Valerie Cruz on Her "True Blood" Character: "I Modeled Her Accent After Penelope Cruz."

From Latina.com

I promised myself I wouldn't watch Alan Ball's acclaimed HBO drama True Blood until they came to their senses and hired a Latina to appear on the show. The show (finally) came through for me on Sunday night, and I happily tuned into True Blood as it welcomed its first Latina (and first Latin vampire), Cuban beauty Valerie Cruz (Nip Tuck, Dexter) to the show in the recurring role of Isabella Beaumont, an elegant, 600-year-old Spanish vampire-with-a-soul (think Rob Pattinson in Twilight) who rolls with the super-scary Dallas coven of vamps! I called Ms. Cruz to get all the deets on her biting new role, and the gracious (and super-intelligent) actress (who is perhaps best known for her role as Silvia Prado (Jimmy Smits's wife on Dexter), gave me the 411 on all things True Blood, including why the evil Dallas vamps are NOT to be messed with; why her character may be on Bill and Sookie's side after all, and why a certain Oscar-winning Spanish actress may have served as the inspiration for her character's Spanish accent.

Your character Isabel isn't your typical vamp, is she?
As far as vampires go, no. She has a penchant for humans and a vulnerability. She wants to try to find a way to co-exist with them.

So in a crowd of evil vamps, Isabel is like the Edward Cullen of True Blood—a vampire with a soul?
Yes, definitely! That is actually a very accurate description.

Except that she lived during the Spanish Inquisition and she's 600 years old! Does she feel old?
I think she does in the sense that she's become a little world-weary.

How did you come up with Isabel's Spanish accent?
I've been doing accents for a long time. The people I modeled it after would have to be Penelope Cruz or Antonio Banderas, or somebody from Spain. That was very important for me {to get the accent just right}, because when you have a character on a show that has a big cast, every bit of that character matters--from her hairstyle and accent to the way she dresses.

Speaking of Isabel's wardrobe, that white dress she had on Sunday night was really elegant! Would you ever wear something like that in real-life?
No! Probably not. It takes a lot of confidence to wear that thing. I'd be too self-conscious. Unless I'm feeling especially saucy that day. And that outfit is pretty tight! But the wardrobe designers and the hair and makeup people on the show are amazing. I told them my ideas and they ran with all of them. I wanted to really define where she came from—what region. I had read stuff on the Spanish Inquisition, and jotted stuff down. There's a sophistication in Old Spain and that was an element we brought in--that Isabel never lost that sort of, that heritage. You will see a Spanish element (to Isabel) throughout.
read on