True Blood News - Season 4 news and spoilers

SFX have conducted their annual poll of everyone’s favourite vampires, and released the results on their website to coincide with the publication of their Vampires special edition magazine.  You’ll be pleased to know that FIVE True Blood characters made the list!

2. Eric Northman – “Eric the Viking. Once a phrase that immediately meant “flop comedy from the Monty Python guy.” Now it means, “Top Nordic vampire hottie.” Bill was supposed to be the alpha vampire on True Blood, but – although far from unpopular – he was eclipsed by his blond nightclub owner boss in the popularity stakes (if “stakes” isn’t too sensitive a word to use). As in so many other cases (Spike and Damon, for instance) he benefited from the fact that he didn’t have to be the nice guy. Far from it – he’s an utter git, chaining Lafayette to a slave wheel, and tricking Sookie into drinking his blood. Not to mention all the killing. But it’s more than that. Eric is just so inherently cool. So cool it doesn’t matter if he does a bit of killing while getting his hair dyed; or if he cries when his maker dies; or if he wears a shell suit. He remains untouchable cool. Hell, he’s survived centuries with the name Eric. That’s how cool he is.”

5. Pam DeBeaufort – “True Blood has come up with many memorable vamps, but none quite as reliably foul-mouthed as Pam. Her dialogue (which we can’t reproduce here for taste reasons) is often the highlight of an episode. Devoted to her maker, Eric, she’s also a bit of a badass… and kinda hot. And unlike Eric or Bill, she’s never going to be won over by Sookie’s charms. She may not be one of the show’s main players, but she’s definitely one of the most fun. And we loved her anti-Sookie rant in the season four finale.”

9. Bill Compton – “After seeing death up close even before he became a vampire in the American Civil War, there’s no wonder True Blood’s Bill Compton rarely cracks a smile. Played with seductive relish by Essex-born Stephen Moyer, he’s the Bon Temps vamp who it’s possible to believe we’ve only scratched the surface of.”

11. Jessica Hamby – “Jessica, a vampire so-so easy to love, because of her combination of naivety and sexual/vampiric awakening. She’s the suppressed teenager who’s suddenly discovered alcohol and is rebelling, but taken to ludicrous extremes. Savage and fragile, sensitive but headstrong, she a mass of adorable contradictions, whose fangs pop out at the most embarrassing moments. Stuck as an eternal teenager, doomed to losing her virginity each time she makes love thanks to a self-repairing hymen, she is one of True Blood’s greatest creations.”

21. Russell Edgington - “There were a lot of things to grumble about in True Blood’s third season, but King Russell wasn’t one of them. The oldest and strongest vampire in the world, he’s also one of the funniest. A charming psychopath with a hatred for humans, he was responsible for the single best scene in all of True Blood, when he ripped out a news anchor’s heart, live on air, and declared war on humanity. That he was then squandered for the rest of the season was a shame, but no matter. The end of season four is pretty clear… Russell is coming back. Sookie and co had better watch out…”

Read the full results of the poll here: SFX Top 50 Vampires 2012

Photo credit: HBO

Thank you Alexis for asking TVGuide.com a question that we want to know:

Is there still hope for Sookie and Eric on True Blood? — Alexis
NATALIE: Considering that Sookie swore off both Bill and Eric in the season finale, it’ll be a while before we see any movement on that front. “The feelings are still there for both Eric and Bill,” Alexander Skarsgard tells us. “The attraction is still there, but they’re preoccupied, and so is she.” Instead, look for Bill and Eric to team up while the vampire world begins to both expand and collapse in the coming season. “The guys have usually tried to kill each other and now suddenly have to learn to become friends and protect each other and work together.”

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Terry Bellefleur and the ghost of Christmas past?

In our new segment, Take a Stab, we ponder what will happen to our favorite Bon Temps (and Shreveport!) residents in True Blood season 5. So pin on your sheriff badge and stir the gumbo pot,  because this here is the Bellefleur edition!

Terry Bellefleur

The last time we saw Terry B, he looked strangely shocked to be getting a hug from Patrick Devins, a Marine sergeant from his Iraq war days. Now, Private Bellefleur believed Patrick to be dead, so they haven’t spent any quality time with each other since the war -  so why has Patrick sought out his long lost buddy now?

We’ve been informed by one of the True Blood writers, Raelle Tucker, that “Patrick will bring trouble to Terry and Arlene. His arc has to do with Terry’s past coming back to haunt Bon Temps and Arlene and the life they’re trying to set up together.”

There are several ways we can interpret this. Did Patrick witness Terry doing something terrible back in the war days? Were they lovers? Or should we take Ms. Tucker’s comment literally and believe Patrick to be a ghost coming into Merlotte’s to haunt Terry & Arlene? And if he is, was Terry his murderer? Oh say it isn’t so!

Greater Family Ties

Caroline Bellefleur, "Please tell me there was a bigger reason for me to bring that bible out than cock-blocking Portia."

What’s to become of the ancestral relationship between Bill Compton and the Bellefleurs? Will Bill tell Andy that he’s his gggggrandfather? Or (more likely) will Bill keep this information to himself? Maybe we’ll see more of Portia and she’ll explain to her brother all about their blood drinking progenitor. Either way, I believe that Andy will be just fine with Bill as a relative, after all, he did have an affinity for Bill way back in season 1, as did his cousin Terry.

But in the books, the Bellefleur connection was treated very differently with Sookie being jealous that Bill was helping them out financially. Since Bill & Sookie aren’t even together at this point, that storyline seems to be dead. So what will Bill’s Bellefleur connection bring to True Blood?

 The Mighty Andy Bellefleur

And then there’s Andy, oh Andy! There’s so much going on with Andy Bellefleur and I can’t wait to see what happens to him in season 5! At the end of last season, Andy seems to be off the V (thank the gods!) and is gently wooing Holly the Wiccan waitress. But this is True Blood and I’m pretty sure that this relationship won’t be all sweets and sunshine, because Andy Bellefleur was ravaged by a fairy!

Maurella atop the handsome & muscular Andy Bellefleur (he's cutting back on carbs ya know).

Maurella found Andy in the woods and asked to be protected. After he acquiesced, she hopped aboard the Bellefleur express and rode it all the way to heaven. Now, I can totally understand why Maurella would be captivated by the Mighty Andy Bellefleur’s sexy swagger, but perhaps she had ulterior motives… maybe she’s a soldier in the army to harvest humans? Hmm?

So what do y’all think? Is Patrick Devins actually a dead guy? Will Bill’s Bellefleur connection amount to anything – or is it just another dropped storyline? And will Andy contribute the Bellefleur DNA to the fairy hybrid population?

UK Fans are eagerly awaiting Season 4 of True Blood which will be shown in February on FX. Meanwhile, the wittiest guy on board, Stephen Moyer, talks to Sky Guide for delight of his fellow British fans on Bill Compton’s new look and storyline. Among other interesting subjects, he gets on one delicate subject for fans since Eric lost his hair back in Season 2. The haircuts. Dear True Blood team: it’s well known that vampires can’t visit a hairdresser. Their own nature forces their hair to stay like the day they died, as noted by the same Bill Compton on Season 1, episode 2, when he told Sookie that he was lucky to have had a shave the day he died. Allow me this little ranting to beg again to True Blood stylists to bring Bill’s sideburns back! Now. I’ve said it…

In the new fourth series of True Blood Bill has gained…shall we say, ‘a position of power’ to prevent spoilers? Has he let it all go to his head?

He sleeps with as many virgins as he can find and does things that he doesn’t care will p*** people off or not because he’s got power and he’s going to abuse it.

So the romance is dead?
Yeah, romance is dead, let’s screw everything! No I think that what happens is that he’s learnt from his experiences with Sookie that he has to be honest and he has to tell the truth. There are decisions he has to make as a politician which are difficult but he knows that ultimately he’s being commanded from on high. There will come a point where he will break and it’s been really interesting.

So Bill has transformed?
Yeah, one of the things about this series was how we were going to make Bill different this year. Any person who is in power has a thing like “well I should do this and I should do that” and at some point they stop thinking “I should do this” and they become the answer to the question, they become the thing, the role. I think anybody in power probably goes through that.

Does he look different?
Yes! Me and Audrey Fisher who is the costume designer and Dennis Parker who does the hair and Brigette Ellis who has been our make-up person from the beginning, we all sat down and decided how we wanted him to look. He’s probably got a better quality of blood that he’s been tapping, even though we say we drink True Blood, he doesn’t have to now, he’s got thousands of people volunteering to give him blood. So maybe because he’s on a better quality of blood, his complexion has changed, maybe he’s looking better, looking healthy. We played with that in Season One and Two, certainly Season One, that just after a vampire has fed they’re more rosy cheeked. There’s so much detail, you wouldn’t believe the crap that we talk about. So that was one thing, then would he still look like someone from the civil war?

Well we’ve established that you don’t have to have the same hair as you had because of Alex [Eric] losing his long hair. So lets cut his hair, lets get rid of the diggers [sideburns], he’s not from 1870 anymore, he’s in the present day, so that’s immediately changed the way he looks. Lets talk about clothes, instead of having him in jeans and stuff now he’s a patrician, even though the public don’t know about his position of power, they know that he is a local benefactor. I never wear suits, but we sat down and we decided, lets wear suits. There is a suit designer that does a lot of stuff for me, they came to me and they offered to make Bill’s suits and so me and Audrey sat down with 200 swatches and we talked – would he be a double breasted man? Would he be a single breasted man? Would he have three buttons, would he have two buttons? We had five suits made out of the fabrics that we’d chosen and then we had to decide what kind of shoes he’d wear, would he wear cufflinks, would he have French cuffs, would he have cut away collars… I can’t tell you how detailed it is but you do that for every series. Alex will have done it for his look this series after his changes too.

Read the whole interview at the source

Stephen Moyer

Stephen Moyer gives another lovely interview and recalls his acting roots that led  him to be the sexy hot vampire king Bill Compton on True Blood, an evil Russian agent named Brutus in The Double, and how he got into gardening.

As the day winds down, Moyer is reflective and enthusiastically regales his acting roots. “I did a production of Tom Sawyer when I was about 10 and I used to sing in the church choir. My headmaster of the school that I went to. . .had seen me singing in the church choir and he asked me to play Tom in the school production of Tom Sawyer. I absolutely loved it and I did many many productions at school. Then about the age of 12 or 13, I started doing local amateur dramatics. When I was about 15, you have a thing called a Career Advisory Day where you talk to somebody who does that at your school. And he said to me, ‘What do you want to do?’ and I said, ‘I want to be an actor.’ Literally, I hadn’t said it up until that point. And he had never heard it up until that point. He went around to this office of filing cabinets trying to find how you do that. I’m from a very ordinary working class background in a town without any actors in it, in a small town outside London. And there wasn’t anything. We went through all of these things and we didn’t know what to do. I was about 15. And I found out what you had to do and I wrote all the letters and I flipped burgers because you have to pay for your auditions. That’s how I got into drama school.”

Who knows what the future still holds for Moyer. True Blood is still going strong and there are more movie roles on the horizon. And it’s a good thing because he has no back-up plan to replace acting. “I did do, on summer holidays, landscape gardening for a friend. Used to dig holes and plant flowers. I’ve got an awful lot of knowledge about greenery because of it that I’ve still retained. So everywhere I’ve ever lived there is a little pocket of ground with a garden in it that I keep going.” And what about tackling one of Gere’s most famous roles – Chicago’s Billy Flynn? “I’d love to do it. But there’s a couple of big parts that I’d like to play before Billy Flynn, so we’ll see.”

Read the whole interview

The Bajan Reporter has had the chance to chat with Mr. Stephen Moyer about Season 4 and Bill’s difficult relationship with Sookie after the fatidic revelation that broke them up.

Q: This season doesn’t look great for Bill and Sookie’s relationship.
SM: No. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this but I think that [laughs] you can’t watch two people be happy together for too long. Our show is about conflict and drama. If you see me put this glass down like that, Alan is never gonna make me do that again – he wants to see what happens when it’s a cup or a broken glass. Now that’s fantastic because you are constantly being given stuff that you didn’t know. Like my character, I didn’t know he was going to be a 1920s nightclub entertainer, right? So in season two, suddenly I’m behind the piano and singing. I didn’t know that I’d been in London in the 80s, so episode two, I go back to London in the 80s so now I have to think – when I’m creating stuff or when there’s new stuff coming – “God I was in London in the 80s, I wonder where else I was?”

Q: How was the accent on that? Did you do a British accent from the point of view of being an American?
SM: Yeah. I just went straight in and did [in strong accent] full fucking full Camden. It was awesome. Bucky [Brian Buckner]– who wrote that episode – is a good friend of mine. It didn’t need to be in England in the 80s but he totally did it because that’s how he sees me: in Camden in the 80s. So yeah, Bill and Sookie have separated. At the end of season three he gets pushed away from her and he knows that he’s messed up. What’s interesting about their relationship is that Bill knows enough now not to tell her what to do. So when there are a couple of instances where she gives him an opening and he says “goodnight Sookie”. He’s reversing because he knows if there’s any hope for him with her, if there is any possibility that they have a future, he has to let her be – and that includes possibly what’s about to happen with Eric.

Q: Which leads me to the obvious question – how is it having another man woo your wife at work?
SM: We’re friends. I went up to him at the beginning of the season and said – you’ve got loads of stuff coming up. You have to do your job and you have to be completely happy to do so. I’m not going to be around but I’ve got members of the crew reporting back to me, I’ve got little handy cams and cameras everywhere and I’ve got a little handy cam built into her snatch patch. It’s part of the job and she’s also had to deal with me having relationships with two people this year. What’s different really is that I know Alex really well but the two girls that were coming in to do that stuff were people that she’d never met before. In a way it’s harder. You’ve got to remember what it’s like from Anna’s point of view. HBO and the show have benefited from us being a couple because when we had to do the sex stuff we went for it, but now she’s having to do it with somebody else in front of all the crew who know us as a couple. People are talking about how difficult it must be for me to see her – but you gotta think what it’s like for them, because I’m Alex’s mate.

Q: In that first scene together where you refuse to come in you’ve still got that brilliant screen chemistry.
SM: We love working together but we are very aware that… we’ve had a couple of offers where to do movies together, but we’re not gonna do that. I think people will be sick and tired of us. We certainly will work together, we’ve set up a production company and it’ll probably be me directing or her directing or something like that, but I don’t think we will act together because we’re just aware that… overkill.

Sookie lies to Bill in Season 4

Q: Did you worry that after you were married it wouldn’t zing on screen?
SM: No, the truth is, when we get together on set, which isn’t as often as it has been, we’re so pleased to be working together. There’s a scene in episode four where Sookie lies to Bill and on the page, it was a very simple scene. I go to the door, I need to go in, I need to know if Eric’s there. She says he’s not there. And he knows that she’s lying, she knows he knows that she’s lying, but they look each other in the eye and it’s a really massive moment. He has to believe her because she’s never lied to him before. And that was so much fun to play and it was torture. Everybody came up afterwards and was like “oh it’s so good to see them together in this kind of pain.” I think there’s probably a truism in life that flirting is far far more sexy and risqué prior to a sexual encounter but Anna and I have taken the piss out of each other and been so horrible to each other in front of everybody for so long that I don’t think we could be anything else together.

Read the whole interview