From Arrested Development to her new comedy-mystery show, Search Party, Alia Shawkat has grown up on screen. We spend a sunny afternoon with the Hollywood veteran whose future looks brighter than ever.

“We’re sitting in the sun on a bench surrounded by trees. I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now,” Alia Shawkat says with a laugh. “Like, I don’t want to leave this place.” The actress is talking about L.A., because she’s off to New York soon to film Search Party, the new comedy-mystery show she stars in, co-created by Michael Showalter and the team that made Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City happen. I don’t want to leave either, but for me “this place” is much more specific—the Griffith Park picnic table where we’re sipping iced coffee from the Trails Café—and my reasoning is much more personal: Shawkat is really freaking cool.

I had my suspicions the first time I saw her on Arrested Development in 2003, when her comic timing as Maeby Fünke—the teen who convinced everyone she was a movie studio executive and made “Marry me!” a pop culture colloquialism—was on par with that of the cult show’s seasoned actors. It seemed pretty clear when she starred as a roller derby badass in Drew Barrymore’s 2009 film Whip It opposite Ellen Page, who’s still one of her closest friends. And her recent Broad City guest spot all but confirmed it when she showed up in season two as Ilana’s doppelgänger, facilitating one of TV’s weirdest and most hilarious sex scenes. When she rolled up to the park today rocking a Cross Colours snapback over her curly hair, a pale blue sweater, black shorts, and some cowboy-esque booties, apologizing for being a few minutes late because of a phone call about a movie she wrote, will star in, and is producing, it merely sealed the deal.

The fact that Shawkat is handling business like a boss is just one of the things that make her seem much older, or at least wiser, than her 27 years. It’s also her low-key demeanor and the unselfconscious way she talks about things like the Academy Awards (“They’re bullshit”) and gender dynamics (“These smart, amazing women, the minute a guy comes around, their voice changes, their energy shifts, and I’m like, What the fuck happened?”). But more than that, it’s probably the fact that she’s spent the majority of her life working in a very adult world. Shawkat, who grew up in Palm Springs, California, with two older brothers, was only eight years old when she told her parents she wanted to act.

“We were a loud, jokey kind of family,” she says. “I watched [the Nickelodeon sketch show] All That, and I was like, ‘I want to do that. I want to be on TV.’” It didn’t take long. After having her head shots mostly ignored because her Middle Eastern heritage (her dad is from Iraq) made her look “too ethnic,” as the agencies said, Shawkat was plucked from a hundred kids at a manager’s cattle call, and singled out again when she group-auditioned for an agency. She booked commercials for the Gap and Barbie during her first week of work, and her third audition landed her a role in David O. Russell’s 1999 film Three Kings.

From there she starred in State of Grace (a female-fronted Wonder Years–like series narrated by Frances McDormand) and was then cast as Maeby in Arrested Development, a show that indelibly shaped not only her work trajectory but also, well, her. Shawkat was only 14 when she shot the pilot, which also included her first-ever kiss, with co-star Michael Cera. “Our sensibility and our sense of humor was molded on that show,” she says, playing with the large gold bangle on her wrist. “Both me and Michael have had distinct careers because of it. We’re both very conscious of the stuff we want to do because we started off like, This is the level you have to match.”