Ahead of this Sunday’s season premiere, Brian Buckner recently spoke to Rolling Stone about what we can expect on True Blood this season as well as some of the challenges he encountered during his first season as showrunner. Buckner, who has been with True Blood since the very beginning, ultimately succeeded creator and previous showrunner Alan Ball after writer and producer Mark Hudis stepped down from the showrunner post early on in the production of season 6. The interview opened with a question about what to expect in the season to which Buckner talked about the importance of life in a show that is primarily centered upon death:
“Well, thematically – and I want to be fair to all seasons past – I feel like we do so much running and killing that we very seldom stop to speak to the importance of life. So we will have an episode this season that’s entitled “Life Matters.” We’re trying to remind people that the lives of these human beings and of the vampires here in this small town of Bon Temps, they mean something. So that if we lose somebody, we’re going to stop to grieve them, and try to tell the more human side of the supernatural stories we’re telling. That is sort of my mission statement.”
In an interview with Manhattan Magazine concerning Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse), Brian mentioned that we would be seeing a different side of Sookie. This is something he confirms again with Rolling Stone. This grown up, mature “I can do it myself” Sookie comes partially from Anna Paquin’s growth. She is now a mother and has changed herself in many ways since the start of the series so why not Sookie? As a result, the character is more self-aware and slightly darker.
As for what else we might see in season 6, Buckner says we will also be seeing Steve and Sarah Newlin (Michael McMillian and Anna Camp) in a “meaningful way” and a principal character will not make it all the way through the season. (Yikes!) With the series entering season 6, Brian says that change is important in order to keep things fresh which is why shaking things up this year is important:
“Change. I’m not going to say what the changes are, but it’s a big deal. Everybody loves the show, but actors don’t want to play the same scenes anymore, and writers don’t want to write the same scenes anymore, and so literally shifting things up. And pivoting people around – on this show, other than when we have table reads and premiere parties, a lot of these actors never work together – so the way I look at it, if we can shift the paradigm, and some of the relationships within the show, there are all these sort of new avenues to go down. Jason has basically never played a scene with, like, Pam, right? So there’s all these pairings, and my job, and the job of the writers is to change the lanes that we’ve been driving down for six seasons. The answer is, because we have all these characters, I think it’s very easy to stay fresh – you just have to be mindful about doing so. So that’s the kind of thing that we have to be aware of and get back to a little bit of our soap opera roots and remember that romance matters in the midst of all the plot we do.”
So that means that while there will be tension between Sookie and Bill (Stephen Moyer), the center of the show according to him, being together isn’t always possible or interesting. But the impasse that the characters find themselves at is. And finding the balance for True Blood is something Brian Buckner didn’t really appreciate until he became showrunner. All of the writers produce the episodes that they write but now Buckner is in charge of the production as a whole:
“…I don’t think I ever fully appreciated the pressure Alan was under. So it’s that, and of course the responsibilities go beyond writing. It’s post – it’s having to maintain a dialog with the actors so they know where we are, where their story lines are headed. And you can get very, very distracted. So the writing seems to come last [laughs], and that’s been a little bit hard, and I’ve actually never had more respect for the job Alan was doing than I have now, now that I am sort of sitting in that seat. Because it’s a big job.”
But Buckner did write the 9th episode, “Life Matters” and had a heavy hand throughout the season but tried not to be too heavy handed so as not to exclude the voices of his other writers. This is something he says that Alan Ball did really well as showrunner. He had the ability to trust and let people do their own thing, which Buckner struggles with himself because his default was response was to take on more responsibility himself at times. However, this is something he is learning to overcome.
The interview closed with a question of whether there is any hope for Bill to which Buckner responded:
“I think there always has to be hope for him. But his arc during the season, in that first episode, [spoiler alert!] he asks Jessica to make sure he doesn’t lose it. He will. He does. But he will find his way back, because Bill has to be Bill. But that fight that’s going on between the Bill part of Bill and the Lilith part of Bill, she will win for a little while.
Source Rolling Stone.com- “Q&A: ‘True Blood’ Showrunner Brian Buckner Spills on Season Six”
Image Credits: HBO, Inc.
