Carrie Preston‘s character on True Blood, Arlene Fowler, has been around for it all. She’s been one of the mainstays on the show, and her character has definitely grown since we first met her in season 1 (being engaged to a serial killer will do that to you). Preston sat down with the HuffPost TV on Thursday to talk about what we can expect from season 5, as well as her future on the show and the show’s future. Check out some highlights from her interview below.
On what’s happening with Terry (Todd Lowe) in season 5:
“…it’s very interesting though because we haven’t really delved into Terry’s past yet. Not really. We’ve done a little here and there, but this season, we’re definitely getting a look at what he went through in Iraq, so I think that’s really interesting. Of course, we do that “True Blood“-style. [Laughs.] It’s definitely going to cast a bit of a shadow over Terry and Arlene this season.”
On whether she’d consider directing an episode of True Blood:
“Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill, directed an episode this season. He had shadowed last year, and he directed our eighth episode this season and did a bang-up job. He was so good on set. So yeah, they’re totally open to it … but I don’t know if it’s in my wheelhouse. I definitely love being on the show, and I’d love to shadow a director and see if it feels like something that I’d want to do, but the things that I’m drawn to are definitely much smaller, character-driven, actor-driven kinds of pieces. “True Blood” is so epic and has so many special effects and all that stuff — I’d definitely need to educate myself on how that happens, start to finish, but I’m certainly not opposed to it. I do think if I went to them next season and said, “Hey, mind if I latch on to a director and watch it from start to finish?” I feel certain that they’d be very open to that.”
On Arlene staying alive this long on the show:
“…I think that the show needs Arlene and Terry and Andy Bellefleur and Hoyt — the people who are playing the townspeople — because otherwise there is no context for the vampires and werewolves and everything. There’s no context for them if we don’t continue to remind the audience that they are existing in a real world, albeit fictitiously drawn by the writers. I think Arlene is a real representative of that world, and also of how judgmental that world can be. I’m aware of that function that she has in the show, because that’s out there in our country. If you want to, you can read into our show a lot of social and political themes. And if you don’t want to, you can just look at it as a fantasy soap opera, and that’s why I love it because it exists on both of those levels.
We need to have conflict within the world — it needs to be more complicated than “Vampires are hot and sexy!” We need to also realize that they are killers, by design, and some of them are mainstreaming, but some of them really don’t want to be mainstreaming. The theme of this season is definitely about that kind of identity I think: What loyalty do you have? Where do your loyalties lie?”
On how she eventually sees True Blood wrapping up:
“I’m not sure … all I know is that even though Alan Ball is stepping away as our showrunner next year, I think he’s still going to be involved with the series, and I think that the ending of “Six Feet Under” was probably the most brilliant ending of any series ever, so I feel like we will be in good hands with him when the time comes to end “True Blood.”‘
For a peek at what’s happening in Preston’s life outside of Bon Temps, read her interview in its entirety here.
Source: HuffPost TV – ‘True Blood’: Carrie Preston Talks Season 5 And Emmy Buzz For Her Role On ‘The Good Wife’
Photo Credit: Frank Trapper/Corbis
