Like most actors who play villains, Melinda Clarke -- "The O.C.'s" deliciously evil Julie Cooper -- tends to see things from her own point of view.

"I can defend almost everything she's ever done," Clarke said Thursday night during a party on a Warner Bros. soundstage that marked Warner Bros. Television's 50th anniversary. "If you ask me a question about a storyline, I can tell you why she did it."

Those storylines, of course, include Julie sleeping with daughter Marissa's (Mischa Barton) ex-boyfriend, marrying for money and then having an affair with her own ex-husband (Tate Donovan), and at one point trying to commit Marissa to a mental hospital.

So what can't she defend?

“Well, that’s coming up,” she said, smiling. “There’s one thing that I’m having trouble defending and it’s a big scandal. That’s it – I can’t say anymore.”

Maybe it'll have something to do with Marissa's upcoming lesbian storyline (though Clarke said "you'd be surprised by her reaction, actually -- it's not what you think").

I did ask her, by the way, about Marissa's missing younger sister, last seen riding off into the sunset on her pony (OK, I think they sent her off to boarding school). Her absence was conspicuous, though, in the episode -- possibly the show's lamest -- when the girls' father decides to move to Hawaii to become a better dad.

Because, you know, it's much easier to parent when the kids aren't actually there.

"Well, that actress [Shailene Woodley, who played Kaitlin Cooper], we were having trouble, she's so busy," Clarke said. "She'll come back probably older and wiser and another Julie Cooper Jr.," she joked.

And possibly in another body altogether.

Meanwhile, there are reports that creator Josh Schwartz has promised Fox an "O.C." spinoff that will follow Kaitlin's adventures at boarding school.