For a shoot that delves into transformation and role play, VIOLET GREY couldn’t have cast a more fitting subject. This spring, television audiences will find Jones inhabiting two characters that are utter opposites (save for an enviable shade of blonde). Beginning April 5, she’ll reprise her role as ’60s housewife Betty Draper Francis on the eighth and final season of AMC’s Mad Men, which contains plot twists that were shocking even to cast members. “I was surprised,” says Jones of the much-anticipated series finale. “But the show has always surprised me. Each episode is so good and sort of ties up things — not in a perfect bow, obviously — but I think the audience will be happy.”

With a few clicks of the remote down to Fox, viewers may have caught Jones playing the straight woman to co-stars Will Forte and Kristen Schaal in the Sunday post-apocalypse comedy Last Man on Earth. “It was so enjoyable to go to work and just laugh all day long,” says Jones. This May, audiences can also see her in a big-screen thriller, The Good Kill, which co-stars Ethan Hawke.

Though Jones has received accolades for her portrayal of the frosty yet temperamental Betty, off screen the actress — an active environmentalist, Oceana spokesperson and mother to 3-year-old son Xander — more resembles her Last Man on Earth character, the world-wise Melissa. “She’s a pretty cool chick,” says Jones. “Independent and super modern.” To wit, she has pretty much mastered the art of the Instragram #TBT (a fact duly recognized by BuzzFeed). “I was at my most confident as a kid,” explains Jones, who once posted a photo of herself at age 9 with a mullet. “It actually wasn’t until I got into high school and started to get quote-unquote pretty that my confidence started to disappear. So I want to give the message that girls can be proud and self-assured no matter what funky haircut they have.”