Niecy Nash-Betts is serious about finding “stolen moments” in life, she said, as a balance to her busy acting schedule. And she is quick to nudge others to do the same. During a recent lunch in California, she fired off a few date-night suggestions for a reporter who had lackluster birthday plans — maybe a couples ceramics class?

“If you need to put a battery in your back, you’re talking to the right one!” she exclaimed. Indeed her battery always seems charged.

In August, she wrapped production on a leading role in FX horror series “Grotesquerie,” which recently premiered, her latest collaboration with Ryan Murphy — and then hopped immediately on a flight to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, where she and her wife, musician Jessica Betts, celebrated their fourth anniversary.

Back home barely a week, she was already gearing up to film with Murphy again in September, this time as comic relief in the Hulu legal drama “All’s Fair.” A year-end Mexico vacation was already in the works as well.

“You got to wring life out like a dirty rag,” she said as she sipped ice water, looking polished in a pink cotton gauze pantsuit, seemingly unfazed by the triple-digit temperatures scorching the San Fernando Valley. “You got to get every inch of it.”said as she sipped ice water, looking polished in a pink cotton gauze pantsuit, seemingly unfazed by the triple-digit temperatures scorching the San Fernando Valley. “You got to get every inch of it.”

In the past year, Nash-Betts also hosted her third season of the latest revival of “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!,” a weekly game show on Fox, and played a kindhearted confidant in the Ava DuVernay film “Origin,” her third collaboration with DuVernay after a minor part in “Selma” and her Emmy-nominated lead role in the Netflix series “When They See Us,” about the so-called Central Park Five.

It’s a hustle she has managed to maintain for nearly three decades, in a career comprising work in just about every genre and category imaginable. She has done sitcoms, web series, animated shows, crime procedurals, gritty dramas and reality TV.

But it may be her work with Murphy, which goes back a quarter-century, that has helped her to push her professional boundaries furthest.

In January, she won an Emmy, her first, for her role in Murphy production “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” Now “Grotesquerie” finds her delving again into new territory, jump-scare horror, as her character, Detective Lois Tryon, investigates a series of grisly, potentially supernatural small-town murders.

Murphy, who created “Grotesquerie” with Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken, described it as “a meditation on the end of the world” and said he knew instinctively that Nash-Betts could stand up to the challenge.

“She can do anything,” he said. Nash-Betts, who is also an executive producer, said she knew she was in when she first read the script. It terrified her.

“The horror of this, coupled with the fact that I’m playing a character I’ve never played before,” she said, “was extremely satiating.”

Success was a slow build for Nash-Betts, 54, who for more than a decade did mostly small and one-off roles in film and television. Initially known more for her comedic chops, her characters grew increasingly complex and dramatic in series like “Getting On” (2013-15), a HBO hospital dramedy; and “Claws” (2017-22), a comic crime drama on TNT that she led, playing a money-laundering nail salon owner.

For many years she was best known for her breakout role — which is also her longest-running one — as Deputy Raineesha Williams in “Reno 911!,” the mockumentary “Cops” spoof that debuted on Comedy Central in 2003. The show has seen many episodes and iterations since, including a revival run on short-lived short-form streamer Quibi and three feature films.

DuVernay said authenticity — what she also called “a warmth, a connectivity” — was the key to Nash-Betts’ craft.

“Whether she’s playing a detective or a single mom or someone glamorous, she’s trying to find that thing that makes you recognize them as a human being,” DuVernay said. “Once she does that, she doesn’t let you go. She finds the everyday-ness in every role.”

But her part as the esteemed but privately tormented Tryon in “Grotesquerie” held special challenges. Nash-Betts admitted having initial reservations about playing “a woman who has the vices that my character has” — Tryon is an alcoholic — but her fears excited her. She tried her best to understand Tryon’s addiction and how the detective got to that point.

“A lot of the ways that people get into those spaces and places is pain, so there’s this underlying pain that you always have present,” she said. “Where’s the pain coming from? What’s the source of that? Then, identifying that, unpacking that and baking it into every scene.”

To ground herself in the character, Nash-Betts had to find places where she and the character overlapped — such “entry points” as her own experiences with motherhood (Raven Goodwin plays Tryon’s daughter, Merritt) and with marital strain (Courtney B. Vance plays her husband, Marshall).

“This is my third marriage — insert ‘crosses eyeballs’ here!” she said with an attendant sight gag. “So I understand what it’s like to be in emotional pain because your relationship is failing.”

But when asked whether the horror aspects of the show haunted her during production, she didn’t mention demons or occult rituals. She was much more troubled by the recurrent themes of human cruelty, something that distresses her off set as well.

“We are living in dark times, and you don’t even have to watch a TV show to know that,” she said.

Being the light for others is what helps her press on when things get bleak. For instance, she felt it was her duty to make the “Grotesquerie” cast and crew laugh in between filming particularly difficult scenes. (“She rallied the troops,” as Murphy put it.)

And when it comes to finding some light for herself?

“I married my comfort,” Nash-Betts said, explaining that Betts (whom viewers can spot in a small “Grotesquerie” cameo), would drop everything and head with their dog to the remote desert filming set to lift her spirits.

Traci Carter Holsey, head of development for Nash-Betts’ production company, Chocolate Chick Inc., who has been a friend since 1995, said this marriage signaled a shift in the actor’s approach to life.

“Before, I could call her if she was out at dinner, on the red carpet or wherever, and she would take the work call,” Carter Holsey said. “She has a protective space now. I’ve noticed how much more present and connected she is to the now — and how much she commits to enjoying what she’s been working toward.”

Nash-Betts agreed; “cultivating and curating” happiness has become her priority in this chapter of her life, she said — whether that’s taking a pasta-making class in southern Italy or testing the limits of her craft on set.

“I feel very grateful that I wake up every day and don’t live a life that I have to escape from,” she said. “I do what I want to do, and I live the life that I want to live, so I love it here!”