Alan Ball did an interview with the Guardian UK about True Blood season 2 (which premieres tonight). A lot of this we’ve all already read, but some of Alan’s comments are new. I’ve posted excerpts from the interview below:

Can we talk about themes? I’ve noticed a lot more religion in series two.

We definitely get into the nature of religion and the nature of dogma and how that affects people, and why religion exists. With the Fellowship of the Sun, it was fun to create a false organisation that targets one particular group and uses religion as a tool of fear and power, because we know that happens on a daily basis. Certainly you can’t turn on TV or go on a computer in America and not see somebody go on about how America is a Christian country and other bullshit. Originally when I started working on the series, I wanted to explore the twin polarities, in the south, of Sunday morning revival church meetings, and Saturday night at the bar where you go and get so drunk that you give yourself permission to do the things you wanna do. Because they’re opposite sides of the same desire, which is the desire for transcendence.

Here it’s shown on two channels, and both have advertising

Hmmm. I don’t write breaks, so somebody’s making some arbitrary choices about where the breaks should be.

Have you seen it like that?

I haven’t and honestly it would be upsetting to me. I’d be like, what’s that doing there? [laughs] I couldn’t work at a broadcast network now. I’m too spoiled. The executives at HBO don’t want things to be easy and overly explained and pre-digested. They want things to be complicated. If this show was on a network then Bill and Sookie’s relationship would be perfect and he’d never do anything horrible and it wouldn’t be messy and you’d never see them have sex and him actually bite her. But that’s the point.

And it’s shocking, the first time you see it

Yeah! It’s shocking but it’s also like, OK, that’s what this relationship is. That’s why the idea of having a vampire lover is one that so many people fantasise about. It supports this entire cottage industry of vampire romance fiction/TV shows. Whether it’s for preteen girls who are afraid of sex or whether it’s for horny housewives whose real life with their husbands isn’t exciting. I actually had one of our assistant directors went home to visit her friends in Texas, and one of her friend’s husbands came up to her and said, “We just want to say thank you for that show because we’re having better sex than we’ve had in years on Sunday nights.” Hello, vampires are about sex.

There was some controversy over here when series one aired, because a journalist assumed the show was aimed at teenagers

But it’s never been for young teenagers. I’ve always thought it was a show for adults. And by the way, if people think teenagers aren’t having sex, they’re out of their minds! I mean teenagers are like vampires. They basically are sex!

Read the entire interview here.

Posted in Alan Ball, Season 2