True Blood’s Carrie Preston has been interviewed about her character Arlene discussing her history with True Blood and that now-famous pool table sex scene.
Will you tell me about the audition process for Arlene? How did you go about getting that part?
Luckily it was a simple process for me because I had worked with Alan Ball right before they started casting the pilot. I was doing a film that he wrote and directed called Towelhead (2007), and so I met him on that, and it was while we were on Towelhead that he asked me what I was doing next. I said “I’m not sure,” and I asked him, and he said, “Well, I’m doing this vampire pilot for HBO, and I might have something that you might be interested in.
So they sent the script over, I read it and I honestly didn’t know what character he was talking about – because it didn’t appear to be that I was right for Arlene physically. I thought “Hmm. I wonder which part he means” And they said “It’s Arlene.”
I thought, “Well, OK. I certainly understand women like Arlene. I grew up in the south. So, I went in and had one audition with Alan and the casting directors, and they put me on tape, and he went to HBO and said, “This is who I want for Arlene. And they said, “OK.”
So, it was the least amount of hoops I’d ever had to jump through to be a series regular on a television show. Usually they make you do many, many auditions for many, many people. I was very fortunate that it was the right fit at the right time
Wow! It must be really gratifying to have someone of Ball’s status trust you and appreciate your work so much as to do that …
It was highly flattering and humbling and exciting because he’s someone that I’ve admired as a writer and a creator. I was a huge Six Feet Under fan, American Beauty fan, plus we’re both from Georgia, so it was a nice southern connection as well.
OK, speaking of Georgia. I notice now that your voice has a bit of a southern flare, but nothing like Arlene’s. What does that voice come from? Are you imitating anyone you know in real life?
I grew up in Macon, Georgia, so I know a lot of strong southern women like Arlene. I’m not doing anybody in particular because Arlene is a pretty singular person. The writers have created a very specific woman there, but I guess it’s an amalgamation of women that I’ve known over the years and I try to honor them in the best way I can with her and feel blessed that I’ve gotten to play her for seven years.
Speaking of Arlene and even Elsbeth, although this is a silly question, I wonder if you could tell me about their dazzling red hair. Was that from your life or commissioned by the show [True Blood]?
I was born blonde and was doing roles that required me to be in the blonde world for many, many, many years and then True Blood came along, and I remained blonde for the first three seasons in a wig. The character calls for being a redhead, but I was involved with other projects at the time that we shot the pilot, so I couldn’t dye my hair.
And then I just decided that I was ready to move on from the wig, because the wig is limiting. There’s not a lot you can do with it, and it was sometimes uncomfortable to wear a wig for upwards of 14 hours a day. So, I waited until they had a moment in the script … a time bump that was like a year or something, and all of us changed our looks up a little bit once that happened. It was then I decided that would be a good opportunity to go wigless and dyed my hair. And I haven’t looked back. It’s been great.
I was wondering if you could speak about the differences between the production cultures of both True Blood and The Good Wife. What’s most different?
On True Blood they take a lot longer to shoot an episode. It’s not as prescriptive as far as shoot days at the network. The network generally on a drama will say they’re shooting it in eight days, and they will usually do double up unit on a couple days and may stretch it to 10, but usually they try to keep it in the eight range.
Whereas True Blood, our episodes … it’s very hard to track because everyday they’re shooting two units which means there’re scenes from one, two, three, sometimes four episodes at once. It’s hard to tell how many days that takes, but sometimes people will do that math and it will end up taking 21 days to shoot an episode spread out over a month.
So, it’s very different as far as scheduling goes. Network generally tends to go from one episode to the next, so they’re sequential. True Blood will juggle several at once to accommodate people’s scheduling and location scheduling and all of that.
I don’t know how the ADs on True Blood were able to make that work – and the producers. It is a real feat that they’re able to pull that off and get the episodes in the can.
Since you’ve worked for both cable as well as network shows, I’d be curious if you’ve ever been a part of any conversations had with executives or if as actors you’re aware of the network notes passed onto producers.
The actors usually are not privy to those conversations, although for the finale of the show, True Blood, I was shadowing the director, who is one of our directors who has been with us since the beginning, Scott Winant, because I am a director as well, and so I wanted to really see what it was like from soup to nuts how our show gets made.
So anyways it was very interesting for me to see how things happen on True Blood, and go into the preproduction meetings and see how many meetings go into one stunt or one scene in one location, and the care and the detail and the amount of people that are utilized to make one moment work on our show, is something that I didn’t fully, fully, fully grasp and experience until I did that shadowing. It was really amazing, and I learned quite a lot about how much prep goes into a show like True Blood.
Read the complete interview with Carrie by going here: huffingtonpost.com
