True Blood creator Alan Ball spoke just the other day in more detail about what to expect in Season 2 of the hit HBO show, and offers various nuggets on the characters and the overall direction of the series. Check it out after the break…
SciFiWire has published a brand new and exclusive interview with Alan Ball in the lead up to the season two premiere of “True Blood” on June 14th at 9 pm on HBO.
The article contains quite a few spoilers, but we’ll just provide you with tidbits. If you want a run down of various spoilers for the premiere, head on over to the full interview at the link above. The second series will be based in part (but loosely) on the second book in the Sookie Stackhouse Series, Living Dead in Dallas.
Ball said that he feels this season will be more “intense” in almost every aspect, but will also continue to find that addictive mixture of adult drama and fantasy: “Everything gets deeper. Everything gets more intense. It’s a lot scarier. It’s sexier. It’s just really, really fun. I feel like each season is a novel, and the episodes are just chapters. Especially the way our show is. The episodes are not self-contained. You know, you gotta be involved in the story, and you gotta know what’s going on.“
The mysterious Maryann Forrester, a character who was introduced at the end of the first season when she extended a hand to help Tara find a place to stay and get herself together, will also feature strongly in season two, but her intentions are exactly what we thought they were: Bad.
The series will also continue to “explore the terrors of intimacy, in that when you really, really open up and let another person into your life and your psyche, it can be terrifying—especially when that person is a vampire. … And then there’s just the whole exploration of the dark side of human nature,” Ball said.
Another interesting point Alan touched on in the interview was about the fine line of balance he walks in trying to stay in tune with the original novels to some extent, but how he obviously needs to take certain liberties with some character aspects and storylines that just won’t work on TV, particularly mentioning a subplot in the books that features the real life Elvis Presley being turned into a Vampire, which changes his personality to a vap named Bubba, who ends up helping Sookie in her adventures - about this Ball said: “We are not going to meet him, I just couldn’t figure out a way to do it that would not be cheesy. I mean, not that it is in the books. It’s great, because you can imagine that it’s him. … But the only way to do it [on screen] is to have some Elvis impersonator, and it just wouldn’t [be] the same.”
He also mentions Six Feet Under, and how he treats the characters of True Blood with the same respect and care that he did for his legendary series that also aired on HBO: “The challenges for me are to remain very true to the spirit of Charlaine’s books and the world and the characters. To not just go, like, ‘Oh, it’s supernatural, so we can do this. Wouldn’t it be fun?’ without keeping it rooted in the characters’ emotional lives. You know, I’m a big fan. I’ve read a lot of speculative fiction, and the ones that really work for me are the ones in which, no matter how outlandish or otherworldly the story is, that the characters, I really care about them. I’m really invested, and I understand why they behave the way they do. I’m rooting for them, and so that’s the challenge for this show as well. And in that sense it’s not that different from Six Feet Under. People did a lot of outlandish things on that show, but you had to remain invested in them. And this is pretty much the same thing. I do have to say that I’ve never worked in any genre-type format where you can really just open so many doors. There’s a lot of ways to tell stories that are really fresh and exciting for me as a storyteller.“
I was hoping for a little bit of information on Evan Rachel Wood’s scheduled appearance at the end of the season, which we reported on HERE, but we figure that he won’t speculate on a potential storyline for the finale this early. We’ll keep you updated with all the newest stories as they break.
Don’t forget to check out our articles featuring the S2 posters, promo clip, S1 Blu-ray release and viral campaigns.
