Mary-Louise Parker has built a cult following for her quirky Showtime hit “Weeds.” The show is about a single mom, living a nameless, look-a-like California suburb, who turns to selling pot to help make ends meet. Parker’s character Nancy Botwin’s life is far from bland.

She faces off tough drug dealers, Latin American drug lords, the police and her pesky neighbors. But this season she showing more of her sexuality, including a steamy sex scene with Demián Bichir, known as Mexico’s George Clooney.

“My girlfriend, she’s a great fan of Weeds,” Bichir told E! Entertainment. “When she heard that I had this audition for that, she told me, ‘You know what? This is it. This is one of the greatest shows ever!’” Bichir played the mayor of Tijuana, who becomes involved with Botwin. “They told me that these characters might get involved with each other and get some relationship going on there,” the 45-year-old Bichir says. “Then when I watched the past seasons, I realized how open it was.”

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As for the Clooney comparisons. “You know,” Bichir says, “it’s fine with me, because I think George Clooney is one of the greatest actors. I guess it’s better than being called the Homer Simpson of Mexico.”

Critics may never call Parker classically beautiful, but she possesses a worldly endearing sexuality, a distinctive voice and delicate features. As Nancy Botwin on the show, Parker struggles with the sudden death of her husband and agonizes over how she’ll support and raise two young boys on her own. Without any discernible career skills, the widow Botwin finds good paying work as the local pot dealer in the pristine, new LA suburb known as Agrestic.

There’s definitely a double meaning when this girl puts on her Mary Janes, according to the show’s Web site. For her efforts on the series, she’s already snared a Golden Globe. “I think she enjoys the adrenaline of it, and I think she’s grown to enjoy it,” Parker says of her character’s descent into drug dealing. “I don’t think she necessarily knew that about herself but I don’t think she’s the most rational person, you know? I think she is a bit reckless, and I think she isn’t someone who thinks ahead.”

The show was never meant to be a flat-out comedy, and if you look at the pilot, that isn’t really what it is. “I don’t know how to approach anything as a straight-out comedy or a straight-out drama. It’s just life as life, and sometimes it tips one way darker than the other. I think that it does have the potential to go pretty dark. I think, actually, within that darkness is where a lot of great comedy is born of that,” she says