Joe Manganiello on Why the Cast of ‘True Blood’ Was “Really, Really Overqualified”

Joe Manganiello is sharing why he thinks the cast of True Blood was way too “overqualified” to be starring in the hit drama fantasy series.

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On a recent episode of Podcrushed , with hosts Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, the actor, who played Alcide Herveaux , looked back at the “really wild, crazy, intelligent” show that “pushed the culture forward at the time,” as he described it. However, he noted that the series cast actors with extensive résumés.

“What’s funny about True Blood was, you know, we were all really, really overqualified,” Manganiello admitted. “Well, I should say the material was deceptively tricky because it was kind of written in like Tennessee Williams. It was very operatic at times.”

He continued, “But, you know, but it’s all theater kids. It’s like people with Tonys and Oscars and, you know, Mike McMillan and I were the Carnegie Mellon kids, then there was Rutina [Wesley] and Nelsan [Ellis] were the Juilliard kids, then Chris Bauer was the Yalie, then you get West End of London, then you get this international cast. You got [Alexander] Skarsgård from Sweden. You had, [Stephen] Moyer from England. And Anna [Paquin], obviously, from New Zealand by way of Canada. It was really, really intelligent, trained actors.”

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And the Deal or No Deal Island host wasn’t wrong — Paquin (Sookie) won an Oscar in 1994 at age 11, before True Blood , for her role in The Piano . Alexander Skarsgård (Eric) and Carrie Preston (Arlene) have each won Emmys for their roles in Big Little Lies and The Good Wife , respectively. Lois Smith, who played Sookie’s grandmother Adele, won a Tony in 2020 for The Inheritance , as did Denis O’Hare in 2003 for Take Me Out .

True Blood , created by Alan Ball, ran for seven seasons from 2008 to 2014. It follows telepathic waitress Sookie as she embarks on adventures with humans, vampires and, eventually, other supernatural beings.

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