasts as well-known storybook characters and, now stranded in the artifice of real life, have been denied every fairy-tale character's birthright: the prospect of a happy ending.

The hard-hearted mayor of Storybrooke is Regina, the other character played by Parrilla (pronounced puh-REE-uh). Also starring on the show are Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Dallas, Robert Carlyle, Jared Gilmore and Jennifer Morrison.

Parrilla, a beautiful brunette with smoldering eyes and a lively, outgoing manner, counts "Once" as her seventh series, which also included short-termers such as "Miami Medical," ''Swingtown" and "Boomtown."

Longevity isn't a priority for her.

"When the script for 'Once' came my way," she says, "I had the thought that maybe it will last only a season. But I was willing to take that risk. Even if it hadn't gotten picked up as a series, I'm happy to have played this part."