In an interview published on June 20, House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon spoke about working on the Netflix series and dished on Rachel's role in the series.

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Speaking to Variety at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Willimon went into Rachel's (Rachel Brosnahan) story on the show and how the character started out being just a prop in the backdrop and ended up playing a key role in the show.

"That was a complete unexpected discovery, which was a byproduct of what we did with Corey's character in the first season," he said. "When we decided to have Peter Russo run for governor, we needed his downfall to be much more grand than we had originally planned. It was always in the works that Peter Russo would meet his demise, but when he became that much closer to Francis and the stakes were much higher, we really needed to be smart about making his downfall believable and tragic. One of the ways I thought of doing that was to bring back a character we had seen early on, Rachel."

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In fact Brosnahan had signed on for a couple of episodes, and was now featured through season 2 and will most likely return in season 3. Willimon spoke about the decision to keep her for an enduring arc.

"At the time, Rachel, in episode one and two, was simply listed as Call Girl. She was never intended to come back," Willimon said. "But you look at the characters you have available to you and rather than introducing a new one, here's one that was intriguing and mysterious and I had an instinct that she had a lot more to offer us."

Willimon discussed the avrous twists and turns that were introduced in the character's storyline and how she became closer to Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly).

"So, I started to bring her back knowing that eventually she would be the Trojan horse that brought Peter Russo down. In order to get there, we needed to have her reenter this world in a believable way. So, she approaches Doug," he said. "Then a relationship between them began to form, which none of us in the room could really pin down and didn't want to. Its mystery, its complexity, its bizarreness is something we felt was really exciting and we kept wanting to return to it. It became a major storyline in season two. In the original concept of the first two seasons, none of that was there. So, in responding to what Corey was doing in front of the camera, then adjusting the scripts, bringing the character back, a new relationship forming -- that's the openness I'm talking about in terms of responding to what you're seeing and adapting. There's no better type of discovery than that because one of the things I'm most proud about in season two is this very strange dynamic between these two people that is very difficult to describe."

Finally Willimon suggested that Rachel also served as a way of taking people outside of the officialese and political intrigue of the White House, into the outside world beyond hallowed halls of governance.

"Whenever we can get out of marble clad hallways of the Capitol or the ornate carpeted hallways of the White House into other worlds that might have nothing to do with Washington, it makes our world bigger and it expands the scope of the show," he said. "So, through Rachel we were able to see a whole different type of existence than the one in which Francis and Claire live in.

The third season of House of Cards will film in Maryland, where the first and second seasons were also shot. Initially, the continuation of filming of the third season of the Netflix series was fraught with troubles over the past few weeks as the producers weren't getting permission from the State of Maryland. But the issue was finally resolved on April 25.

Watch a trailer for Season 2 of House of Cards:

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House of cards, Netflix, Television