“True Blood” stars Anna Paquin, 41, and Stephen Moyer, 54, met on HBO’s beloved fantasy horror drama (2008-2014) known for its graphic sex scenes.
That made it somewhat, well, awkward once Moyer (vampire Bill Compton) began directing “True Blood” episodes — and filming sex scenes involving Paquin, who played telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse.
However the married couple, who live in Manhattan, told The Post that they eventually got used to what might have been an especially difficult situation.
“Steve began directing me once we were on ‘True Blood,’” Paquin said. “And in Season 7, our final season, he directed the season opener, which had Sookie in love with the large beautiful werewolf Joe Manganiello.
“Steve directed us in a slightly explicit sex scene,” she said, “so if you ask whether it is awkward to shoot a movie with your husband, the bar for awkward is ready terribly high in our household, not to say on that show on the whole.
“Stephen cut his teeth directing [on ‘True Blood’] and by Season 3 or 4, it could be like, ‘Hi honey, who’re you f–king on camera today?’”
“There was actually a day where we were walking from our trailers, Alex Skarsgard and Anna and one other actor, and we were all working in dressing gowns going toward our stages,” Moyer said. “It got to some extent where I used to be about to go to 1 stage and Anna and Alex to a different and I used to be identical to, ‘Go for it, guys, good luck, have an excellent time, make it look good.’
“In that Season 7 sequence with Big Joe, there was only a funny moment where I’m going, ‘Joe, you’ll be able to do it, mate. It’s OK, grab it, you’ll be able to do it.’”
Now, Moyer is directing Paquin within the upcoming big-screen indie drama “A Little bit of Light,” out April 5.
It’s nothing like “True Blood” (no sex scenes) and, by now, they’ve got their very own language with regards to filming with Moyer behind the camera.
“One in every of the good joys of working with Anna is that I believe she’s an excellent, genius actor,” Moyer said. “But we even have a shorthand. We don’t discuss [a scene] the night before like, ‘Right, tomorrow, that is what we’re going to do.’ We type of skirt around that because we’ve got a deep understanding of one another as performers and we trust one another.
“Sometimes we leave it to the moment we’re shooting a scene to discuss it.”
Paquin, who won an Oscar in 1994 as a baby actor on “The Piano,” said it helps that she’s worked on several sides of the camera.
“As an actress/producer, I at all times act with one eye on the clock,” she said. “To a certain extent, there are conversations that occur at home, but those are to do with the logistics of how we will get XYZ achieved, like what does the scene need that the movie doesn’t exist without?
“We discover that in discussing mechanical things sometimes little bits of creative stuff get worked out in the method.”
Paquin and Moyer said they might work together again in a TV series if the correct opportunity presented itself.
“It hasn’t come up yet, but that might be the fantasy scenario for our still-school-age children,” Paquin said. “If type of a ‘True Blood’-type thing happened now, our youngsters can be ecstatic and it could be an enormous priority for us to shoot in a single place.”
“We’ve never found the correct thing for us by way of acting together [again],” Moyer said. “But we do have a extremely fun project, an animated series, which is admittedly funny that might involve each of us being voices on that show.
“After we got here up with this concept in the course of the pandemic, all the large animated firms had a crazy backlog of sensible ideas … but we still type of hold out somewhat dream for that one.”