True Blood star Anna Paquin weighs in on HBO’s reboot

HBO is rebooting vampire drama True Blood, for better or worse. Apparently, even author Charlaine Harris didn’t know it was happening.

Last month, we learned that HBO was in the early stages of rebooting True Blood, the network’s vampire drama that ended in 2014 after seven seasons, the last two of which are pretty widely loathed.

It seems pretty quick to do a reboot of the show, and indeed, we weren’t the only ones surprised it was being considered. According to Anna Paquin, who played protagonist Sookie Stackhouse in the original, not even the author of the source material, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, had wind of it. “Charlaine Harris didn’t even know it was happening,” Paquin revealed to Collider. “Everybody’s phones were blowing up. Cast and crew, by the way, were like, ‘Oh my God, your show is getting picked back up!’ and we were all like, ‘Huh? What?'”

"We do live in an era of entertainment where the reboot and the sequel have become a currency. So, is it time? I don’t know. That’s really not my department. It was some of the best years of my life, but I don’t think them continuing to tell those stories or continuing in that world really has anything to do with the thing that we created. That’s its own special little entity that was ours and came with a whole family of cast and crew who are still in touch."

I’m not terribly surprised that the original author wasn’t informed; this kind of fits with a recent pattern established by WarnerMedia, where they make big moves without roping in potential creative partners, although original showrunner Alan Ball is attached as an executive producer on the new series.

“I wish them well,” Paquin continued. “I don’t know if they need us for anything. Aren’t we all too old now? But it’s a fun world. It’s a supernatural world with endless possibilities. Of course, there’s room to do more and to tell more stories within that universe. We don’t own it.”

There’s no release date for the True Blood reboot yet, assuming it even goes forward, although I’m thinking it will.

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h/t CBR