Ashley Benson first gained fans with a four-year stint on popular soap Days of Our Lives, but she’s found new celebrity as Hanna Marin on Pretty Little Liars. Once chubby and awkward, the character of Hanna emerged as the “Queen Bee” after former group leader Alison disappeared; only recently has she settled down and become a sensitive voice of reason among her friends. I spoke to Benson about Hanna’s personality changes, her boy drama, and why ABC Family’s dark teen drama is such a success.

TV.com: OK, I have to tell you. Hanna has definitely become my favorite character on Pretty Little Liars. Are you excited about the direction she’s taken?
Ashley Benson: I’m so excited. I’m just really glad that she’s becoming more down to earth. She’s really funny now, so that’s really fun to play. But yeah, I’m really glad about the direction they’ve taken her. I think that a lot of fans, she’s slowly becoming their girl that they go to. She was so mean and stuck-up, and now she’s a really good friend. She’s funny and she’s sarcastic and it’s really good to see the other side of Hanna now, rather than the stuck-up and snobby side. It’s good. I like it a lot.

So, Spencer’s plagiarizing, Emily’s kissing girls, Aria’s kissing her teacher. What’s going on with Hanna? Does she also have secrets we don’t know about?
They’re not touching a lot on stuff, but I think that in this period of Hanna’s life, she’s just kind of finding out who she is. I mean, she’s already gotten in trouble with the police and now she’s told her friends. She’s gotten in trouble with them quite a few times, from stealing sunglasses to wrecking Sean’s car, which nobody found out about. She’s keeping the affair with her mom and Detective Wilden a secret. In the midseason finale, she gets a little bit more information about A, so things happen in that way to my character. And it ends with a huge cliffhanger, so we’ll see where it goes from there. But she definitely doesn’t have as much darkness as the other girls. I think she’s just struggling with family things, with money. And we’ll see where the writers take it.

Hanna does have her share of boy drama. Do you have a preference for which guy she picks? Are you Team Sean or Team Lucas?
I’m Team Both. I adore both of them. They’re so sweet. I don’t know. I would love to see how the Lucas thing plays out, just because it’s something new and Lucas is not the type of guy that Hanna would go for. But she befriended him because she used to be just like him. They always saw each other, and she knows what it’s like to be in his position. So I think it’s great that she’s kind of opening herself up to people that she wouldn’t necessarily open herself up to. I can’t wait to see what the writers have in store for that, because I don’t know where that’s going to go. But I know that the fans really love that storyline, so we’ll see what happens.