Pretty Little Liars Exclusive: Shay Mitchell on Spencer Tension, "Insane" Episode to Come and More!

When it comes Pretty Little Liars, the questions are often outweigh the answers in regards to what A is up to and who is in danger on a weekly basis.

But as we’ve been seeing tension build between BFFs Emily and Spencer, there are also lots of questions surrounding Emily’s family situation, her relationship with Paige and what our resident lesbian will do if she truly is done swimming due to her shoulder injury.

With all this in mind, I jumped on the phone with Shay Mitchell, who happily dished as much as she could about the current developments. And, like any good Liar, she also teased what’s on tap for the rest of Pretty Little Liars Season 4...

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TV Fanatic: Emily and Spencer have been butting heads lately and from this clip for the next episode, it looks like that’s not going to improve anytime soon. Can you talk about what we'll see?
Shay Mitchell: I think for so long Emily is usually the quiet one. She kind of falls back into that a little bit and lets the girls do their thing. But it comes to a point, like with everything in her life, that she just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore and I think she's taken so much of what Spencer has said and I think Emily being with her more often than not is when she's kind of fed up.

So I think even in the next episode it drags into that as well. Emily also finds out that Spencer is keeping something from her so it doesn’t get better right away. I think it's just more hurt and I think that’s because Spencer's kept things from the girls in the past, they're all a little bit wary. ‘Are you telling us everything?’ And it's hurtful too because all these girls are supposed to be sharing with each of them what's going on. They're in this together. So when one of them kind of holds back on a secret or doesn’t tell them something, it's a little upsetting and I think Emily's very sensitive right now towards Spencer.

TVF: What we're seeing lately is that Emily doesn’t define herself by her sexuality but by her swimming. Do you see it that way?
SM: I feel like Emily is very strong and she's very competitive and for so long she was a team captain. She did get a lot of praise for winning the school's races and all that and bringing it in for her team. And if she doesn't have swimming... I mean, she's not the best at school so really it was swimming that was her everything and taking that away from her, it'd just be difficult and I think that was also sort of her outlet to kind of deal with everything when she's out in the pool.

TVF: What do we see the rest of the first half of the season with Emily and Paige? Do they remain in a good place?
SM: I hope so. I mean, I think that because they took swimming away, they should at least have Emily have a girlfriend, someone she cares about. We have a lot of scenes coming up with Emily and Paige. And it's always a little bit rocky as is everything in Rosewood, but it is fun. I get to work with Lindsey [Shaw, who plays Paige] a lot and I absolutely love that. So we will be seeing them down the road in this season.

Every time I try and explain this season I keep thinking about what's to come next and what you guys haven't seen and I'm like ‘oh my god!’ Like [the next] episode is probably one of my favorite episodes for a certain reason that I'm not going to tell you. I can't. I don’t know how they're doing it honestly. It's just insane. After you see this episode, we'll have to have a conversation again and then you can be like ‘oh my god!’

TVF: A lot of the talk in the last episode was about Emily maybe kind of having to rebrand herself if she's not going to be a swimmer and being a cheerleader is mentioned. How would you feel about that?
SM: I mean, let's continue that rumor because I know that Shay would definitely like to do that, definitely wants to be a cheerleader. Do I think Marlene [King, Executive Producer] would do that? I don’t think so. I haven't heard one thing about that and I think that would also be a little bit difficult for Emily to be like okay, well, we're not actually the main player on the field, but we're going to cheer for them….I would love to put on that outfit. Do not get me wrong. But I don’t think it's going to happen, although you never know.

TVF: Will we see Emily and the girls in Ravenswood [the PLL spin-off] because I know they're working on that now for the fall. Can we expect a crossover?
SM: We could be seeing Emily in Ravenswood. Ashley [Benson] and I put it out on Twitter that we were going to New Orleans to do an episode and we actually did call our line producer saying we would do it because we want to go there so badly. More because I want to go and have beignets but also because it would be really fun to go and be a part of that set for one episode.

TVF: There's nothing like New Orleans' beignets. Nothing like it.
SM: Exactly. And if you're going to have a spinoff, then let's have us kind of be in that place, too, and welcome everyone to Ravenswood. But yeah, I think there could be a potential for us to do one episode or something like that. But also, if we don’t go down there to shoot, I will 100 percent be down there to visit Tyler [Blackburn, whose Caleb is being spun off], and just check it out and make sure everything's cool and also just because I love New Orleans.

Jim Halterman is the West Coast Editor of TV Fanatic and the owner of JimHalterman.com. Follow him on Twitter.