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Jamie Lynn Sigler picks at a roll made of pizza dough at Angeli Caffé in West Hollywood as we discuss her upcoming return to HBO on the fifth season of Entourage. Sigler plays “a version of” herself for three episodes as this season’s Anna Faris, who tweaked the tabloid perception of her life in three episodes last season. Entourage’s Sigler, like the real one, has recently relocated to Los Angeles and on the show she finds herself desperately searching for a new assistant while a romance brews. “I become close with one of the boys” is all Sigler can reveal at the time of our interview.

Cheers to Central Casting since Sigler’s life the past few years has read like an Entourage subplot—marrying her manager, A. J. Discala and, almost inevitably, divorcing him three years later. But the star hasn’t quite adjusted to Hollywood life—especially to the paparazzi who routinely shout homophobic slurs at her close friend Lance Bass. “He’s one of the kindest, sweetest, gentlest people I’ve ever known in my life,” she explains, “and when anyone says otherwise it’s really upsetting to me.” Sigler says her own worst encounter with the paparazzi was when they photographed her at the market after buying cake and beer for a party. Her mother called her up after it was printed, worried: “Jamie, you need to eat healthier!”

Despite her breakout success as Meadow Soprano, the daughter of America’s most lovable, neurotic mafioso, Sigler was no overnight sensation. She’s been grinding out steady work since she was seven years old. She’s particularly proud of her starring role as Belle in the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast in 2002 (“I feel like I’m my best. . .on stage and it showed.”). In the midst of her career climb, Sigler released a pop album called From Here to Heaven, a flop that she describes as “not what I wanted to be doing, but what I thought I had to be doing.” She also somewhat dubiously starred in a Mariah Carey music video called “Through the Rain” and as the titular Hollywood Madam in 2004’s Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss. “I was acting out these things I’d never even done in my personal life,” she says, including “how to hook and how to cut up and snort a line of coke.” Quite a leap for a Long Island girl who had a Wizard of Oz-themed bat mitzvah.

Her recent move to Los Angeles, partly chronicled in Entourage, is just one of many recent changes in Sigler’s life. She recently wrapped an indie flick called Son of Mourning and started a jewelry company with her roommate called CJ Free. However, she misses her New York fans—for instance, the construction workers that yell “Meadow, don’t go to Stanford! Don’t leave the East Coast!” Nevertheless, Sigler is excited for the new experiences and extended period of self-reflection that Los Angeles has provided for her. Lately, she’s been thinking particularly about a recent Birthright Israel trip that she describes as “life-changing.” Says Sigler, “I felt more connected to a place I had just come to than the country I had been living in my whole life.” The 27-year-old has also appreciated the opportunity to spend more time alone, in turn, realizing that she is “becoming more and more like my mother every day.”

For the NJBs out there angling to become Sigler’s rebound, she advises: “Don’t tell me your mother’s going to love me the first day you meet me,” she says, laughing. “Let’s just work on us first.”