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Bon Temps is going to be very crowded for True Blood's third season, what with all the new vampires walking around. Executive producer Alan Ball, and several of True Blood's writers and producers, sat down with fans of the show Wednesday at the Paley Center for Media to discuss the new residents of Bon Temps, Bill and Sookie's future and a naked Alexander Skårsgard.

So where does the action pick up at the beginning of Season 3? "I believe [Eric] appears without most of his clothes in the very first episode," jokes Ball. (But seriously, he says, fans of Eric's amnesia story line from the books will have to wait until Season 4.)

"Sookie [Anna Paquin] is going to go off in search of Bill [Stephen Moyer], and she will find him," Ball tells TVGuide.com. But Sookie is in search of much more than just Bill. "There will be more conjecture about what she is and she will be more driven to discover what she is," said Ball. "She will get closer to the answer."

Will her brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) help her? Not likely, as Ball explains that he doesn't share his sister's magical gifts. "It's a DNA thing, it's a genetic thing and skips some people and gets in some others," he says. "Jason has vestiges of it, in that he's such a fantastic athlete and he's a perfect shot, but he's still human, whereas Sookie is definitely a half-human, half-something else that we're waiting to reveal."

Good news for Bill fans: He won't be going away for an extended period of time, as he does in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels. Ball reports that the TV series won't be telling the same story. "Stephen Moyer will not be marginalized. Bill and Sookie may go through some rough patches that last maybe a little longer than Team Bill fans might like, but Bill and Sookie have a connection that will never die."

So what about Bill's big secret, that he only went to Bon Temps and became close to Sookie on the orders of Queen Sophie-Anne? Will that ever be revealed? Ball says yes. "I can't say when it will be discovered, but it definitely will be," he says. "We are definitely aware of that as we're breaking the stories, and have been from the beginning of the show."

Ball says that marital bliss is not in the cards for Sookie and Bill. "There is somebody who wants a wedding, but it's not who you think it is," teases Ball. "I don't think you'll see that wedding actually happen."

What you will see is another human-vampire romance, when Tara meets the still-to-be-cast Franklin Mott. Their relationship will be unlike any other on the show. "I don't even think they're in the same ballpark," producer Raelle Tucker tells us. "He's more dangerous than any of those other [vampires]. She's definitely playing with something that's a lot more deadly."

And Mott won't be alone. "You'll find a range of vampires," supervising producer Alexander Woo says. "The vampire world really opens up. You'll see that there's as much of a variety and diversity among vampires as there is among human beings. There's going to be extremely cruel and extremely kind. I think you'll see there isn't one archetype; there is a panorama."

Question: Thanks for all the True Blood casting news! Do you have any other scoop on season 3? –JKH
Ausiello: It’s happening: Lafayette is getting a boyfriend! A True insider tells me that Alan Ball is quietly searching for a sexy Latino actor in his 30s to play a lust interest for everyone’s favorite same-gender-lovin’ blood dealer. (Over the summer, Ball confirmed that viewers would see a more “vulnerable” Lafayette in season 3.) Got casting tips? Head to the comments! Here’s one to get you started: Um, Adam Rodriguez, hello.

Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire” books concern the goings-on in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, resident telepath waitress Sookie Stackhouse and a whole lot of supernatural beings. These creatures include vampires, who have recently revealed themselves to humans worldwide after the development of the synthetic blood substance Tru Blood. Harris’ books appeal to a wide range of readers. One of these was Alan Ball, an Oscar winner for his original screenplay for American Beauty and creator of HBO’s highly-acclaimed series Six Feet Under, which ran for five seasons.
Ball hadn’t been known previously for fantasy / horror, but after he picked up the first book in Harris’ series, Dead Until Dark, he says he became enthralled. “I got into Sookie and the world and the characters, and I looked forward to going to bed every night, because I knew I was going to read the book before I went to sleep, and I would tell myself, ‘Okay, I’m just going to read two chapters,’ and I would read seven. I just felt, ‘This is kind of a phenomenon.’ I read first four books, [which] at that time [was what] had been published, and I wanted more. So I called [Harris]. At that time, she had given the rights to a film producer, but those rights were set to run out in a couple of months. They ran out and I convinced her to let me take a stab at it.”
The series Ball created based on the books, True Blood, has successfully been set up at HBO and it would be fair to call the results a phenomenon. The cable network is so pleased with Ball and company that, Ball relates, “I just closed a deal to show-run [True Blood] for two more seasons, so I would assume that [the series is at minimum] going through Season Four.”
What does Ball feel is important to preserve from Harris’ books? “The main story is the same. We diverge mostly in the secondary characters. The books are sort of Sookie’s story, what happens to her. The other characters disappear if they’re not in a scene with her. And so we have diverged, certainly in the storylines for Tara [played by Rutina Wesley] and Lafayette [played by Nelsan Ellis], but we’ve tried to remain very true to the spirit of the world.”
The treatment of the supernatural elements in True Blood is fairly naturalistic. Ball explains his thinking on this subject. “Certainly the supernatural element of the show is a character in the show. We didn’t want to make it seem like something that is outside of nature, we wanted to make it seem like it was something that was a more primal aspect of nature. Maybe we’ve just lost a little bit of our perception to see it. It’s right under our noses, but we just don’t know it. [In] the books, but vampires are just the tip of the iceberg. I also like the fact that as writers on the show, it really opens the door for a lot of that in the way that we can create situations that the characters really have to [deal with] who they are and their emotional strength. So I really enjoy that aspect of it and it is something that I’ve never done before.”
The character Lafayette is killed off in Harris’ second book, but as of the end of True Blood’s Season Two, he’s alive and kicking onscreen. “Lafayette is very small in the book,” Ball relates. “Nelsan Ellis, the actor we cast, channeled something from somewhere that is kind of amazing. I definitely knew Jason had to be a great character actor [Ryan Kwanten plays the role]. I think all the major characters I knew were going to be really, really strong and really, really compelling, but I think Nelsan is the one [who was most surprising] – I had no idea that that would happen.”
Have any other characters surprised Ball? “I think the Newlins [the couple who run the anti-vampire Fellowship of the Sun, played by Michael McMillian and Anna Camp] are fantastic. I love Eggs [Tara's Season Two love interest, played by Mehcad Brooks]. I love Lorena [played by Mariana Klaveno], I think she’s pretty wild, too. For me, they all pop. I love them all.”
Anna Paquin, who won a Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Sookie, wasn’t on Ball’s radar for the role at first. “I actually didn’t have anybody in mind,” he explains. “And then when the casting director said, ‘Anna Paquin is interested in coming in,’ I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a surprise – I wouldn’t think she would want to do television.’ But she did and she came in and we talked with her, and I’m very glad that she did. Bill was hard to cast. I sent some actors to HBO and they weren’t really on board – as happens sometimes,” he notes with a laugh. “They’re paying for it, so I have to respect [their wishes]. But then – we had a casting director in London [who suggested] Stephen Moyer, and he’s really, really right.”
Sookie’s grandmother Adele is in the series for only the first seven episodes, but her influence on Sookie is felt throughout the series. “I love Lois Smith,” Ball says of the actress who played Adele. “That’s one of those things where when I’m talking to the casting director, I say, ‘I’d like someone like Lois Smith.’ ‘Let’s get Lois Smith!’ ‘You think she’d do this, she’d be willing?’ ‘Yes.’ I was so happy to have her. Anna was, too – Anna was like,” Ball does an impression of Paquin bursting into song, “‘Lois Smith!’”
True Blood the series has startled some of Harris’ fans by being more overtly sexual and violent than the books are. Even in the relatively tender romance between Paquin’s Sookie and Moyer’s vampire Bill Compton, Ball says, “Certainly, the first time that they get together, we made it pretty bloody.” The episodes are indeed harder-edged than Harris’ prose, Ball adds. “It’s a little more violent. The books are violent, but I think it’s one thing to hear about it and another to see it.” So far, he adds, HBO has not objected to what has been depicted on the show. “I have never had a situation where they’ve said, ‘You can’t show that.’ Obviously, there’s a lot of sex in this show, but it’s never going to be pornographic. I’ve never had a situation where [the network has complained]. But I’m sure if I did something graphically pornographic, they would say, ‘Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?’”
Although his work as a director and producer has brought Ball in contact with special effects before, True Blood presented him with new experiences in that arena. He wants the effects to have impact, but not to steal the scenes. “I don’t want it ever to become a show about effects. We don’t have the time or the money to do a show about effects, and I’m getting tired of stuff where it’s all about the CGI and the characters are secondary. I always wanted the effects to be minimal, just enough to suggest. I think a lot of times it’s a little scarier to leave the effects to your imagination. But it is a little bit of a challenge. I just have to really depend on my visual effects people [the team at Todd Masters FX], asking them, ‘What can we do? How can we do it? Show me how it works on the storyboards.’ I said at the very beginning, ‘I don’t want any of that blue light from the Underworld movies, and I’m not going to give the vampires weird contact lenses or have the shape of their heads change when their fangs come out.’ In the future, when we get to other creatures that might appear, I don’t want to do that same old stuff. What’s important is the characters. The effects are just the shorthand to get us from one stage to another. But we will never be about the effects. I mean, it’s less interesting to me how [Bill's] face might change or what exactly are the mechanics of the fangs coming down – although we have really thought about that – than the fact that he’s been alive for a hundred and seventy years, most of them as a vampire, and his wife and children, who he loved deeply, he outlived them. He’s outlived everybody. He’s in a changing world and he’s given up on the idea of having any sort of love in his life until he meets this girl. That to me is way more interesting than what [growing fangs] looks like.”
Although Bon Temps is in Louisiana, most of True Blood is shot in and around Los Angeles, although there are occasional road trips, Ball relates. “We go to Louisiana maybe four times a year. Certainly, we can find places in L.A. that can pass for Louisiana, especially if it’s night, but you can’t have big palm trees and smog in the air. We have to [make it look hot], so we have makeup people who just have water bottles so they can spray the actors so they look sweaty, [although] not the vamps.”
As True Blood continues, Ball says, “I think we’re always going to use the books as sort of a foundation, but I just don’t see how, as time goes on, you can’t diverge from them a little bit more each season. I don’t know, though. We’re starting to work on Season Three and we actually are really, really sticking to the books, at the beginning at least.”
Anything Ball can tell us about where Season Three is going? “Season Three is a big Eric [the vampire played by Alexander Skarsgard] season and Season Four is really big for Eric’s character, according to the books.”
The fan response to True Blood, Ball says, is “Very enthusiastic, which is fantastic. It’s really good. I wasn’t really expecting it, but I’ve got to say, it feels fantastic. It feels great for people to respond to the show as much as they do. It’s really, really exciting.” At Comic-Con, he adds, “It was like we were rock stars. I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience like that, and I’ve got to say, it was very, very fun.”
Is there anything Ball would like to say in conclusion about True Blood? “That it’s really fun!”

Read more: http://www.spoilertv.com/2010/01/alan-b ... z0cVmZeyqL

According to True Blood creator Alan Ball, whether you’re a fan of Bill and Sookie or Sookie and Eric, season 3 of the HBO hit is sure to make you very unhappy. And, oddly, very happy, too. “Take a look at Joe [Manganiello],” he teases of the hunk he cast as the psychic’s new love interest, the werewolf Alcide. “Do you think [they] have reason to be worried?”

Rhetorical questions aside, the writer is confident that, just as his new hire won him over, he’ll win over viewers. “We were looking for a guy who was big, sexy, decent and heroic, with some darkness,” he says. “And [Manganiello] showed us all of that in the audition.”

In fact, the One Tree Hill alum so impressed the boss that he wasn’t asked to take a chemistry test with leading lady Anna Paquin. “We do that when we have four or five options,” Ball explains, “and in this instance, I felt like Joe was the only one who came close to what the character needed to be.”

Though Alcide isn’t introduced as a potential suitor for Sookie — “As in the book, he’s helping her find [her kidnapped boyfriend] Bill,” Ball notes, “and he has a business reason for owing Eric a favor” — one (bad) thing leads to an (incredibly sexy) other. “He’s there with her during a very painful time in her life — and his life, actually. And they’re thrown into some pretty intense situations together.

“And hello, he’s hot!” he adds with a laugh. “And hello, so is she. Two hot people in some intense situations and, for whatever reasons, their significant others are not there… they’re human.”

Well, that last part may be a stretch. But it’s clear what Ball is saying. The question now is, how do you feel about what he’s saying? Should the show have spent a season exploring the Bill/Sookie/Eric triangle before making it a square? Or, given that OK, yeah, Manganiello is pretty appealing, are you looking at this as a “the more, the merrier” scenario? Sound off below — and don’t be afraid to go for the jugular! (Additional reporting by Andy Patrick)