Anna Paquin & Christopher Meloni Cover TV Guide for True Blood

The latest issue of TV Guide magazine features a beautiful cover photo of Anna Paquin and Christopher Meloni to promote True Blood season 5. The mag also has some scoop about the new season thanks to spending some time on the set during a vampire execution scene. Here’s an excerpt:

“When that blood hit me in the face, I went, ‘This looks awesome!'” Meloni says gleefully. It’s nearly 11pm and it took two hours to set up the shot — called a “goo drop.” A bucket of stage blood (with some latex blobs mixed in for guts) is suspended from a scaffold. Just below it hangs an empty suit of clothes matching what the actor playing the doomed vamp is wearing. As the stake goes in, the bucket empties through the garments, and the bloodsucker is no more. There’s only one chance to get it right. And Meloni nailed it.

The actor’s excitement is matched only by the seriousness of the character he plays: Roman, the 500-year-old head of the Vampire Authority with the weight of the world on his pinstripe-suited shoulders. He’s chief executive not only of the vampire government but of their religion, too. “My first day on set, I recited a prayer in Aramaic,” says Meloni. No separation of church and state here.

“Roman is a politician who has a dream,” explains executive producer Alan Ball. “He was behind the coming-out-of-the-coffin [movement], something that’s been in the works for at least a hundred years. But there are factions in the vampire community who want to go back to the Dark Ages and feed on humans. The biggest arc in Season 5 is the future of peaceful coexistence.” Adds Meloni, “Roman’s determined. He wants peace, but others have been trying to stomp out his path. Think Obama with very long incisors.”

Read the rest of the story, including how Bill and Eric fit into the Authority and what’s coming up for the Eric-Sookie-Bill triangle, on the TV Guide website and in the magazine.