Joe Manganiello : USAWeekend

True Blood fans have their Team Bill and Team Eric camps — referring to the vampire suitors of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), the telepathic heroine of Alan Ball’s HBO show andCharlaine Harris’ best-selling book series. Yet, keep an eye out for Team Alcide once Joe Manganiello debuts on the show. The third season of True Blood premieres on HBO Sunday night, but Manganiello shows up in the third episode June 27 as Alcide Herveaux, a Mississippi werewolf hired to be Sookie’s bodyguard by vampire Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) and to escort her into an underground society of werewolves after her boyfriend, bloodsucker Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), goes missing. A Pittsburgh native and vet of TV shows such as One Tree Hill and How I Met Your Mother, Manganiello is loving his role so far and checked in recently after getting the script for the season finale. “It’s so wild,” he says. “This season is crazy, and the finale is no exception.” Read below for Manganiello’s thoughts on his furriest co-star, his longtime love for horror and whose cape he’d love to throw on in a superhero movie. Also, check out this clip featuring Manganiello and Paquin.

Were you a True Blood viewer before you were cast?
I was. I watched the premiere episode when it came on, and a couple months after that, a friend of mine sent me a web link to a blog on True-Blood.net and that blog was speculating as to who would play Alcide when he showed up in the show. Fans of the books were posting pictures of who they think should play Alcide, and some were posting pictures of me. It was really cool so I saw that, and I thought, “A werewolf for True Blood? That’d be amazing!” So I ordered the books and started reading them, and the character was described as looking very similar to me: tall, dark hair, the whole deal. So I really got into the show and made sure I never missed an episode and really started following it online.

 

From One Tree Hill to How I Met Your Mother to even the Taco Bell commercial they play constantly, you often steal most every scene you’re in and have a definite presence. Is that due to just staying busy in a variety of roles?
I guess I just go with everything 100 percent. I do the best I can. Maybe it’s my size, I don’t know. I’m a big guy, and I take up a lot of space. [Laughs]

 

Do you get that a lot where people know your face and roles but maybe not the name?
Yeah, sometimes people have thought that we’ve hung out, and it’s just because they kind of associate me with being in their living room. That definitely happened. But on the other side of it, I’m 6-foot-5, I’ve got long hair and a beard, and I kind of stick out. [Laughs] People generally remember where they saw me.

 

Was it cool being on set that first day and getting into a character that so many fans of the books love?
Sure. Being a fan of the show, I want to do it right. I want to do right by Charlaine, I want to do right by Alan Ball, and I want to do right by the fans. Also for me, this is a dream come true to get the chance to actually play a classic Hollywood monster in the line of Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. I was a kid who grew up on black and white monster movies, and Halloween was my favorite holiday. Every year, my mother would help me make some elaborate costume so that I could go on that night. So to get to do that as an adult, I wanted to make sure I put all my effort into it. Showing up that first day, there was a lot of pressure on me but it was also a lot of fun. I remember being in the middle of a scene on my first day and, in the middle of the scene, looking at Anna and my brain’s going, “That’s Sookie Stackhouse! And that’s Sookie’s house!”

 

Have you seen your wolf transformation yet or what you’re going to look like in wolf mode?
Actually, we use live wolves on set this year. I actually turn into a live wolf. His name’s Thunder and he’s a giant North American timber wolf. He has yellow eyes and is a beautiful animal. We both play the same character – I turn into him and he turns into me.

 

Is he tame enough for you to pet or do you have to maintain some distance?
There is a protocol for behavior around the wolves, but a couple of weeks ago, I went up to the ranch where my wolf lives and they let me take him out for about 45 minutes up through the mountains — under supervision, of course. He responded to his name and I can pet him. There is an adjustment period where they have to become acclimated to you, but once they are and they like you and take to you, you can walk them around and do stuff with them. It’s pretty fun.

 

In True Blood, vampires are trying to fit into society and there’s a lot of subtext in that. How do the werewolves fit in?
It’s the same basic principle, except vampires have come out of the coffin. They’ve come out to the world, and the werewolves are still hidden. Along with that comes a lot of very interesting questions. They can’t go to normal doctors, and they can’t be in jail for over a month because obviously they know the full moon will change them. There’s a lot of these rules and curiosities to werewolf society we explore through this season. And on top of that, you have the relationship between werewolves and vampires because they both know of each other and hate each other. When I was auditioning for the part, Alan said, “When a werewolf thinks of a vampire, I want you to think of the way that a Jew would think of a Nazi.”

 

Sookie’s got so many love interests, it’s hard to keep track. Does Alcide make it a love square?
Anytime you’re gonna see Sookie, you’re gonna see Alcide. As her bodyguard, he’s not far from her side. Both of them are definitely going through relationship issues – Alcide’s fiancée has recently left him, so he’s in this dark, heart-broken kind of place, and Sookie’s gone through her trials and tribulations with Bill. You put the two of them together, and I guess we’ll see what happens.

 

Is it surreal for you yet that you’re talking to people about playing a werewolf?
Oh yeah! As a young kid, my parents sent me to Catholic elementary school, and I remember one of the nuns saying to me, “If you pray to God and your faith is pure, God can move mountains.” I heard that, and I went, “OK, you have to pray with pure faith and God will answer you. Great!” So I would wake myself up at 5:30 in the morning and walk up in the dark to 6 a.m. mass, and I would pray every morning for weeks on end that God would turn me into a werewolf. [Laughs] I was a little, little kid with Coke-bottle glasses, and I would pray for weeks. And nothing happened. I thought to myself, “This is a gyp! And the nuns are wrong and there’s nothing out there listening to me.” I just felt stupid. And of course, here I am 25 years later and I turned into a werewolf.

 

What was your favorite Halloween costume when you were a kid?
I was 3 years old, and my mom dressed me up like Dracula with the little teeth and the widow’s peak and the whole deal. They took me to a haunted house — which is kind of weird to take a 3-year-old to a haunted house. [Laughs] But I guess they thought I would be OK with it. I don’t think most 3-year-olds would. The story goes there was a vampire in a coffin in the haunted house and he jumps out, and all the adults recoiled in fear. And me in my little vampire costume, I walked up to the coffin. The vampire reached down and picked me up and put me in the coffin with him and closed the lid. I was happy to go do it! I don’t know if I thought I was in character or I really believed I was a vampire, but I’m sure I was ready to leave my family behind and live with vampires.

 

Are movies where you want to end up or was TV the goal?
I started in film. My first job out of drama school was in Spider-Man. Films are definitely what I’m pushing back into now. But in this day and age, True Blood is better than 99 percent of the movies I go and see at the theater. You don’t see films really taking the risks that cable TV shows take. Cable TV shows have protagonists with very unlikable traits that you wind up knowing and loving anyway. Nobody on True Blood is pristine – everybody has their dark side, and that’s kind of the beauty of it because in real life, everything’s a gray area.

 

You mentioned that you’re a pretty big dude. Did you get pigeonholed early in your career because of your size?
Not really. I really haven’t played “big guys.” I’ve played normal parts generally that were written for people different than I was. What you were talking about before with the presence thing, it’s probably the fact that when I get cast in a part, I have to make that part fit me. Alcide in the books is described as being really big, but the part could have been played by someone who wasn’t as big. I just lucked out.

 

Are you still a horror fan?
Well, my career started out working with Sam Raimi, and that was really cool. I’m a fanboy at heart. I was and still am a big comic book fan. I read The Walking Dead zombie comics, and I went to Monsterpalooza in April that was out in L.A., this big festival for all the movie horror monsters. It’s something I loved as a kid and still love today. Obviously with this job and stuff like Spider-Man, I’ve got fanboy cred now.

 

Are they taking you to Comic-Con this year for the True Blood panel?
Yeah, I’ll be on the panel at Comic-Con. I hear it’s like a rock show. I’ve gone in the past, but not a part of something as huge and popular as True Blood.

 

Maybe you can jockey for a superhero role while you’re there.
Well, I know they’re getting ready to reboot Superman. That was something that was always on my radar as a little kid.

 

You might have to shave for that, though.
We’ll see. I can always shave it off. Maybe at Comic-Con we can get a “Joe for Superman” thing going!