An HBO spokesperson tells The Hollywood Reporter that Denis O’Hare doesn’t appear this season.
As recently as earlier this month, O’Hare told THR that fans should “never give up” on Russell’s return. He also reiterated what series creator Alan Ball had told fans, “Russell’s not dead.”
When HBO released the episode descriptions for this season’s finale episode, it stated "the denizens of Bon Temps brace for a new crisis with a familiar face" and we thought for sure it was referring to Russell.
When we spoke to exec producer and writer, Alexander Woo, before this season’s premiere about the character’s reprisal, he told us, “He’s been locked away, so he’s kind of a time bomb. He could come back in any moment.” So, that moment won’t happen this season.Ausiello has some info on Scott Foley's appearance on TB. Remember last Sunday when Terry was looking at Hoyt and said he had someone all big like him in his platoon? He didn't say it like he liked the guy (seemed to almost growl), so I wonder if this will be that person.
Bon Temps’ population will climb by one in the Sept. 11 season finale when Scott Foley makes his debut as an old friend of Terry’s (Todd Lowe).
The TB gig isn’t expected to impact the actor’s current day job on Grey’s Anatomy, where he’s playing the husband of Kim Raver’s Teddy. We have him around for a decent amount of time,” confirms Grey’screator Shonda Rhimes. “We’d keep him around forever if we could.”Askarsgard.com has the scans of this TVGuide Mag article
Now for the spoilers. The True Blood Season finale is the #1 show to watch for the weeks of August 29th to September 11th. The picture (shown below) says that “Sookie finally chooses between her vamp lovers when the war against Marnie the witch gets bloody deadly.”On the featured article on page 70, TV Guide tells us: Hankie up, True Blood fans. Not everyone survives the Halloween clash between vampires and witches in the fourth-season finale. “There is a body count by the end,” says creator Alan Ball. “It’s more than one death – people we know and love – and it’s pretty shocking.” Alan also says that Antonia is the toughest foe that Bill, Eric, Pam and Jessica have ever fought; that Sookie’s decision choosing between Eric and Bill is her toughest decision she’s ever had to make and two major past characters return. (Says Alan, “One is beloved, the other despised. One reveal is terrifying, and one is emotional and powerful.”) And finally, Alan says, “A lot of things that seemed like they were happening outside of the witch story find their way into it. You’re going to think things are finished when they are not.”
Seems the characters we see in the fun-ale are Gran and King Russell.
Alan Ball talks to Pedestrian, read more at the link.
That’s good to hear. Well I guess we're talking because you'll be discussing your work at the Sydney Opera House later this year and I was wondering if you’d ever done something like that before? I’ve done tonnes of things for print and camera but I’ve never done just me, myself and my work in front of a live audience. I’ve appeared on panels and I’ve certainly done a lot of things with the cast of both True Blood and Six Feet Under but it will be the first time for me with it being just all about me.
Does that scare you at all or are you excited by that prospect? Yeah I’m very excited to come to Australia because I’ve always wanted to come to Australia. It’s at a perfect time because I’m right between seasons four and five of True Blood so I don’t really have anything on my plate so I hope to really experience the country and the continent as much as one can in a short amount of time. In terms of am I scared of the event itself? Not really. I’m assuming that everyone coming is kind of interested.
In the writer’s room when you’re blocking out and breaking a season where does it start for you? What are you trying to achieve and where is the usual starting point in the writer’s room for a new season? For True Blood? Well we start with the book, with the source material. And when we come in for the season we’ve all read the book, we talk about what works, what we feel doesn’t necessarily work, and then we start going from there. The books are all Sookie’s story because Sookie is the narrator of the books, we have a lot of free reign anyway because of all the other characters that we have on the show. And then it’s me and five others and we just sort of very slowly map everything out. We spend a lot of time just talking about what we want the season to be about: Who’s the big villain? How is it going to engage our characters in a way that we haven’t seen before? We have two columns and we start giving little one line descriptions of what happens to each character in each of those episodes and then we start breaking those episodes more individually and we come up with two or three beats for each character or each collection of characters or whatever way they are combined at that point in the story and then we map those out chronologically and then we make an outline and somebody goes off and writes the first draft.
Is there a logical end for you for True Blood? I’m sure there will be, I just don’t see it yet. I mean, everything ends. And I don’t want it to be one of those things that goes on for more seasons than it actually could. You know what I mean? But I do feel like there’s definitely a fifth season. I’ve signed my name on a piece of paper committing to it. And I would imagine that it could go beyond that. Whether or not I will be a part of that is another question because there’s only so much you can do and I’m not as young as I used to be...On the other side of that I’ve never had as much fun on a job and it just keeps being fun, so, who knows.
Is it important for the non-antagonist characters to be likeable? Someone like Tara for example, who can be quite self-loathing and spiteful, is it important to balance a character's likeability with how they serve the plot? I mean I am much more forgiving with characters than a lot of people because I like them all. There is not a single character that I don’t like. I know that a lot times when I was working in TV like the question would be, if she does that then she’s unlikeable or if he does this thing then we’re not going to like him, and I’m like, ‘really? I like him, I think he made a big mistake and he screwed up but that’s the story’. I think it’s important for me for the characters to be strong and to be recognizable and I guess that’s just different wording for likeable. If you can understand why people are behaving a certain way, the seed or the root cause behind it, I mean, it all falls into the Buddhist notion of compassion, and the idea we should have compassion even for our greatest enemies, that we should be able to see their human side, the pain and the suffering that they feel. That’s a tall order. That’s a tall order for most people, including me but I do feel that it’s important to treat fictional characters with the dignity of being a genuine human being and not just like, ‘we need someone to come in and be evil’. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and thinks, 'wow, today I’m going to be evil. I am so hurt by everything that’s happened to me and I’m going to make somebody pay for this.' And they may very well do something that is easily classifiable as evil but I think ultimately, everyone's a human being and that’s part of the joy in the work that I do. Even though they’re fictional characters, I get to peel back the layers and see what it is that screwed them up or that turned them dark or made them a bitch. It’s hard to deal with, but for me that’s the interesting thing.
Who has been the hardest character to kill?
True Blood is different, I mean, it was certainly hard to kill Gran, but Charlaine had killed Gran in the book so I knew that was coming. And True Blood exists in a different world. It’s got such a gigantic body count and death doesn’t really, I mean it’s a very pulpy, heightened story so it doesn’t have quite the same emotional effect as Six Feet Under when it comes to death.
Having said that, once a True Blood character dies, it seems as if they enter some other kind of pantheon in the audience's mind. Godric comes to mind as an example of that.
Oh yeah. And they can always come back in flashback. After season four, people will know there’s a different way for them to come back. I guess True Blood can exist in this world where nobody really dies, ever. [Laughs] You can blow them up and behead them and explode their guts across the screen but they’re not really dead.
Blood Work! "True Blood Recap 4.9: The Monster Box
And no, I'm not just referring to the uncomfortable side-effects of Sookie's dream threesome with Bill and Eric ... (#stillgotit!) In honor of another extra-busy episode of "True Blood", this week's Blood Work! celebrates potential threesomes (dreamed or actual), puts to rest wandering spirits (with ice and a twist of lime), and suggests the formation of a Forgotten True Blood Character Softball League. Join Brian and Andy as they tackle Jess and Jason's tailgate party, Banana Flanagan's shenanigans, Alcide's tendency to carry people around, and much more. From CampBlood.org!Mark Blankenship's Sucker Punch has some good points but seems he is getting tired of some plot repeats. So happy for me to read that someone else likes Scrappy Doo, besides me.
This is another reason I love Sam and Tommy: Their stories keep surprising me. Tommy keeps making irrational decisions that piss people off, but deep down, he loves his brother and wants his brother to love him.
When Tommy shifted into Sam a few weeks ago, it was a reckless gesture, but when he shifts into Sam this week, it's a selfless one. This isn't the same as Tara going back and forth between extremes. It's an example of honest-to-god growth in Tommy's character: He's learning from his mistakes and trying (in his way) to atone for them. He shifts into Sam and goes to confront Marcus, who is furious that Sam is with Luna. He's trying to protect his brother, to keep him safe. But he's also trying to protect Sam's relationship with Luna, which Tommy himself almost destroyed when he shifted into Sam last time. There's a wild nobility there. Tommy's not being thoughtful, but he is trying to be loyal.
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