It was love at first bite

From the Sydney Morning Herald

An Aussie actor gets his big break in the vampire drama True Blood, writes Gabriel Wilder.

Vampires may not like the sun but they certainly have no aversion to the limelight. The cultural phenomenon that stretches back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, has resurfaced in umpteen guises since. Lately, teens who like their vamps glitter-skinned and their heroines breathless have turned to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels and film. Those looking for something meatier, however, can sink their teeth into Alan Ball's new series True Blood.

Yes, it has a vampire romance but this is no Mills & Boon with fangs: the violence is brutal, the sex sweaty, the dialogue salty and the humour dry. As with Twilight, it has its origins in a series of novels. Ball (Six Feet Under) stumbled across one of Charlaine Harris's novels and became hooked on the sultry, supernatural world set in the Louisiana bayous.

The first book focuses on telepath Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin, who won a Golden Globe for her performance), her romance with a vampire, Bill Compton, and a serial-killer mystery. But after the first two episodes, Ball began developing new storylines for other members of the ensemble.

"I think Alan's very clever like that," says Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill. "He knows that it can't just be [a romance]. I think that it ultimately is a love story [but] it doesn't mean it can't be 20 other things as well. When I read the script, I couldn't believe how much he'd packed into it."

One beneficiary of Ball's approach is Australian actor Ryan Kwanten, who plays Sookie's brother, Jason. Once a Home And Away regular, Kwanten now lives in LA and was sought out by Ball.

"He'd seen a film of mine and saw characteristics of Jason Stackhouse in the character that I was playing," Kwanten says. "Next thing you know, I was hired."

Ball expanded the character of Jason, giving him his own storyline and one hilarious episode involving a severe case of priapism. Kwanten, 32, has the task of making the self-centred, womanising Jason not seem like a lost cause.

"I threw away the textbook on everything I thought I knew about acting and just flew by the seat of my pants because that's exactly how this guy operates," he says. "It's really liberating to play a character like that because a lot of characters tend to be very brooding."

The brooding territory in True Blood is pretty much covered by Civil War vampire Bill, whom Moyer describes as "completely angst-ridden … your classic tortured hero".

Unlike Kwanten, who was one of the first to be cast, Moyer was one of the last. Ball searched for months for the right "Bill" before Moyer, who had just finished shooting The Starter Wife with Debra Messing in Queensland, emailed an audition. "Alan saw it in the afternoon and I flew [to LA] that night," he says.

True Blood poses particular challenges for its cast. As well as having to guzzle copious amounts of fake blood (apparently some kind of glucose concoction), both Kwanten and Moyer have frequent nude scenes. The first time we meet Kwanten's character, he is butt-naked and engaged in a sex act. In fact, clothes seem to be something of an afterthought for Jason.

"This is by far the most full-on sex and nudity I've ever done," says Kwanten, who has been acting since he was 16. "I was warned but one can never quite be prepared. You sort of sign your life away and go, 'Oh, nudity', then you walk into your trailer and you see a modesty patch and that's what you're wearing for the day."

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen any of Ball's previous work that there is a subtext beneath the sex and humour. In True Blood the vamps have come "out of the coffin" and are campaigning for equal rights. Ball is an openly gay man but has stated the vampires can stand for a number of things.

"It can be any group that has been persecuted or felt like an outcast in society," Kwanten explains.

This ambiguity bothers many of the people posting comments on web forums about the show, people who would rather see their entertainment delivered in a tidier package - ethical dilemmas sorted, no shades of grey. "I think they're the people that need to see it more than anyone," Kwanten says. "But we'll get those people one person at a time."

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/08/1234027854744.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1