Brian Buckner

Attention, pluie d'interview cette semaine, en voici trois de Notre showrunner!!! ^^

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ici, il explique le final et envisage la saison 7 dans cette interview: datant du 20août:

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Allthough I know all you True Blood fans are all still busy mourning Eric’s (apparent) demise, I suspect you’ll want to take a break from your weeping to read what showrunner Brian Buckner has to say about Alexander Skarsgard’s future involvement with HBO’s monster smash.

For that matter, you’ll probably also be keen to read in this exclusive Season 6 post-mortem/Season 7 preview how the boss explains the lack of Sookie-Alcide sex in the finale and how he plans to reset Bill now that he’s no longer the godly Billith.

RELATED | True Blood Finale: Grade It!

And yes, just for good measure, he’ll also reveal how much prodding it took to get Skarsgard to go full frontal for his “final” scene (hint: none at all!), and why Season 7 will not be taking a page from The Walking Dead.

TVLINE | The big question coming out of the finale, obviously…
Let me guess. [Laughs]

TVLINE | Alexander Skarsgard — will he be back for Season 7?
I can tell you that Alexander Skarsgard is going to be a part of the next season of True Blood. He will be a series regular.

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TVLINE | That will be a huge relief to fans.
I am aware! I’m not going to take Alex Skarsgard out of people’s living rooms.

TVLINE | I’m guessing Eric won’t suddenly be alive and well in the Season 7 premiere.
No. That would be a cheat, wouldn’t it? That would be an incredible cheat. Pam has gone off in search of Eric, and maybe she’s going to be the one to find him, y’know?

TVLINE | Let’s talk about Alexander’s nude scene. Full-frontal nudity on a guy is not something you see often on television.
Correct.

TVLINE | What kind of behind-the-scenes conversations took place prior to shooting?
Alex Skarsgard was the coolest camper in the world. There’s no conversation with him. He’s Swedish. They’re naked all the time. As a matter of fact, when I saw what we had on camera, I sent him an email that said, “We’re going to lock picture. Are you OK with this?” He said, “No problemo.” That was the conversation. It couldn’t have been easier.

TVLINE | Did the reaction surprise you — or him? Probably not.
I think sometimes we are impressed by how much people care. But I don’t think that people care was a surprise. He knew the gift he was giving everybody. [Laughs]

TVLINE | Moving on, talk to me about the decision to jump ahead six months.
Look, we’re going into a seventh season. I’m aware that people like the familiar, but we have to change. We have to be able to pivot. There were bits of story in there that I didn’t necessarily, nor did any of the other writers, want to show. The fallout from what Bill had done… Ours is a show that is so constrained by [our narrative structure]. We’re not 24, but we’re damn close – and sometimes it’s really refreshing to be able to shuffle the deck. For me, it’s fun. We will obviously pick up some of the pieces and explain how certain things happened. But what I think some people found jarring, to me was really refreshing. It was that: The world has changed, this virus has mutated, and this is the way the world is going to look now. Meanwhile, life beats on in this small town.

TVLINE | The show has flirted with a Sookie and Alcide romance for years. Why was now the right time to pull the trigger on that?
In a world where almost everybody is a creature of some kind, Alcide is the most human of all of our creatures. Now, that’s not to say that it was his most human season. We all felt the same thing that the audience was feeling, which was that Alcide needed to come back to center. So it was that as much as anything else. And it was also that Sookie’s going to put her money where her mouth is and say “no more vampires.” She got into it with Warlow without knowing he was a vampire, so she was trying. But this shows growth for Sookie. I mean, I suppose he’s a hunk, so at least she’s still getting her piece. [Laughs] He’s the most normal, most human, most down-to-earth of any of her suitors. To me, with Eric gone and off on his own story going forward, I think it’s a pretty obvious triangle we’re setting up between Bill and Sookie and Alcide.

TVLINE | The time jump deprived us of their courtship though.  
Well, yeah. We skipped stuff, which is not to say that the audience is going to be deprived of love scenes [between them] going forward. But truthfully, the Jason/Violet love scene that the audience did get [in the finale] – or, just shy of love, I suppose – if I had those scenes back-to-back, it would’ve been really pandering. The Jason/Violet [sex scene] was more on story, because that was set up between them. She promised that she was going to make him work for it, and that was the payoff.

TVLINE | Are you looking at Season 7 as a reset of sorts for Bill?
Absolutely. We don’t want Bill to be an a—hole. Whereas the show that I love watching most right now, Breaking Bad, Walter White is on a downward trajectory with the consequences of his actions. The question we’re going to be asking this coming season is: Can Bill be forgiven? Because he made his intentions clear. One thing that I noticed – and I probably shouldn’t read as much as I’ve been reading, but I have been, in terms of audience reaction – is the idea that characters can’t change. I will put to bed one thing for you: this idea that Lettie Mae is trying to poison Tara? It’s absurd. That is genuine. And I realize that on our show, because it’s been so incredibly plot-driven for the past several years, you insert a Big Bad and then have the characters react in the way we expect them to react. That’s sort of what’s been going on. When we let characters change, when we let the show be character-driven, I think people don’t know what to do with that. So with Lettie Mae and Tara, not to say that everything is going to go great, but the conflict is not going to be she’s poisoning Tara. By the same token, I think Bill doesn’t have a trick up his sleeve this time. I think he’s genuine. The real question is about forgiveness.

TVLINE | What do you see as the theme of Season 7?
The show started out as, “Let’s see if vampires and humans can get along.” We’re returning to that original promise of the show. And because humans and vampires are being forced together, we’re going to be examining that with all of our characters. Everyone’s going to come under the umbrella of that main story. These are complicated relationships now because they’re feeding – it’s not necessarily sex, but things get confused sometimes, especially in vampires’ minds – so you’re going to be looking at a number of complicated three-way, four-way relationships.

TVLINE | All the humans will be paired with a vampire, essentially?
For every human a vampire; for every vampire a human.

TVLINE | The gang that appeared in the finale, they were all infected with Hep V?
Correct.

TVLINE | How do you explain the fact that some of those infected  — Nora, for example — died quickly, yet others are wandering around.
We did say that the virus had mutated, and we get to decide what those mutations are. Perhaps the demand for human blood goes up and that’s the only thing that keeps vampires with Hep V alive. In seasons past – I’m not going to point to any one of them – we took some massive swings, not knowing where we were going. That’s the nature of what we do. In this case, I don’t believe we bit off more than we can chew. I’m not going to give answers to all these things, but the virus has mutated. That’s another reason for the time passage. Just like bacteria mutates and that’s why there are antibiotic-resistant strains. So what applied to Nora doesn’t necessarily apply to this gang. And they’re not zombies.

TVLINE | What are they? Is there a name for them?
In my somewhat limited zombie-genre experience, zombies are not organized. They’re just hunting-killing machines. So what was meant to come across there was that they’re organized, they’re in a formation, they’re hunting, they’re sentient, they can talk. They still have intellect.

TVLINE | There was definitely a Walking Dead vibe in that last scene. Was there any concern that people were going to look at that and go, “Ah, they’re jumping on the zombie bandwagon?”
Sure. Of course, it was a debate in the writers’ room. The logical conclusion to a season about Hep V getting out there in the world has to be [that] there’s Hep V-infected vampires… but we’re not going to do The Walking Dead season of True Blood. Truthfully, all of this is about forcing humans and vampires into relationships. It’s not going to be a plot device the way people are familiar with us introducing a Big Bad at the end of a season.

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une autre interview donne encore plus de précision, lisez ici:

Le showrunner de True Blood fait beaucoup de parler de la sixième saison de True Blood et c'est finale, Voici encore une fois une autre interview de TVGuide avec Brian Buckner. Il examine le concept de vampires et les humains travaillent ensemble comme le thème général de l'exposition et bien plus encore.

Si vous ne voulez pas tout connaître Saison 7, ne lisez pas cette interview.

 

Was blowing up everything at the end of the season a chance for you to really start fresh next year?
Brian Buckner: It is. I think we've had more success at the outsets of our seasons when we've done an adequate job setting the table for the following season. It's a bit of a reset and it's also establishing a story that is for every vampire, a human, for every human, a vampire. It's to try to return to the show's promise in Season 1, which is if vampires exist, let's examine the relationships between humans and vampires. Now we get to do it with many different pairings rather than just Bill and Sookie. The hope is — and this is what I was hinting at Comic-Con — that by putting all of our characters essentially into one story, now it's Bon Temps vs. the world, the characters people love will get more screen time because these stories don't have separate demands. We just get to tell a simpler story and then experience them through our characters.

If vampires and humans are now working together, where does the tension come from?
Buckner: I don't mean to say there are not complications with those relationships. The driving force of the show is going to be the relationships. What does Alcide (Joe Manganiello) or Sookie having to take on a vampire feeding partner do to their relationship? Every relationship is complicated because it's a three-way or four-way. That's what we're looking at. I don't think it's all going to be hunky-dory. It's going to create tensions between makers and makees because, "You love that human, don't you?!" It's a bit of a shift back from plot-driven big bad to some of the soapy elements of the show. It's the relationships that are interesting, not the plot that the bad guy is necessarily providing.

Can you talk about the threat of the mutated Hep-V? 
Buckner: That's the work of next season. Specifically, viruses do mutate and that's part of why we gave ourselves a six-month time passage. This is a disease that, as Dr. Overlark (John Fleck) explained when he was injecting Nora (Lucy Griffiths), can be spread in any number of ways. It has spread around the world very rapidly. Bon Temps is a microcosm of what's happening out there in the world. The vampires who are infected, their appetite for human blood is increasing. They need to feed more often in order to survive this disease.

Have vampires essentially overrun the world at this point?
Buckner: It's a major outbreak. You see how people got upset about Bird Flu and no one really had it. The idea here was to isolate Bon Temps to make it the town we know vs. the world so we don't have to leave Bon Temps in order to get story. They can only depend on one another; that's what Sam is talking to Andy (Chris Bauer) about. Andy obviously has his own feelings about vampires right now and whether or not they can be trusted. Sam's point is we don't have a choice but to trust them. Without their help, we can't protect ourselves. It's a very uneasy alliance. I don't want to suggest that it is conflict-free. Of course, we promised a pretty big payoff at the Bellefluer's bar.

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Presumably that means Season 7 picks up right where we left off?
Buckner: That's a fair presumption.

Turning to the biggest question after the finale: Is Eric really dead? What kind of role will Alexander Skarsgard have next season?
Buckner: In the olden days, this was a fun tease for an audience [Laughs]. The actor Alex Skarsgard and the character of Eric Northman will be back on the show next year. He'll be a series regular. We've obviously promised a "Where is Eric?" story and it would feel incredibly cheap to deliver the goods right away. We sent Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) off in search of him and if she were to find him right away, we would be doing a disservice to ourselves and to the audience.How we use him is going to be up to us, but we want people to rest assured that he will be back in their living rooms next year or wherever they watch. Boy do they love him! Wow!

Pretty sure he broke the internet after going full-frontal. 
Buckner: It was crazy. I got a question about the discussion on that and said, "He's Swedish. There was no discussion whatsoever." I even called him to say, "Are you sure this is OK?" and he said, "No problemo."

People thought it might be a body double. 
Buckner: Nope! One day the tell-all will come out that that guy is as cool as Eric Northman. He doesn't sweat the small stuff.

Because you jumped ahead six months, we missed Sookie and Alcide's courtship. Will we see some flashbacks to that?
Buckner: Whether or not there will be flashbacks, we don't know at this point. The writers will be back in the room starting September 3 and we'll start to figure this all out. I think there is fun in, "How did this happen?" but you will see what sparks flew. It's not like we're going to skip over all the Sookie-Alcide fun. In terms of going back and filling in those six months, that I don't think we'll be doing, but the audience will see what they want to see.

What does this mean for Bill next season? Will he seek redemption in order to get Sookie back?
Buckner: Yeah, but I don't think it's manipulative. One thing that I've heard a lot online, and it applies to Bill too, is this idea that characters can change. Lettie Mae (Adina Porter) does not have a trick up her sleeve. It's genuine. People can feel incredibly ashamed of the way they've treated their children down the line. I know my mother does, right? Lettie Mae does not have Hep-V. She's not trying to infect Tara and trick her. There's not a plot thing behind every character motivation. To the same effect, Bill has truthfully seen the error of his ways. When Lilith left him, he lost his powers and all of his feelings for Sookie came rushing back. The real question is, yes, this season is about redemption for Bill, but can he be forgiven? We're establishing a new triangle — with Eric clearly unresolved, but not part of the picture in Bon Temps in the short term — the Sookie, Alcide, Bill triangle is going to be in play.

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We didn't really see much of Tara this season, except for acting as a big sister to Willa — which I hope is a set up for her to someday be a maker. What will we see for her next season? Does she need to repair her relationship with her mother first before she can move on?
Buckner: The only two pairings that you know of so far are Tara and Lettie May, and Jason (Ryan Kwaten) and Violet (Karolina Wydra), right? The pairings are going to dictate a lot of the story that we tell. But your point is certainly well taken about the character of Tara. My feeling is that the problem on our show has been telling too many separate storylines and there's no room for all your characters. I don't think we have a too-many-characters problem. I think we had a too-many-stories problem. My sincere hope is that by telling a simpler story that demands less plot and less exposition and less locations, that we're going to be able to really examine characters and relationships. You can tell we've abandoned the wolf pack. The books were about one thing and I have immense respect for [author] Charlaine [Harris] and what she did, but people are keyed in — as are we as writers — on these vampire-human relationships and that's what the show needs to focus on.

Speaking of the books, if viewers hadn't read the final book that just came out, it would appear that the Sookie and Sam thing came out of nowhere. Why did you guys decide to explore having Sookie take a shot at a relationship with Sam?
Buckner: Well, it was organic. Sookie was looking for a reason to stay alive, right? A lot of her usual sounding boards weren't there because they were in a vampire prison. She went to Bill, not because she loves Bill, but because she thought of all people, my first boyfriend, he's not going to say, "Oh cool, go ahead and become a vampire." But he did. It was a slap down. She went to Sam not to say, "Let's start this now," but to say, "Do I have a human connection? Is there anything in this town and this life left for me?" And when she got slapped down by her backburner guy, she said, "F--- it. I don't even know if my brother is alive!" It was a very fatalistic, dark Sookie. Then she goes to this funeral and experiences community. That funeral wasn't just about Terry deserving more screen time. It's about this place, this town, what these people mean to each other, this sense of community. When she experiences that and hears Arlene (Carrie Preston) finding some peace, even in the midst of all that pain, she realizes, "I have a place in this town." That's why she goes back to Warlow and says, "Let's try this out." Now he ran out of patience, but that was her storyline.

Do you think there's still the possibility of exploring Sookie and Sam?
Buckner: I'm aware that Charlaine got a lot of blowback for that pairing in the book. I think anything is worth exploring. I don't have the answer to how much longer we're going to be doing this show. It's not where I'm leaning. That scene was more connected to Sookie looking for a reason to be here and truthfully about us trying to earn pushing her to the place where she would really consider being made vampire. They have an incredible friendship and I think she sees more eye-to-eye with him than she does with any other man in her life, but it seems that he's in the friend-zone where Sookie is concerned and I think she was grasping at straws. The cool thing about that scene was that neither of them were wrong; she just had really bad timing. On another day, maybe Sam would've been more receptive to that.

Violet and Jason have a very odd relationship in that she expects him to pleasure her, but she won't reciprocate. Can we really trust her?
Buckner: I trust her so far. She came on strong. She seems like a b---- at vamp camp. Of course the way she claimed Jason, that seemed pretty b----y, too. If she's b----y to Pam, everyone is going to be protective of Pam. The job was, how do we get her earn her way back in our hearts because she's joining as a regular next year, as is James (Luke Grimes). One of the things that we realized pretty early on is that as much as people complain sometimes that there are no humans left onTrue Blood, if you do the math, there aren't very many vampires left, so we needed to populate it more. The two of them are just stunning. It was a strange casting call in the middle of the season knowing that we were going to be casting for series regulars for the following season, but I think we hit the jackpot both times. We trust her — for now. I think she has a code. We're a show that has Pam, so if you want to have a new, tough female vampire, you have to create a different character. Pam doesn't give a sh-- about anybody, so the instinct was to give Violet this code. "If Sookie is your family, she's my family. I will put my life on the line for her." She's earning her way into our hearts by going to bat for Sookie and Jason in the finale.

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Has Andy really let Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) off the hook?
Buckner: There's always going to be tension there, but if he were going to hold her responsible, he would've pulled the trigger. Chris Bauer has really been an MVP for us this season, because we took a character who was usually comic relief and asked the audience to care. I think he did an amazing job. Andy deep down knows that even though he's the sheriff and even though he has guns, he's up against something much bigger. Jessica did the right thing in saying, "I'm not asking for anymore of this family's blood. I'm giving you my protection, you don't have to say yes." He shuts the door. To me, that moment is about her standing guard out there and he knows it. I don't think they're all the way healed, nor do I think they can ever be all the way healed.

What did you think of True Blood's season finale? Will you be watching next season? Hit the comments!

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ici, datant du 24 août:; pour the vulture

True Blood viewers had a right to be skeptical going into the HBO series' sixth season. Not only did series creator Alan Ball depart after production had begun, he left behind an array of painted-into-corner plotlines and a scattered storytelling structure. The task of getting True Blood back on track fell to executive producer Brian Buckner, a longtime writer on the show. Despite the behind-the-scenes upheaval, the series saw a major uptick in quality and, more important, coherence. Plotlines once seen as indicative of True Blood's worst instincts (e.g., Andy knocks up a faerie!) suddenly became plotlines indicative ofTrue Blood at its most inspired (Andy grapples with his daughters' deaths). Going into Sunday's finale, the show seemed like it was being steered by capable hands.

But afterwards, the hard-earned, still fragile goodwill the show had accrued over the season seemingly dissipated overnight. Sure, some recappers liked it, but the immediate Internet consensus was that True Blood had just hit rock bottom. So what happened? Was it the very appealing and charismatic Warlow suddenly backhanding Sookie? Was it the jarring time jump? Was it Eric Northman's almost offensively inglorious "death"? What exactly was it that made people reject this finale as somehow not being up to par with Season 2's ostrich egg finale? To find out, Vulture reached out to Buckner to get the first-time showrunner's take on this negative feedback, plus ask about his intentions for season seven. We also used the opportunity to get an official confirmation about that Jason-Eric sex dream we were promised.

Some would argue that it's the job of a showrunner to create a controversial season finale. Nice job!
Yeah. I mean I knew it was controversial, I just didn't think it would be hate-inspiring.

Why do you think the finale fueled so much negativity?
Well, it's testament to Alex Skarsgard. People want those ten or twelve weeks with him in their living room and they may have feared we were taking him away from them.

It was a relief to hear that Eric will be back as a regular next season. Can you also confirm that these infected vampires aren't actually zombies?
Well, they're not zombies in the way that we're used to zombies. They're vampires and they need to eat humans, which all vampires do. But in order to stave off the effects of this mutating virus, they need to eat more, and more often, than the vampires that we've been living with for the last few years. The truth is, the way TV works is everybody wants us to have the answers already, but we haven't even gotten in the [writers'] room for season seven yet. We knew that this was a story that we wanted to tell for next season and the idea that we were going to force vampires and humans into uneasy relationships for their own protection seemed like a really ripe place for us to go and is going to create character combinations that we haven't had before. In terms of what every rule of this mutating virus is, we still have to do that work.

Will the feedback you've received recently influence the story lines of season seven?
I don't think so. Look, the blogosphere ... This, by the way, is my very first time sitting in this chair, watching something like this happen. It is my first rodeo. But I have been making TV for a long time and I don't think that we should let the audience tell us what show to make. Because I think it's the death of television if we give people exactly what they expect to get every week. What's the point? So the idea that we need to release material beforehand and immediately come clean with our audience and promise to not surprise them anymore, I'm not sure that's the TV world that we want to deliver.

Early seasons of any show are usually about the thrill of discovery, whereas later seasons are about deepening the elements already established. Is it fair for viewers to compare a show's sixth season to its first?
Look, I sit in a strange place because it's not my show. I've just been here the whole time. What I'm trying to do is the best version of the show as I see it, because I can't be Alan [Ball]. And I can't be all the other writers that we've lost. So, I'm trying to go back, not necessarily to season one, but to the show that Iwould want to watch. [The audience] doesn't speak with one voice. It's a lot of voices, not any one person. We start to think, This is what the people think, but there's varying opinions. This person loves Tara, but this person can't stand her. Or this person would've killed off, say, Jessica. And I will admit to reading too much feedback, but I don't want to work on a show without Jessica.

Who would?
I don't think we can let this affect us. The good news is that there are certain stories we're currently locked into and also I have a couple more weeks before I have to go back and start to figure this all out. So the newness of these reactions will have worn off and I can just go back to telling story in an instinctual way. You could drive yourself crazy trying to please everybody. It's impossible.

I pretty openly loved this season, but I did detect a bit of course correction in certain story lines and characters. Would you say that's accurate, and if so, was there a story line in particular that you knew you wanted to change when you came in?
The truth of the matter is, this show had a bunch of incredibly strong voices in the writers' room. And I want to — but I'm not going to — get into the specifics, but what you're seeing is a change in showrunners and a staff of writers who really wanted to help execute what was right for the show. What I think the showhas suffered from over the years — and I hinted at this at Comic-Con — is not that our cast is too big; our problem is we've been trying to tell too many stories. And so characters who you'd want to see more of aren't getting a terrific amount of screen time because the stories are so plot-driven and demand so much information, and the changes of location eat up the production budget. I feel like we can learn more about these people in this town and do much more interesting character-driven stories if we reduced the number of separate story lines that we were telling. So if you're seeing a correction, it's essentially that. It means — and this won't come as a surprise to Joe Manganiello — closing off werewolf pack stories.

Thank you.
If there's a story with the werewolves, it shouldn't just be that they're sexy together. We know we want to use Alcide on the show, but I'm not sure that when you cut away from the vampire story to what's happening in the pack ... Is that really the story that we think our audience wants to see or that we even want to write? So it's sort of like that. I wouldn't call it a correction, I would just say the premise of the series in the first place was: If vampires really exist, what would their relationship with the humans look like? And so that's where we're going. This show is at its most interesting when it's asking those questions and it's not about hunting down a big bad and being completely plot-driven.

How dare you deny us a Jason-Eric sex dream? Or should we expect that in season seven?
I think you can reasonably expect it. With our show there is an appetite — Alan from the get-go called it "popcorn for smart people." And popcorn is addictive: You keep eating it and expect there to be another piece of popcorn right away. My favorite shows on TV make you wait for things. So the idea that I failed to deliver on a promise when I only made one episode after that promise ... You know, sometimes things are better when we wait for them. I would love to get our audience conditioned to the idea that this might be a show that delays gratifications sometimes. Because of course we know people want to see that dream. The setup wasn't written lightly. And believe me, there were HBO executives who were saying, "You have to give us the dream!" And we will. Of course we will. But that doesn't mean it has to come in the very next episode.

It seemed like a strange choice to not let Sookie kill Warlow. And what about Chekhov's Fireball?
It's hard. To me, Jason's story this season was he wanted to hunt down Warlow, so you're taking agency away from Jason if you let Sookie be the one to do it. Now, we tried to strengthen Sookie in many ways this season but probably the girl-power version of the story was she should've been the one to take him out. But if she did, there was only one way she could do it and we're not yet prepared to take away Sookie's telepathy. So that's what using the fireball would do. And that's sort of what it came down to.

Why did you decide to make Terry's funeral so prominent this season?
We haven't killed off a lot of our significant characters. What I promised Todd Lowe when I took the job in February was my mission statement is to make life matter again. And that Terry's death will not be in vain and we're going to take the time to mourn him. You know that Auden poem in Four Weddings in a Funeral?

"Stop All the Clocks"?
Yeah. This town was going to stop and say goodbye to somebody. And the fact that Terry was maybe not a top-tier, but a more middle-tier character, sort of served our story better. Which is, every life matters. But the funeral was as much about the celebration of Bon Temps as it was about saying goodbye to Terry. And it was by design to help Sookie understand that she couldn't become Warlow's faerie vampire bride. But in terms of the funeral's significance, we had committed to killing Terry off and I didn't want it to be insignificant, because I don't want the show to be porn and snuff. It was really important to say, if we're going to kill somebody, then let's honor it the way a small town would.

And reestablish the value of human life.
Yes, so that going forward when we kill somebody or if we tease that somebody might be gone, we need our audience to believe us.

This show took a lot of care to make Warlow a sympathetic, plausible romantic option for Sookie, so it was slightly upsetting when he turned into a cretin suddenly. How do you surprise an audience without making them feel betrayed?
I certainly read a lot of that criticism. He was a character who told us that he fought against his darker instincts constantly. It wasn't as if his turn was inorganic or completely unmotivated. He was always a complicated character. Do I think we were perfect in our execution with Warlow? Maybe not. I think I may have missed the mark in terms of peoples' investment in him. I didn't realize we'd actually done as good a job as we apparently did in making people love him? I think I may have always assumed that people would maintain their distrust in Warlow. The thing we were really trying to pay attention to — and I think this may be how we got there, if it was a mistake — was that he had to be compelling enough for Sookie to fall for him. Because she's the character that we worry about screwing up the most. So we were coming at it from the point of view of, Will we hate Sookie for falling for this? So his case had to be compelling. Now, could we have started his turn a little earlier? Maybe? But then we would've been ahead of Sookie and she would've seemed stupid. So it's tough. It's a balancing act, admittedly.

What single moment or element of this season would you say you're proudest of?
I love Bill going after the Governor. It was actually not something that was planned from the beginning of the season, the decision for Bill to take out the Governor and for Sarah to rise up as the Big Bad. So the scene where Sarah sits with Burrell's head and promises to finish his work? That's pretty great in my mind. And I'm not sure that everybody loved it, but Jason's decision to turn Sarah loose, I also thought that the two actors were just stunning there.

I mentioned it in my recap, but that scene was arresting and sophisticated in a way that True Blood maybe isn't very often. Should we expect more of that kind of thoughtfulness when it comes to politics and religion going forward?
I think our No. 1 mandate is to entertain, and if we start to politicize too much I think we will hurt ourselves. The show started out as "popcorn for smart people" — that was Alan's mission statement, and I would love it to still be for smart people. Of course I want it to be smarter. Because all these television shows that people are watching is because they're smart, and I would love to see my work on that list. But we have set up an expectation that we are going to devour story and give a ton of "WTF moments," as Alan would call them, and we still have to do that too.