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'True Blood' revels in the details: Ball, Paquin and Moyer at HBO panels

By April MacIntyre Jul 29, 2011, 5:53 GMT

06/21/2011 - Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer - HBO\'s "True Blood" Season 4 Premiere - Arrivals - Arclight Cinemas - Hollywood, CA, USA © Tina Gill / PR Photos

HBO’s campy vampire series "True Blood" will 'keep on keeping on' the HBO network, as showrunner Alan Ball and real-life couple Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer (Sookie and Bill) shared anecdotes about line envy (Kristin Bauer gets the best to reel off) to who Stephen thinks rocks on the show.

Ball also delighted in revealing the devil's in the visual details of Southern Gothic fang-tastic series.  "We try to create a world in which vampires are just part of the fabric of the society. So in a production meeting, we’ll say, 'If she’s reading a tabloid, it should be about what just happened in the show.'" says Ball. "You know, it should be I’m sure if Russell Edgington went on TV and ripped out a guy’s spine on national TV, it would be in all the media. So it should reflect that. So we just put together a fake tabloid with that. This year we had a it’s very quick. I don’t know if you even see it. There’s a 'Good Housekeeping' with Nan Flanagan on the cover saying, 'I’m a clean freak.' "

Speaking at the True Blood panel for the summer Television Critics Association press tour, Ball made it clear he wants to keep the vampire tales going strong in the fictitious Louisiana town of Bon Temps:  “I have no desire to leave. Doing the show is more fun than anything else I’ve ever done.”

Star Anna Paquin responded to one reporter's question about the fun lines the actors get to dole out:  " I think that the more you can bring humor into darkness, I mean, I think in real life one of the things I always find is that, if you can laugh through a situation even if it’s incredibly sad or really hard, you know, it’s kind of the way through, and I think that our show uses that in a really great way. Also it’s just kind of really fun for someone to write you in a way that makes you sound incredibly funny..."

Stephen Moyer added, "I think that one of the things in those first three scripts that we saw that Alan wrote was this humor, and it wasn’t until, I think, Anna first saw that pilot back in the day that I really realized just how funny it is.  My character isn’t one of the ones who gets many of those lines because he’s kind of more melancholic and introverted and stuff. But I was very pleased in Episode 5, the one that just happened, where Pam comes on with a huge kind of thing [hat] because she’s covering her screwed-up face, and Bill says, 'Oh, good. The world needs more beekeepers.' So when you get those lines, you’re like, 'Yes!' Because we all get them, and we all look forward to hearing the other people read them in the table read.

Kristin Bauer plays Pam, the icy beauty who is a supplicant of Erica Northman. Anna Paquin revealed the pale diva got the meaty one-liners.  "I mean, Kristin gets a lot...She does them so beautifully."

Moyer agreed: "Kristin’s got one coming up that is possibly one of the great lines of all time. So that’s coming up."

As for appreciated secondary characters, Moyer praised Carrie Preston and Todd Lowe, the Merlotte's Diner waitress and cook couple cursed with a creepy baby. "I have a great love for Arlene and Terry. I think Carrie Preston and Todd Lowe, who play those two characters, have created an amazing relationship with very, very small material compared to less material than a lot of us have on the show, and I love their relationship. I very rarely get to go to Merlotte’s or any of those places. So Nelsan, Chris Bauer — there’s some amazing actors," shared Moyer.

Ball revealed how the small details were almost as important as the big story arcs. "I just love little details like that because I one of the things that I love about the show is I feel like it’s something that you can watch, and then you can watch it again, and start to pick up these tiny little throwaway details and stuff like that. Those are the kind of shows I love to watch."