We've already given you twelve good reasons why you should be watching True Blood, which begins its sixth season on Sunday night. The most important of which was Deborah Ann Woll. The perpetual seventeen-year-old (on the show, not in real life) was kind enough to bring the skeptics among us up to speed on the new season and all the nudity and violence we can look forward to.
ESQUIRE.COM: I have a confession: Before I knew we were going to talk, I didn't know anything about True Blood but the premise. But I've done my homework, and I think my takeaway is that most guys might not be initially interested but could get sucked in if their girlfriend watched it.
DEBORAH ANN WOLL: How do I get men to watch the show? I feel like this is a grand mission here.
ESQ: It will be fun. You've got vampires, witches, werewolves, and fairies, and it seems that the whole world is kind of collapsing here as we come into season six.
DAW: All of the secrets the vampires held dear have been exposed, and the humans can now fight back as equals in a way, which is scary.
ESQ: Your character is very sweet for a sex-crazed vampire, right?
DAW: She's a lot of things. Like she's really wise about some things and completely naïve about others. She's sexy, but she's also kind of a dork, which is great. And even though she's a teenager physically, she is maturing inside and growing up. She's been through certain traumas that we all go through, like losing your first love or the loss of your family, but then there are also things that are very specific to the kind of violent world she lives in. When a vampire makes a mistake, the consequences can be things you have to live with for the rest of eternity, and I think that's a lot to deal with when you're seventeen.
ESQ: If you become a vampire when you're seventeen, do you retain the mentality and emotional life of a teenager?
DAW: I think what matures us is time, not necessarily our physical bodies. So I think she can probably change as much as human would in the timespan of the show. However, I do think as a human you reach a point where there's a certain amount of humility and acceptance of life and its consequences when you see your own body change and age, and the pounds come or the wrinkles come. I think we need that to ground us as human beings. I would imagine after an extended amount of time, a vampire might stall a little bit. But I think right now, Jessica is pretty much maturing as a human would.
ESQ: I can see that you might become a little emotionally stunted after a while, but it must be reassuring for your character to know she's going to be good-looking for the rest of her life.
DAW: She's got some reserves.
ESQ: It would be tough to be 59 and become a vampire.
DAW: We always have the joke of like, "Let me lose fifty pounds and then you can turn me into a vampire."
ESQ: Going into the new season, where did we leave off with your character, Jessica, in particular?
DAW: Let's see. Last season we were all trapped at this underground Authority where this half-political, half-religious group believed that vampires were superior to all beings and wanted to take over the world from the humans and have it be just a vampire race. They believed that vampires were created in God's image. And my maker, Bill, who's essentially my father figure, got corrupted by this idea and drank a whole bunch of ancient vampire blood and turned into something. We're not quite sure what yet, but he's really scary and we've got to find out how much of Bill is actually left in there. But that's a big deal for me because I lost my boyfriend and my friend who I was sort of fooling around with. I don't really have anybody else to go to, so hopefully he'll still be there for me.
ESQ: Do you see how it can be kind of hard for a more typical, not so fantasy-oriented guy to hear that and be like, "What the hell?"
DAW: It is definitely a hard show to jump into the middle of, but luckily we have things like HBO Go now. It's not like you've missed it and now you're stuck. And I think once guys give it a shot — and you'll be able to speak to this better than I will — there's a lot of stuff that can be interesting to guys. There's a lot of action. Plenty of people are getting their heads chopped off.
ESQ: And there's the gratuitous nudity from both genders.
DAW: There's definitely something for everyone.
ESQ: Is there an initiation process for people's first nude scenes?
DAW: When someone new comes on and has their first nude scene — and even if it's not full nudity — it's always a weird, awkward setup. We have these famous merkins which are sort of toupees for your delicate areas to make it look like you're naked but cover you up a little bit. But we joke around a little bit with the newbies who are trying that stuff on for the first time.
ESQ: What's the gore-to-nudity ratio?
DAW: It's fairly equal parts, I'd have to say. The lucky thing is that every time a werewolf or shifter shifts, they have to take their clothes off. I feel like Sam Trammell will get an award for being naked the most just because he's a shifter. Ryan Kwanten might be having way more sex, but Sam is naked like every other episode.
ESQ: I read you got in a little trouble for accidentally giving away a murder before an episode aired. Are you extra-protective of spoilers now?
DAW: No, I think I've been pretty good.
ESQ: The "Red Wedding" episode of Game of Thrones was interesting, because the spoiler was out in the world for everyone to know but it still created this massive wave for people who didn't know.
DAW: I feel like you have to go looking for spoilers. I'm not on social media, so I will watch a show that was on ten years ago, and clearly I could find out every single piece of information about that show, but I'm not trying to spoil myself. You definitely participate in your own spoiling.
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