All Hell is Breaking Loose as True Blood Starts Its 6th Season
Rutina Wesley plays baby vampire, Tara Thornton on the HBO series, True Blood. At the end of Season 4, viewers were left wondering if Tara would be around at the start of Season 5. To Ms. Wesley’s surprise, and excitement, she was told she’d be made into vampire.
As Season 5 ended, Tara found herself at the center of the stunning events that took place at the New Orleans headquarters of the Vampire Authority. With the start of Season 6, all hell is breaking loose and Tara, Sookie (Anna Paquin), Eric (Alex Skarsgard), Jason (Ryan Kwanten) and others have to flee the scene and regroup.
“We all meet up and just get the hell out of Dodge, because ‘Billith’ is no joke this season. Seriously. We don’t know what to do, because before we can figure out what the next step is, we have to really understand what Bill is — in fact, whether Bill Compton still is even in this thing anymore. You’ll find that out eventually, whether Bill is just completely lost inside.”
Tara finding herself in peril is nothing new. Taking a shotgun blast to the face at the end of Season 4, Tara’s fate hung in the balance. Even when told her character would be ‘turned’, Ms. Wesley wasn’t sure that meant she still had a job for any length of time.
“What? That doesn’t mean that I’m dying, does it?’ Because normally when a character gets turned, they’ve got one more death and then that’s it; they’re gone.”
Playing a Vampire is Exciting, Especially Having Pam as a Maker
When Ms. Wesley learned that her tenure on True Blood would not be short lived, she grew excited about the possibilities for playing Tara as a newly-turned vampire. Even more exciting was having fan favorite Pam (Kristin Bauer-Van Straten) as Tara’s maker. Pam is notoriously over the top and possesses a sexy wardrobe.
“I asked, ‘Ooh, do I get to dress like her? Do I get to be sexy?’ Kristin is just awesome, and as long as I got to dress like Pam, I was OK with it,” Wesley says, “As an actor, something like this is the meat, the thing that keeps you inspired and challenged to do something new. I decided that, as a vampire, Tara would walk in a slightly different way, kind of like a panther, and her voice was going to be lower. There was a whole physical transformation that I tried to work in, but it’s still Tara.”
Not surprisingly, any downside to playing a vampire, according to Ms. Wesley, would be the night shoots. Vampires, being creatures of the night, shoot the majority of their scenes, at night.
Day or night, we’re all excited to still have Tara (and Rutina) right in the thick of things for Season 6!
Source and Photo Credit: Zap2It
