True Blood's Anna Paquin : Emmy Roundtable: Drama actresses

Broadcast or cable, primetime or anytime (thanks to DVRs), television is now the best place for actresses. The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond and Matthew Belloni invited a diverse panel -- Rose Byrne (FX's "Damages"), January Jones (AMC's "Mad Men"), Regina King (NBC's "Southland"), Mary McDonnell (Sci Fi Channel's "Battlestar Gallactica"), Anna Paquin (HBO's "True Blood") and Sigourney Weaver (Lifetime's "Prayers for Bobby") -- to discuss the challenge of shooting a scene in three takes and the strangest things they've read about themselves in tabloids.

The Hollywood Reporter: You've all worked in both film and television. What's the biggest difference?

Anna Paquin: For HBO, we shoot single camera, so it doesn't feel any different to shooting a (movie). The place that I have experienced the difference is you're always with new material that you haven't had for more than a few days, and you're right at the edge of creating the character. In that sense, it's a different entry into the creative moment. There's not as much prep.

January Jones: We get the material literally a day or two before we shoot it. So, it's very spontaneous. It works, but -- unlike a film, where you have the script and you have the beginning and end and hopefully an arc -- you don't know where the character is going.

Rose Byrne: Sometimes we get (the script) on the day (of shooting). I go a bit mental, but you have to let it go.

Sigourney Weaver: (With) "Prayers for Bobby," I did have the script for a month. One thing I said was, "You know, I'd love to work chronologically," and they said "Absolutely." That was the first thing to go! By the last week, the schedule was like, my son was dead, my son was alive, my son was dead, my son was alive. (Thanks to reading it well in advance), I kind of knew where I was.

Byrne: I had to do a whole scene opposite someone in a chair, and I had a gun and I was taunting them -- and I didn't know who was in the chair when we filmed it! But actually it was quite fun because it ended up being like an acting exercise.

THR: Do you have a lot of input into your characters' dialogue?

Mary McDonnell: I had as much as they would allow me before they quieted me down!

Regina King: I started out on TV when I was a kid. So I never would have even dreamed that I could have spoken up. "I'm going to do my homework," and that was pretty much it. So this is a new experience for me. I still feel kind of like that kid: I don't want to get in trouble.

THR: Anna and Regina, you both started as child actors. What has been the key to transitioning?

Paquin: Um, luck? There really isn't some sort of grand plan. It's not like I had any idea what I was doing. Not getting really weird-looking helps.

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