Pages tagged “Anna Paquin”

Release Date: May 19

Creator: Alan Ball
Writers: Ball, Brian Buckner, Charlaine Harris, Chris Offutt, Raelle Tucker, Alexander Woo
Cinematographers: John B. Aronson, Matthew Jensen, Checco Varese  
Starring: Anna Paquin, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Trammell, Stephen Moyer, Rutina Wesley 
Network: HBO

In the second episode of True Blood, our hero Sookie (Anna Paquin) was visiting her friend Bill the Vampire’s house at night. The show ended with a trio of vampires greeting her at the door, baring their fangs and looking ready to bite. I was all prepared for Episode Three to open with Sookie holding her ground and the vampires having a good laugh and backing off. In other words, I expected them to be wicked, but much more complicated than just pure evil. I was hoping the story would once again mess with stereotypes and reveal nuance and complexity. No such luck.

The second episode of True Blood is better than the first. As stilted as Stephen Moyer was as Bill Compton in the pilot, he and Sookie’s budding romance seems more grounded this time. Bill is confounded both by Sookie’s innocence and her absence of fear. He lost his wife and children in the 1800s and has returned to Bon Temps to try to build an inconspicuous life, reclaiming the old Compton manor. Sookie has spent her life trying to quiet the voices in her head, but always feeling different. A moral compass and the gutter minds of her horny customers keep her at arm’s length from normal human relationships, but Bill brings Old World manners to a self-respecting girl, asking her when he might “call on her.” She can’t hear Bill’s thoughts, and Bill has no power over her mind. If only the vampire haters don’t come between them. Hey, wait—I signed up for a vampire show. How'd I get inside a romance novel.

Anytime I come across a TV show based in the South, I do so with a little fear and trepidation, always half-expecting the locals to be made into yokels. But what better place to set a vampire series than rural Louisiana? Alan Ball's new HBO series True Blood has an interesting concept—after a Japanese company manufactures a synthetic blood, vampires are finally able to “come out of the coffin” and into public view. Ball introduces this concept right off the bat with a vampire lobbyist on Real Time with Bill Maher.

How the existence of vampires will mesh with Southern religion and a history of racial tension is a theme that Ball also teases immediately with talk about "vampire rights" and telepathic lead Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) reading the thoughts of the locals in the dive bar where she works—“Dear Jesus, help me just enjoy one beer and not desire a second.” But whether Ball is going to explore the mix of mythology and religious belief with a deft touch or a clunky fist hopefully wasn’t answered by the church billboard proclaiming “God hates fangs.” I also hope HBO will one day grow out of interpreting their freedom to be grittier than network TV into a directive that every new show must include a gratuitous sex scene—in this case, once with a sadistic vampire and once with a human trying to emulate one.

Best known for her Academy Award winning performance in The Piano at the ripe old age of 11, Anna Paquin has gone on to act in myriad projects, including Finding Forrester, all three X-men movies, Almost Famous, HBO originals and on-stage work under the direction of Philip Seymour Hoffman. She and her brother, Andrew Paquin, have their own production company (Paquin Films), which released Blue State last year. At the age of 25, she has already been in the industry for 14 years, so it should come as no surprise that she takes her work so seriously.