Why did you decide to cast Anna Paquin as the main character Sookie?
Anna pursued the role. In the beginning I thought “Well why would Anna want to do TV? She’s got a movie career.” I’m used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them. I thought about it and I thought of course she’d like to do this, it’s a fantastic role, a great role. Nobody is going to cast her like this in a movie yet. I was a little worried that she wouldn’t want to dye her hair blond, but actually she was very willing. I felt a responsibility to be as true as I could to the book. You have to be close enough so they don’t think, “Whoa it doesn’t make any sense.” But ultimately physical resemblance isn’t as important as whether this person can bring this character to life in a way that’s compelling and makes me care about what happens to them. Tell us more about the vampire Eric played by Alex Skarsgard. Will he be in a lot of episodes? Eric is a 1,000-year-old vampire who came to America from Scandinavia. He was a Viking who became a vampir
