Stephen Moyer 'True Blood' in Variety

When Stephen Moyer auditioned in London for the HBO drama "True Blood," the Englishman didn't know whether he could pull off the accent needed to play Bill Compton, a 170-year-old Louisiana vampire.

"I hadn't done a Southern accent since I pretended to be a cowboy when I was 7," Moyer recalls. "I hadn't practiced at home, because I'd literally gotten the script the night before, but when I opened my mouth when we were doing the take, it was just kind of there."

After reading Alan Ball's pilot script, about Louisiana bayou dwellers co-existing uneasily with the undead, Moyer believed that the show -- an adaptation of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels -- was "landmark television."

"Honestly, I wasn't really surprised by the show's success, because I knew Alan was creating the kind of stuff I'd personally be interested in watching," he says.

Many fans seem most interested in Moyer's feverish chemistry with co-star Anna Paquin, who plays ingenue protagonist Sookie, a human who can read everyone's mind except his.

"I honestly think whether the attraction is there or not, you have to create it," he says. "I'm lucky because with Anna it's there."

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