Stephen Moyer stars as Bill Compton on the smash hit True Blood on HBO and he wishes he had a bigger gay following.
Stephen recently spoke to The Advocate about his trials and tribulations as a vampire with a penchant for biting and French-like sexual deviancy. Asked whether Stephen is conscious of his gay fans, he answered, “I feel very at home in that world, so I’m very pleased about it, but I may come in fourth behind Joe Manganiello, Alex Skarsgård, and Ryan Kwanten, if I’m really honest. I’m a little upset. Once upon a time I was doing very well in that area, but after Alex and Joe joined the show, I naturally went down in the pecking order.” No pun intended with pecking order, right Stephen?
Stephen is stopped more than a famous psychic who is asked about lottery numbers, so it isn’t really surprising that he has been asked by fans to bite them. Stephen says that only if they “look clean and wholesome” will he go in for the bite and he has been asked by a guy in West Hollywood to bite him. Watch out Stephen! Ebola carriers also look clean and wholesome in the first twenty four hours.
Stephen, who is married to the bisexual Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse), delivered one of the most shocking and exciting covers in the controversial history of Rolling Stone magazine, when he, Anna and Alex Skarsgard (Eric Northman) posed naked against one another, with their faces and bodies sprayed with fake blood. Stephen says, “When the photographer suggested the idea for the original shot, we had already shot what we thought would be the cover. Alex and I were actually sitting there eating, and the last thing we wanted to do was take our tops off. Literally 10 minutes later, we had dropped trousers and were in position being sprayed with blood. It was only until an hour later, when Anna and I were driving home and stopped at a traffic light, that we looked at each other and said, “What in God’s name did we just agree to?” Then Alex pulled up to the side of us, we rolled down our window, and he said, “What did we just do?”
The cover went on to be digitally manipulated by fans and showed Stephen with his leg around Alex Skarsgard. This manipulated cover went viral very quickly.
True Blood has also recently been berated for becoming “too gay” and alienating the regular straight viewership. Stephen has an answer to this and says, “Is there such a thing as too gay? We live in a very different world than we grew up in, so if people can’t embrace that aspect of our show, then that’s a shame. I certainly don’t think it’s specifically gay, but our show ticks a lot of boxes for a lot of people. We have an incredibly broad audience, one of the widest demographics in terms of sexuality and age groups, so obviously we’re doing something right.”
There have been questions whether Stephen’s character Bill will have sex with Alex Skarsgard’s character, Eric Northman and Stephen answered to the rather awkward question of when Bill and Eric will have angry vampire sex, “I’ve been asking myself that question for a long time. Alex and I would absolutely embrace that. Last year, when Sookie had her fantasy about the two of them with her, we even suggested it. Of course, Bill and Eric together isn’t necessarily Sookie’s fantasy.”
Homoerotic fan fiction has been all the rage since the show started, with fans writing short stories on Bill and Eric getting all kinky with it. Some of these stories have gone viral and even though Stephen has not read the stories, he says that he heard “it is very graphic”. Celeb Dirty Laundry did some investigation into these stories and found a few at a site with rather promiscuous ads. The stories range from Bill and Eric getting together and also Stephen and Alex as actors getting together. It is as graphic as it is slightly perturbing and not in the sense that it was homoerotic fan fiction, but that fans created these Universes for the characters and actors, and took their time to emulate a simulated Universe. It is as if each and every young fan tried to live out their greatest fantasies in a story not longer than three pages, with more graphic nudity and sex than even the liberal HBO.
Bill and Eric are building on an alliance in the new season and Stephen also had some interesting views on the future of their relationship, “Yeah, it’s a situation where the two of them realize that it’s pointless to be against each other. I like to think that somewhere in their past, maybe the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, or earlier on, Bill and Eric were actually friends and partners in crime. I think they had a messy breakup. Hopefully we’ll get to see what really went on between them in a future season.”
True Blood, in the 5th season (RECAPS HERE), shows no signs of slowing down. Fans have taken to True Blood like Anna Wintour (Editor of Vogue) takes to fur. The show is a dysfunctional, albeit liberal depiction of vampires, werewolves and all things fantasy. Created by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty), True Blood has achieved cult status. The show is interwoven with inside humour, sexuality and more existential issues than at first sight.
True Blood is a captivating and potentially powerful piece of sub-culture and is as forgiving of its audience as it is polarizing.