Backstage has interviews with Deborah Ann Woll and Joe Manganiello.
Deborah:
Getting “True Blood”: “It was a huge room with 10 to 15 [people] sitting in the room watching me,” Woll says. “So in a way it felt a little bit like an intimate theater space, and it was probably one of the most theatrical auditions I have done, because most auditions you’re sitting in a chair. But for this, I asked if I could be physical, and they said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ I remember rolling on the floor because the first scene was this very traumatic ‘turning’ scene.” The only catch was that she did not have a great Southern accent in her arsenal and had only a couple days to come up with one before showing up on set. “Once I heard they wanted me back as a regular,” she says, “I spent the whole hiatus really working on it.”
Joe:
Sounds like a dream come true, but Manganiello found himself disillusioned by Hollywood: “It happened really fast and there were a lot of lessons to learn. I think actingwise, businesswise, I was ready to work, but I don’t think on a personal level I was mature enough to handle a lot of what came with that. So I kind of went away.” He took four years off and went to work in home construction. “I had to shovel literal tons of sand and gravel every day, mix cement, jackhammer, and do this really tough job,” he says. “Today I know that anything I do is better than shoveling.” He now takes a more “blue-collar” approach to the business: It’s all about the work and working as hard as he can.
» Read the full interview
