Bloody Good Times on True Blood

Fangoria.com takes a look at putting together Charlaine Harris’s southern vampire world. Among the people they talked with on set was the romantic vamp himself, (and my TV BF), Stephen Moyer.

Drinking Up TRUE BLOOD

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN

A group of 50 vampires are watching a legal proceeding in a junkyard. Naturally, it’s the middle of the night—both in the story, set in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and in the real world in Sun Valley, California, where the TRUE BLOOD cast and crew are trying to finish before the sun rises.

Episode director Scott Winant relates just one element that has to get done before 5 a.m. “We’re doing a combination makeup/CGI effect,” he explains. “We have a vampire bite that I need to expose, but on our schedule tonight, we can’t do a makeup effect with a full prosthetic, which is how it’s traditionally done. So the effects people came up with a solution where they would make a very small rig which is just a blood feeder tube, and apply it to the neck. We consulted with Zoic, our digital house, and they confirmed they could paint the tubes out fairly easily. That way, we can have the blood flow naturally, but you won’t see the feeders.”

TRUE BLOOD, a 12-hour series which premieres on HBO this Sunday, September 7, is adapted by Alan Ball (Oscar-winning screenwriter of AMERICAN BEAUTY and creator of SIX FEET UNDER) from Charlaine Harris’ best-selling Southern Vampire novels. The novels chronicle what happens when a synthetic blood substance (known as Tru•Blood) makes it possible for the undead to stop subsisting on humans. The vampires “come out of the coffin” to a decidedly mixed reception, given that they don’t always abide by human laws, as demonstrated in the scene being filmed. The books and the show center on telepathic human waitress Sookie Stackhouse, played by Anna Paquin, who’s all for species mixing, and her undead suitor Bill Compton.

British actor Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill, says he’s still getting used to the nocturnal hours involved in filming TRUE BLOOD. “I got back [from the previous night’s shoot] this morning and I couldn’t sleep. The first night’s always really tough, because by the time you’re getting into bed, the birds are singing, people are starting to work, there was somebody drilling holes next door to me. I’ve been awake ever since. But by the third night, you’re so knackered, you’re so tired, you just get back into it.”

Bill Compton is actually Moyer’s second vampire role; 10 years ago, he starred alongside Jack (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) Davenport as a London-based bloodsucker in another supernatural TV project. “ULTRAVIOLET,” Moyer explains, “was set in a very urban London landscape, and it was very clean-cut and English. And this is obviously,” the actor adopts the Louisiana accent he uses for Bill, “very Southern and laid-back. They’re quite different. My [ULTRAVIOLET] character was quite cocky and cocksure and brassy and bold, and Bill is far more considerate, more of a gentleman—and guilt-ridden.”

The TRUE BLOOD vampires are pale with retractable fangs, but differ from their screen brethren in having bloody fingernails. Moyer holds up his hands in illustration. “My hands are brushed white, and we have this blood thing [in the nails]. You can clean everything else off really quickly, but you’ll be at the store the next day buying milk and it looks like you’re really filthy, because that stays on for weeks.”

Todd Masters and Dan Rebert designed the look of the bloodsuckers, and chief on-set makeup artist Brigette Myre Ellis says one of the challenges of her job is making sure the actors playing the undead have suitable pallor. “Mondays are usually our hardest days, because everybody’s gotten some sun,” she notes. Ellis has experience in this area, as she’s a veteran of the entire run of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, and notes, “I did not think I would be signing on for a series that could possibly go for another seven years. If this goes and I do stay on it, it’ll be 14 years on vampire shows!”

One difference from her previous assignment is that HBO allows considerably more gore than the broadcast TV. “This is a big bloodbath,” Ellis acknowledges cheerfully. “In this scene, and scenes to come, they’re completely gore-streaked. We use everything: the brush technique of splattering it, spraying it on—it’s ‘get down and get dirty’ on this show, so it’s great. There are so many different kinds [of camera blood]: There’s pumping blood, drying blood, light-colored blood, we have things called fresh scabs, there’s gelling blood—so many different elements that every time, you have to take into account the situation, how [the character’s injury] happened. And then on the day, you see how they’re going to light it—is it day, is it night, is it interior or exterior? This show is so great, and to be a part of it is amazing. I really believe it’s going to go somewhere. Just the group of people—the cast is amazing, unbelievably talented, there are no big egos, everybody’s happy to be here and wants to be here, so it’s a real pleasure to be around.”

The show’s writers also want to be here—and, unlike on many film and TV sets, they’re welcome. Brian Buckner and Chris Offutt, who co-wrote the episode being filmed, are happily watching the camera monitors next to director Winant. “The real challenge of this show,” Buckner says, “is being truthful to Charlaine’s books and keeping the Sookie stories pretty well-preserved for the fans, but also fleshing out the other characters, so we have a little more of an ensemble. So it’s adding stuff without derailing ourselves on what we need to stick to.” The TRUE BLOOD series showcases more corpses than the books do, he notes. “We’ve added murders, so there’s a serial-killer type of thing, where [a main character] gets fingered for these crimes.”

“I like the vampire mythology,” Offutt says. “This is a reinvention of it in many ways. But essentially, the root of this show is emotional drama between characters, some of whom happen to be vampires and some of whom are human.”

“The trick is to strike a balance,” Buckner continues, “to unravel it slowly, so that we don’t throw a bunch of supernatural elements at our audience at once. Let them buy into what we’re giving them and then introduce something else, and dole it out. Not to speak for Alan [Ball], but I feel like that was sort of his hook into the story of this world, and that’s where you can see an overlap of the other themes in his work. I love the [civil rights] analogy, but we don’t go to it that often. It’s more of a backdrop.”

“It’s an underlying theme,” Offutt agrees. “But it can also be whatever your own personal ‘other’ is, whatever that person represents, whether it’s ethnicity or gender or civil rights. It’s the vampire as newcomer into the community.”

TV series involving creatures of the night seem to attract cult followings, and Moyer says he’ll be happy if that occurs with TRUE BLOOD. “Alan Ball is a bit of an extraordinary presence to work for,” he says. “He’s an amazing man, and if somebody had said, ‘What would you like to come out to America and get known for?’ I would pretty much have chosen this as the dream project.”

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