Even though the shooting season is fairly short for True Blood, approximately 7 months and the cast is getting bigger and bigger, so there’s less time on screen for all our original favourite characters, the work is grueling. With this in mind Stephen still loves work and hope it continues for at least another 4 or 5 seasons.
Stephen Moyer at a benefit for "Dog Works" in 2009
“I really do think that it’s a golden age for American TV and we’re right at the heart of it, thanks to Alan and the incredible writers we have,” says Moyer. “And what’s fascinating is that Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad, Matt Weiner (Mad Men) and Alan all watch each other’s show because they respect each other.
“What I think is incredible about our show is that it tries to do so much. It’s not just appeasing some kind of genre specific audience or an Alan Ball-loving audience or an HBO audience, per se, for that matter.
“We know that from overseas sales. It’s a straight up drama and it just happens to have vampires in it. It’s not a vampire show any more than Star Trek was a show about space travel.
“It’s a show about human relationships and interaction. We never see anybody happy because there will always be obstacles in the way (laughs). Alan does that. He creates a world in which we see people react to extraordinary situations in their life and we judge them as an audience on how they react.”
“There weren’t any actors in the family but my aunt and uncle were holiday camp entertainers and one of my earliest memories is of going to the Isle of Wight every summer and watching them perform.
“My uncle Tony was my absolute idol and he used to do these fantastic impressions – I can remember him doing Elvis. And they also did a little bit of magic. I think a little bit of that stayed with me. And then I started doing plays at school and loved it.”
His life has changed both professionally and personally, since he took on the role of Bill Compton. He and Paquin are a couple-off screen and recently tied the knot at a private ceremony in Malibu. The close-knit team who make True Blood have seen their relationship blossom at first hand.
“There have been a couple of changes on the crew here and there but it’s basically the same group of people and they have seen us meet, they have seen us give each other shit on set and take the piss out of each other constantly,” he laughs.
“They’ve seen us come out as a couple when we were already together – in fact, when they saw us giving each other shit we were already a couple, but they just didn’t know. So they’ve seen everything. Actually, they feel like family.”
Making True Blood is long and exhausting, says Moyer, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“By the end of the show, after seven months of working 16 or 17 hour days, you are knackered,” he says. “And yet when we leave it’s like mozzarella that’s being stretched and stretched and pulled apart – and it doesn’t want to be pulled apart, but it has to be. That’s how it feels.
“Alan and I were talking about mourning the loss of the show – and hopefully that won’t be until four or five years down the line before it finishes. But I’m still mourning it even though it’s far into the future because I’ve never worked on anything like this where the cast is so together, the crew is so together, the writers, everyone – it really is a family.”
“Alan is at the very top of all of it, he’s the reason why it feels like a family, and it breeds a desire to make it the funniest, the weirdest, the sexiest show on television. There’s nothing that touches the scope of what we do. I love it.”
Alan Ball with the True Blood cast/Comic Con 2010
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