Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Bon Temps Beauties! 'True Blood' Stars Get Naked For Rolling Stone


Story photo: Bon Temps Beauties! 'True Blood' Stars Get Naked For Rolling Stone"True Blood's" Alexander Skarsgard, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer on the cover of Rolling Stone, August 2010Rolling StoneAccess Hollywood
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- HBO's "True Blood" might just be the hottest show on television and now Rolling Stone is getting its own bite of the action -- a naked bite, at that.
Series stars Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer and Alexander Skarsgard stripped down to nothing and were drenched in fake blood for the titillating shot featured underneath the cover headline, "True Blood: They're Hot; They're Sexy; They're Undead."
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Nudity isn't a big deal for most of the stars of the series, including Alexander, who plays Eric Northman, a handsome vampire sheriff and former Viking, who carries an unrequited passion for Anna's character, telepath and waitress Sookie Stackhouse.
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"I don't really care about that stuff," Alexander told Access Hollywood earlier this summer at the Los Angeles premiere of "True Blood's" third season. "It's like, if I like the scene... that doesn't really bother me. If it makes sense when I read it... I'm happy to throw my clothes off."
Series creator Alan Ball also told Access that nudity is something that works on the "True Blood" set, in part because he brings in actors who have no problem shedding their clothes.
"I tend to cast actors who don't really have issues with that," he told Access (Stephen is British, Alexander is Swedish and Anna was born in Canada, but grew up in New Zealand). "I don't think it's any accident that a lot of the actors are not American. I think European and Australian actors tend to be less uptight about those things."
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He added that the bare skin isn't a headline-raising tactic.
"I don't ask them [to get naked] just for [gratuity's] sake. It's always about the characters, about the relationships and they're all really good actors and they know they're just playing a role," he said. "I treat it like it's no big deal because I don't think it is. They follow suit."
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With "True Blood" drawing an audience of over 5 million viewers a week, and a gross audience of 12.6 million viewers, the show has gone from strong to stronger. Stephen told Rolling Stone one of the reasons he thinks the show - and the vampire genre in general -- is sinking into the consciousness of the public, is because they are just plain sexy.
"If we go from a base level, vampires create a hole in the neck where there wasn't one before. It's a de-virginization -- breaking the hymen, creating blood and then drinking the virginal blood," he told the mag. "And there's something sharp, the fang, which is probing and penetrating and moving into it. So that's pretty sexy. I think that makes vampires attractive.
"Plus, Robert Pattinson is just hot, right?" he added.
Alan suggested that his show wouldn't ever be holding back, hinting at the big distinction between "True Blood" and "The Twilight Saga."
"To me, vampires are sex," he said. "I don't get a vampire story about abstinence. I'm 53. I don't care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed."