If you have been keeping up with Season 6 of HBO‘s True Blood you will know that Sheriff Bellefleur is having a rough time lately. After his one night stand showed up, popped out faerie quintuplets and promptly walked away, poor Andy was a little overwhelmed. All this while he’s trying to keep the peace with the war on vampires raging. With his girls growing at an unbelievable rate Andy has been scrambling to keep up, only giving them numbers instead of names and before he even had a chance to figure out which one was which Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) went on a rampage and drained three of the four girls. Chris Bauer, who plays Andy Bellefleur, spoke to Vulture recently about how Andy’s sympathy towards vampires is affected by Jessica’s actions, the incestuous relations going on all over Bon Temps, and which cast member does a spot on impression of Alexander Skarsgard (hint – its not Chris).
Even though vampires and all the other supernatural creatures in town drive Andy a little batty, he has always been sympathetic towards their cause but now a vampire has drained three of his little girls. When asked if this latest development will cause Andy to change his views, Bauer replies:
Andy really has to draw a line for himself between power and powerless. And I personally find that line to be one of the most deep and rich veins of humanity. There’s a lot of hubris that goes into thinking you can avenge anything, that you can affect the world in such a way that creates justice. On the other hand, there’s a lot of shame and impotence if you can’t affect your world at all. I think it’s extremely human. So there’s a real energetic chess game of how the humans are navigating this world right now. It’s psycho-emotional, and it’s a power struggle. When Andy confronts Bill, or even vice versa, because Andy is involved in some things that Bill needs also, it will be purely dramatic, bottom line.
After last night’s episode Bon Temps got even more incestuous than when Portia hooked up with her great great great great grandfather Bill, when we found out that Warlow is Niall‘s father – which means he’s Sookie‘s great grandfather. Bauer jokes that he’s going to start calling Bill grandpa Bill and says the genealogy of the town overlaps a lot, especially when you take into account the people who have died and come back to life.
Andy has referred to his girls by numbers because they were growing so fast he couldn’t keep track of them. Now that there is only one left, Chris reveals that she will get a name and that we will get to hear it in Episode 6. When talking about how Andy should react to the death of his girls when he has only known them for 3 days, Bauer says the discussion was around how invested you can get with someone in 3 days vs. if they had lived for the 18 years. He says he decided to go with the real life bond that parents develop with their kids immediately and focused on that. During the 3 days he had with them Andy’s girls were infants, toddlers, pre-teens and then teens. When asked if he spent much time with any of the actresses that portrayed the girls he replied:
You know, I’m immature and underdeveloped, and consequently kind of antisocial. [Laughs.] So it takes a while before I have a conversation with anybody at work. Although I have to say the little teeny girls were so sweet and so adorable and reminded me of my own daughter when she was at that age, that it barely felt like a day at work. They didn’t understand things like camera direction or how to find the lens, so when you do those scenes with the little teeny girls early on in the season, I would say my line and remind them where to look, remind them what to say, they would have their reaction, and I would say my line, and they would just cut out all my on-camera direction. It was very cute.
Most times table reads are the only time the cast actually gets to come together and see what is going on with the other characters. But when the actors are unable to make the read other people will do it for them. Bauer reveals that Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte) does an incredible impression of Alexander Skarsgard. When he tries to do one the reporter says it sounds like Edward James Olmos!
To read the entire interview with Chris Bauer, including his thoughts on pitching ideas to the writers, click here.
Source: Vulture.com – True Blood’s Chris Bauer on Faery Fatherhood
Image Credit: HBO
