Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Iggy Pop, or should I say Iggy's people, had reached out to me saying he was a True Blood fan, and if any opportunities come up, to please keep Iggy in mind. We sent Iggy the demo of 'LB&R'. He loved it and said, 'Sign me up.'
I make about two movies a year outside the 'True Blood' schedule. I work on a great show six months a year, then outside that I get to satisfy whatever creative urges I have. It's a great position, especially for a single guy like me.
The interesting thing about 'True Blood' is that its appeal is not contained to teenage girls. I get stopped in the street and questioned by 70-year-old men whose wives and daughters are making Bloody Marys and throwing 'True Blood' parties.
That's the secret of 'True Blood' - all the creatures that roam Bon Temps become a metaphor for our insatiable lusts and inner desires. Humans craving what they can't have and those secret appetites transforming them into beasts, or even killers.
At one point I had a stretch where it was working on 'In Treatment,' then 'True Blood,' then 'Durham County,' then 'True Blood,' then 'In Treatment' again. If I didn't have that little dose of 'True Blood' in the middle, I might have lost my mind.
Film and theater are about misdirection and making the audience see something. I find it interesting. One of the things we do in 'True Blood' is shoot all of our stunts in camera. Instead of doing some kind of visual effect, we try to make it happen.
Death showed up in my life very early on, so I'm aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there's a sort of contemplation of mortality - although 'True Blood' doesn't fall into that. Even though there's such a ridiculously high body count!
Especially when it comes to something like the awards, I find it kind of baffling that 'True Blood' has been snubbed so many times given the incredible range of acting they have on there; I mean, incredible storytelling and the incredible production values.
People ask me what the appeal of 'True Blood' is and I think there are so many answers to that question, but I think that when there is so much excitement for what you do there is no way that that doesn't become palpable and comes shooting out like bullets.
I really feel like 'True Blood' is a big, giant slice of cake for the audience every week; it's offering people 60 minutes of sometimes thought-provoking entertainment. If you're gonna give an Emmy out, you should probably give it to the audience of 'True Blood.'
Funnily enough, I was a big fan of the show and had been watching it - along with everybody else - and had never imagined that I would be on it. You kind of look at shows and think, 'Oh, I wish I had done that one.' But I didn't really see myself on 'True Blood.'
I was a fan of 'Six Feet Under' and was very sad when it ended, so I was not ready to switch my allegiance to another show. So I was like, 'I'm not watching this 'True Blood.' Then a friend got a bootleg copy of the first four episodes, and by the third one, I was irrevocably hooked.
I had so many offers after 'True Blood' for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball's vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I've always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I've never really had the chance to do that.
I've always freelanced as an actor, and you always have to worry about the next paycheck. When I booked 'True Blood,' I promised myself I would take advantage of the fact that for the first time in my career, I could afford to turn down big money to go and do small, character-driven indies.
In this age of vampires, what I love about 'True Blood' the most is that it's a post-modern take on it. 'Sookie Stackhouse' series author Charlaine Harris and 'True Blood' creator Alan Ball turned that whole mythology upside-down... It's not just about vampires. It's about a lot of different things.
Everyone always wants to talk about 'True Blood' and 'Battlestar Galactica' - no one's even interested in 'Durham County.' It blew my mind when I came to Canada and no one asked me about the show. So many people didn't even know about it. They didn't even know it was on the air! It's very curious to me.
It's pretty crazy. I was thinking about that today, how 'True Blood' has penetrated so much of the cultural zeitgeist. It's truly amazing; it's incredible! The cover of 'Rolling Stone' is major. What's next, the cover of 'Vanity Fair?' When I'm in a 'New Yorker' cartoon, then I will feel like I have made it.
And I guess I'm a kid at heart in that when I go for entertainment, I want to be totally transported. I want to go somewhere else; I want to encounter different things, different beings, different universes. And so I love that aspect of being able to play those things in both 'True Blood' and in 'American Horror Story.'
I guess I didn't even know the word 'genre' until I did 'True Blood.' That's how naive I was, and I didn't realize that there was a point of view about certain types of TV. And so I guess I found it disappointing that there is a segment of the critical community that looks at genre as something that is separate, less than.
'True Blood' is shot on film. It's more like a movie, and they take more days to shoot it, plus it has an hour of content. 'The Good Wife' is network. They're shooting on HD. It moves quicker and they only have forty minutes of content instead of a full hour. Not to mention the difference of shooting, you know, rated-R stuff!
I'll only work on TV shows that have a 'Sookie' on them! Those are the only shows that will cast me. And I've never even met a Sookie in my life. Sookie on 'Gilmore Girls' was played by Melissa McCarthy. And Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, is number one on the call sheet on 'True Blood.' Somebody should write another script with a Sookie in it.
My first five or six years in L.A., I was just trying to get two cents together to stay here. Playing Jason Stackhouse on 'True Blood' put me in a position, financially, to make decisions based on creativity, to choose roles based on whether I connected with them. I love the Jason Stackhouse character... But I also love stepping out of his shoes.