Anna Paquin’s Thoughts on Sookie, Stephen and Snoop

The New York Times scored an exclusive interview with Anna Paquin recently and she talks about Sookie’s progression throughout the first three seasons, how work effects her relationship with Stephen Moyer and the Snoop Dogg video that came out last season.

When television viewers were introduced to Sookie Stackhouse, three years ago in real time but only a few weeks ago in the chronology of “True Blood,”she was a guileless Louisiana waitress with telepathic powers but without much knowledge of how the world worked, and – oh, right – she was a virgin.

How times have changed.

Over the first three seasons of “True Blood,” Sookie has grown into a take-charge heroine who can contend with shapeshifters, maenads, werewolves and – in Season 4 – witches, but no longer depends on her vampire paramour, Bill Compton, or his fanged rival, Eric Northman. During that time, Anna Paquin, the 28-year-old actress who plays Sookie, has evolved, too, into an increasingly central figure on this increasingly popular, explicit-in-all-kinds-of-ways HBO series, who has comfortably outgrown her former status as a precocious phenomenon (and is now married to co-star Stephen Moyer, who plays vampire Bill).

Read the entire interview at http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com