There are a lot of people working behind the scenes at HBO‘s True Blood to make sure all the small details of our favorite show are taken care of. Wetpaint spoke to Suzuki Ingerslev, who is a Production Designer on the hit show, during Comic Con about all our favorite sets including Sookie‘s house, The Authority Headquarters and that smoke monster chasing Terry.
Poor Gran would have been devastated to see what has happened to her house, particularly during the maenad crisis that hit Bon Temps in Season 2. Given that each season followed the previous one with no time lapse until Season 4, Gran’s house had to stay in a perpetual state of disarray. Ingerslev revealed to Wetpaint that it was a huge relief when she was able to clean up that house saying that she couldn’t even go onto that set anymore. Gran’s house is still one of her favorite sets and she talks about how hard it is to spend so much time on a particular set or item only to turn around and destroy it again, saying:
“We first designed the show and thought, oh my god, this is going to be great. It’s going to be grandma’s house and we have all these delicate treasures in there. We went to antique stores and found one-of-a-kind things. And by the end of that season, we started going, oh my god, we are really destroying everything.”
In contrast to the homey feel of Sookie’s house is the very stiff, formal look of The Authority Headquarters which made its debut this season. Ingerslev says that when they designed that particular set they were told to find ancient walls, but at the same time they wanted to counter that with a more modern look. She says they added in the modern touches and then made the room “pop” by adding the colorful furniture to break up the monochromatic look.
Of all the True Blood sets that have been created thus far, Ingerslev says that Merlotte’s is her all time favorite:
“I just really enjoy that set and all the detail we put into it. I love the aging of all the furniture, the bar top, we got coasters on eBay that we Shellacked into the countertops. There’s a homeyness to it. When you go in there, you just want to sit down and have lunch or something.”
Moving on to the smoke monster that seems to be out to get revenge against Terry and his army buddies, Ingerslev says that they were sort of aware that this was a real mythological creature, although they had trouble believing it at first. When asked who created the art that covered the walls in Brian Eller‘s hideout she revealed that some of the staff were involved in that process:
“We actually did a lot of hand drawings. Our set designer and some of our PAs are pretty good artists, so they did little renderings of how they saw the Smoke Monster. So a lot of that is drawings we did. We didn’t want Brian to be this professional artist. He had to be a madman. There were sketches and loose drawings. We also pulled some stuff off the Library of Congress, just to show fires and stuff, because to fill a wall like that takes a lot of material.”
Ingerslev goes on to say that she was happy with the way the special effects turned out on the smoke monster as well because with these types of things you really never know how it will look on screen.
Source: Wetpaint – True Blood Production Designer Suzuki Ingerslev Reveals Season 5 Secrets
Photo Credit: HBO
