Starpulse Talks With Carrie Preston, True Blood’s ‘Arlene Fowler’

Starpulse recently had the opportunity to talk with Carrie Preston, who was cast as Arlene Fowler in HBO’s True Blood. Arlene works with Sookie at Merlotte’s. She is also Sookie’s friend – for now.

Carrie Preston

Tell us about “True Blood.”

Okay! It’s a vampire series, based on 7 books by Charlaine Harris. They’re really fun, sexy, violent, and should have a lot of pop culture appeal. I think that is why Alan Ball was attracted to them. He always wanted to do something different than the more serious stuff he has done before (“Six Feet Under.”) He seems to be obsessed with evil. (laughs)

True Blood It’s set in a fictitious Southern town in rural Louisiana. Anna Paquin plays a waitress at a Bar & Grill and I play one of her friends who also works there. In this world, vampires are “out of the coffin” and trying to infiltrate themselves into society and get vampire rights. It’s almost as if a whole new race of people has been invented. As you can imagine, there is a great deal of skepticism about it and racism in a lot of ways. My character (Arlene Fowler) is on the racist side of things.

So you don’t get to be a vampire?

No. I’m very trepidacious about the Vampires walking amongst us. I definitely offer a little conflict and resistance to the fact that they are there.

How many episodes have you shot?

We shot the whole season of 12 and they start airing on September 7th on HBO. Then we will see how it goes. HBO is doing a big old push for it. They are really behind it. They give you a little time to find an audience.

Where did you shoot?

Most of it was done in LA in studios or on location. There were some exteriors done in Shreveport (Louisiana.)

It’s pretty down there.

Yeah. Very pretty and very hot. I grew up in Macon, Georgia so I am sort of built for that temperature. That’s why it was really great being in Knoxville these past few weeks. It’s like being back in the Southern womb, so to speak. My parents are still there and I get down there periodically.

You have no accent.

Wow. A lot of people say they can hear it, but Julliard trains it out of you. You can’t do Shakespeare with a Southern accent. (laughs)

My character on the show couldn’t be more different than me. I don’t even look like myself. They have me in this redheaded wig. It’s unusual to have the ability to transform because in the books they are very specific about what the characters look like. Because I worked with Alan before, he said he would give me a wig to look like her. So many would never do that, but he took a chance to make the actor into the character instead of the other way around. I will be very curious to see how that plays out. People on the set don’t know who I am before I get into hair and makeup.

I assume you are nothing like Arlene.

Not at all, but I play her very easily, growing up in Georgia. I’ll definitely draw from my past.

I’ll bet your accent will come back.

Oh, it’s big time and in the other movie that I am doing in Knoxville as well.

You can read the rest of the interview at Starpulse.com. We want to thank Brian Reen for sending this to us.