Fans of HBO‘s True Blood all love red-headed Merlotte’s waitress, Arlene Fowler. In Season 4, we have seen her a little less perky and a lot more worried about having given birth to a possible devil child, Mikey. New York Magazine recently interviewed actor Carrie Preston about her latest role.
While Preston was convinced that the Mikey storyline is a portrayal of every parent’s worst fear, she still didn’t say outright that Mikey will turn out to be a normal child. She was glad to see, that with Mikey’s kidnapping (by a ghost-possessed Lafayette Reynolds), Arlene realized that she truly does love her new son:
“I think for Arlene, she’s just relieved to have the child back; any ambivalent feeling she had about the child went away once that fire happened and she realized just how much she loved him and was going to do whatever she could to protect him. What I think has been interesting about my character this season is it also kind of taps into every parent’s fear that they might be raising some kind of demon child. Not a literal one — but, What if I don’t know how to raise this child? Or what if this child winds up having problems that I can’t handle?”
Recently, Vulture also interviewed Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette Reynolds) who proclaimed that his terminology ‘Hooker’ comes from an old Southern usage of the word, and doesn’t literally mean a prostitute. Preston was asked if this was true. While, to a certain extent, it is, it turns out to be used more by folk from Alabama than those from Georgia (where she was raised).
Now, you may think that playing the mother to a possible demon-child is weird enough, but she has also played the mother of her off-screen husband, Michael Emerson, (who played Ben Linus, on Lost). It turns out that this idea was actually thought up by the actress herself:
“We thought it was hilarious. It was my crazy idea. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be really fun if I got to play your mom when they do your flashback?’ He jokingly mentioned it to the producers. A week later, I was giving birth to him in the jungle.”
Preston has also appeared in many other TV shows, including: The Good Wife, Sex and the City and Arrested Development. Her resume is incredibly vast, True Blood is incredibly lucky to have such a talented actor on board.
Make sure you check out the full Vulture interview by clicking on the link below, and share your thoughts with us!
Source: New York Magazine – True Blood’s Carrie Preston on Ghosts, Her Favorite TV Redhead, and Being Married to Lost’s Ben Linus
(Photo Credit: HBO, Inc.)
