True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgård, who has spent the last two months shooting Tarzan in the UK, is interviewed below about True Blood. In this part of a larger interview, he discusses his racy scenes on True Blood, and what he’s going to do next.
For True Blood, did you not like to wear your equivalent of a loincloth? Your modesty pouch, your cock sock, your sack of destiny, or whatever you liked to call it.
Sack of destiny! [Chuckles]
Stephen Moyer was saying for that iconic full-frontal shot at the end of the last season, where Eric starts burning in the snow, you actually chose not to wear your sack of destiny. That it wasn’t scripted that way.
Ah … I wear it sometimes. Obviously, if it’s a love scene with an actress, I’ll wear it, absolutely. But that scene was just me on a rooftop in Hollywood — that’s where we shot it, with a green screen. And it was a very hot day, so I didn’t need the sock. It was supposed to be, when the scene was written, Bucky [Brian Buckner], the showrunner, and I talked about potentially trying to go back to Sweden, to shoot it there. We were very excited about it, and then we realized that it might, you know, be a little bit expensive [laughs] to fly the crew over to Sweden just for that one short scene. Then we were going to shoot it in the Rocky Mountains instead, and then that didn’t happen, for many different reasons, so then we ended up shooting it on the parking structure on the lot where we shoot the show in downtown Hollywood. And it was in June, so it was like 100 degrees. Yeah. Not quite like the mountains of northern Sweden!
I think people were rooting for one last Eric and Sookie love scene, but they got one with Eric and Jason instead.
[Laughs.] We just aim to please! We thought that’s what people wanted, so we gave it to them. That was incredibly difficult to shoot, because Ryan [Kwanten] is so funny. He’s hilarious. So trying to do that scene and trying to keep a straight face was really tough for me that day. But I love working with him.
Director Howard Deutch said his only direction was for you to take it as far as you wanted to.
Yeah, and we took it pretty far. [Chuckles] That scene obviously wasn’t written when we shot the scene last season where I give him my blood, and they didn’t really have a plan to go anywhere with that. But when we shot it, and the way Ryan reacted to it, it was suddenly, when we shot it, it became more sensual than we thought it would be. And when they yelled, “Cut!” everyone was like, “Oh, we’ve got to see more of this.” [Laughs]
You told me before that you wanted to move to New York after True Blood was done. Is that still the plan?
Yeah! I’m actually looking at apartments in New York now. I’m in London for another three months for Tarzan, and then my plan is definitely to move to New York. I’m really excited about it. I don’t really have any plans in terms of what I want to do — movies, television, theater — but I’d love to do a play in New York. Anything that would be a break from what I’ve been doing, something different. I mean, my dad did Mamma Mia!, just after he had done a couple of dark indie films, and he had a really good time doing that. He loved it. He was like, “Fuck it! This is fun. This is different. There’s nothing wrong with fun. I’ll do it!” You know? It’s all about trying to find those projects where you get to enjoy yourself, because I think that’s when you create as well, when you’re genuinely excited about something. Then you’re not just doing it because it’s your job. After seven years on the show, where every break before was a hiatus from the show, there’s something quite exciting about not knowing what I’m going to do next. It’s a feeling I haven’t had in seven years, and I’m pretty excited about it.
To read the entire interview with Alex, go here: vulture.com