Anna Paquin: Phones were ‘blowing up’ over True Blood reboot news
Anna Paquin responds to news that HBO Max is rebooting True Blood for a new audience
True Blood is being resurrected at HBO Max, and Anna Paquin says that she and her former cast members were as surprised by the news as everyone else. In an interview with Collider, she says that when the reboot news came out their phones started “blowing up.”
No one gave the cast and crew a head’s up about the news, so when it broke they were caught off guard as people started asking if Paquin knew about it. She didn’t. “[Author] Charlaine Harris didn’t even know it was happening. Everybody’s phones were blowing up. Cast and crew, by the way, were like, ‘Oh my God, your show is getting picked back up!’ and we were all like, ‘Huh? What?'”
Though it’s easy to dismiss the idea of yet another reboot, a True Blood reboot actually makes a lot of sense. The show used vampires and other supernatural creatures, including shapeshifters and faeries, as metaphors to explore issues of identity, sexuality, politics, religion and racism. Set in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, True Blood explored many of the complex problems in society head-on by incorporating the supernatural elements with everyday issues.
Showrunner Alan Ball’s show varied in many key ways from Harris’ books, and that’s where new showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Riverdale) could find his inspiration. It’s unlikely that Paquin and company will return to their original roles, and it’s not known at this point whether the new series will incorporate any aspects of its predecessor.
Paquin was with the show for the entirety of its run from 2008 to 2014. She and her husband Stephen Moyer met on set and married in 2010. Paquin notes that the cast and crew are still very close all these years later; they shared a Cinco de Mayo Zoom call together that had over 75 people in it.
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Whether she’s part of the reboot or not, Paquin was very diplomatic about the idea. “I wish them well,” she said, noting that there is a “supernatural world with endless possibilities” to explore in a reboot.