Kristin Bauer van Straten plays one of the most wonderfully sarcastic characters on HBO‘s True Blood and she does it very convincingly. Season 4 will bring a lot of challenges for Eric Northman‘s right-hand Pam, and Kristin recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about what we can expect to see from Pam and her relationships with those around her.
In the post-Edgington world, vampires need to be on their best behavior and in fact need to campaign to get public opinion back on their side. but as we saw in Episode 1, that doesn’t really work for Pam. She is not interested in playing nice for the public and according to Kristin Pam is just not a team player. She compares the vampire public relations campaign to politics with the vampires out doing public events, kissing babies and making nice in order to compensate for the bad things they do. On top of this public relations mess, Pam’s boss and maker Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) gets cursed by the witches and has no memory of his past or Pam and this presents new challenges for Pam and van Straten. These changes will not be easy on Pam because she does not want to be in charge and she would prefer to just go back to the way things were and according to Kristin:
“We find out this year the lengths that she will go to make that happen and the methods that she’ll try, which as we’ve seen are going to be very different than what Bill would do and would be very different from what Eric would be able to do. This is the old Eric. Now, we have an Eric who has no idea of his past or his relationships. He is fresh and new like a little baby. It’s very sweet. The girls are going to go crazy. It’s very, very cute. He has a different hairstyle. I mean it’s just adorable. He dresses differently. I mean it’s really sweet.”
As he is struggling with his memory loss, Eric will be in the care of Sookie, played by Anna Paquin, and as we have seen Sookie and Pam haven’t always seen eye to eye. Kristin says that she has not read the books yet so she does not know how the relationship is written between Pam and Sookie but she likes the way it is written on the show. Pam seems to be kind of leary of Sookie but at the same time she is also attracted to her in a way. With Eric relying on her that will force Sookie and Pam to interact a lot more than we have seen in previous seasons and according to Kristin there will be some serious havoc in the middle of the season for them all.
One of the surprisingly fun relationships that we saw begin during Season 3 was between Pam and Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) and from what we have seen that will continue in Season 4. With Jessica being a teenager on top of a vampire, that brings a whole new level to the urges and things she is experiencing and Pam is helping to guide her. Kristin describes their relationship saying:
“Pam is, I think, slightly hopeful that Jessica could end up being an actual useful worthy vampire as opposed to Bill. I think it’s so fun. I’ve always loved Pam’s distaste for Bill. Because what’s so great, it makes him such a good romantic character is that he is tough on the outside, but really actually sweet on the inside — his reluctance to be a vampire. Pam is only sweet on the inside for one person and that’s Eric. So when she sees any rebellion in Jessica, Pam is interested. Like last year, her conversations with Jessica revolved around how to get around a dead body. You know that would get her interested in a conversation with someone. It’s something that’s real to her.”
Kristin says in the interview that one of the interesting things about this season is not so much the plot points, but how the characters react to the events. For Pam, she says we will see more of the warrior side to Pam. We can’t wait! To read the full interview with Kristin click here.
Source: TheHollywoodReporter.com – ‘True Blood’s’ Kristin Bauer on Vampire Pam: “She’s Just Not A Team Player”
Photo Credit: HBO, Inc.
