Post-Mortem: [SPOILER] Predicted Death

SPOILER ALERT! If you have not yet watched episode 3, “Fire in the Hole”, you may wish to stop reading now if you do not want to be spoiled.

HBO interviewed Joe Manganiello as his character, Alcide Herveaux, exited the series after being fatally shot by vigilantes hunting down anyone “different” than themselves. Here’s an excerpt:

When did you find that Alcide would be killed off?

I called it pretty early on. As soon as Sookie and Alcide got together, I remember turning to a friend and saying, “I’m dead.” You can’t go anywhere from that; she needs to settle up with Bill and Eric. You can’t have her break Alcide’s heart, because then the audience is going to be angry with her for breaking the nice guy’s heart. I told my friend, “I bet you everything I own that I’m dead.” The other side of it is, if you look at all the other characters, Alcide no longer has anything to do with the story. If you talk about characters that you could kill and make an impact with, I was probably No. 1 on that list. Why would you keep me around? All Alcide ever did was get in the way. I had dinner with [showrunner] Brian Buckner and he cited all the same reasons I just told you.

Even though you knew that once you got the girl you were dead, what was it like for that to finally come together? After all, Alcide’s been pining after Sookie for seasons…

It was good, but at the same time, it made no sense. She’s got these two psychotic ex-boyfriends who have either tried to kill her or have been involved in some plot to kill her. And there’s these roving packs of infected vampires, and it’s still like, “Let’s keep on living here. Let’s stay in this town.” What? [Laughs.] Alcide’s a contractor. They make pretty good money. Shouldn’t he be like, “Let’s take that money and move to Bermuda. Let’s not see Bill every day at the diner. Let’s leave!” [Laughs.]

(read on for Joe’s spin-off idea, his favorite season, what he stole from the set, and more…)