1. One of the crew working on the original set construction, Mike Wells, used his deceased Grandmother's belongings to decorate the Stackhouse abode. Creator Alan Ball thought this was a marvelous idea and bought in a picture of his Mom, Dad and Brothers, which sat on top of the piano. Over the years many other crew members added personal items of their deceased relatives to the interior of the property.
2. The synthetic blood featured on the show was made from raspberries. Yum!
3. True Blood could've looked very different. Originally Alexander Skarsgård (Eric Northman) auditioned for the role of Bill Compton, Joe Manganiello (Alcide Herveaux) came in and read for the role of Cooter (eventually played by Grant Bowler) and Anna Camp (Sarah Newlin) auditioned for the role of Sookie Stackhouse.
4. It's quite well known that in the original pilot episode of True Blood a different actress, Brook Kerr, plays the part of Tara Thornton. But you might not know that she was busy at work finishing off her very last scenes for episode 2 before she discovered her part had been re-cast. All of Tara's scenes from the first two episodes were filmed again with Rutina Wesley.
5. The fictional town of Bon Temps is located in Louisiana. It is based on the real city of Clifton (That's not to say that Clifton has a Vampire/Werewolf/Shape Shifter problem).
6. Amongst Bon Temps Southern sounding residents were; Anna Paquin who grew up in New Zealand and Canada, British Stephen Moyer, Australian Ryan Kwanten and Swedish Alexander Skarsgård. Sam Trammell was the only main cast member who was actually from Louisiana.
7. Each episode was given a title which was also the name of a song from pop or Christian music.
8. Head over to IMDB and type True Blood into the search bar, you might be surprised to discover that there’d actually been a True Blood movie produced way back in 1989. Don't worry, it's no relation to the show. HBO's True Blood was based on The Southern Vampire Mystery Series by Charlaine Harris, whereas this action flick was about street gangs and just features a character (played by Jeff Fahey) who is called Ray Trueblood. When the series became a hit, the movie was rushed out again on budget DVD. It was given a new, rather sneaky cover (above). Note the washed out faces, probably to give the false appearance of them being vampires. Buyer beware!!!
9. Before True Blood one of Alexander Skarsgård biggest roles was playing Meekus in the Ben Stiller film Zoolander...
10. Nelson Ellis came up with (and the particular phrasing of) the word "Hookah" himself, it was nowhere to be seen in the script. He continued to ad-lib it until the writers just naturally added it to Layfayette's lines.
11. Sookie almost had herself a vampire for a brother. That is to say Ian Somerhalder, who would go on to star in The Vampire Diaries, auditioned for the role of Jason Stackhouse.
12. Anna Paquin landed her first movie role in The Piano at the age of 9. However, because it was an R rated movie she was not allowed to watch it. In 1994, at the age of 11, Paquin became the second youngest person ever to win an Oscar (the youngest was Tatum O'Neal, who was ten when she won for Paper Moon btw) for the role of Flora McGrath in The Piano, and still she hadn't seen it! Eventually at the age of 13 she was allowed to watch a heavily censored version of the movie. In 2009 she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and revealed that she had only just recently saw her Oscar-winning performance in full for the very first time.
13. Over the years, Sookie acquired herself many a fan, but none of them went as far as Snoop Dogg! He had such a crush on Sookie Stackhouse that he even made a video about it...
14. Deborah Ann Woll, who played Jessica, actually does not have red hair. She’s a natural blonde but had been dyeing it red since she was 14. She's not the only one as Anna Paquin is actually a brunette. She died her hair blonde especially for the show.
15. Stephen Moyer was not a newcomer to the vampire business when he landed the role of Bill Compton. Back in 1998 he appeared in the British vampire series Ultraviolet. Not saying he's typecast or anything but after True Blood Moyer provided the voice of the vampire Jared on Phineas and Ferb...
16. Alexander Skarsgård was a front runner for the role of Thor in Marvel's big screen movies. He met several times with director Kenneth Branagh and Marvel head Kevin Feige, and screen tested in the full Thor costume. Some time later Skarsgård spoke with MTV about the superhero, the reporter said to him he thought Skarsgård should've won the role as he had the perfect look for Thor, the Swede responded "So did I."
17. Joe Manganiello, who plays Alcide Herveaux, used to get paid $25 a week to dress up like Captain Morgan at bars.
18. Talking about Joe Manganiello, women sure seem to have a thing for him. Maybe they've never seen this picture of Joe as a teenager...
19. There is a True Blood jewelry collection available to buy. It was commissioned by the studio and created by jeweler Udi Behr. Ironically most of the jewelry is made from silver.
20. Charlaine Harris, the author of the books True Blood is based on, made a cameo appearance in the Season 2 finale...
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This article was originally published August 24th 2014
