True Hunk

True Blood’s resident lycanthrope JOE MANGANIELLO lands in Hong Kong to promote the latest season of the hit HBO show, as christina ko tries not to swoon

I CAN’T BE sure whether or not I’m projecting when I meet Joe Manganiello at Mandarin Oriental’s M Bar and he seems to be gregarious and eloquent and well-prepared and courteous and really, really (for lack of a better adjective) hot. My tendency to devour True Blood episodes the way a fat kid eats cake – urgently, unceremoniously, fanatically – may just cloud my judgement a pinch.

But if my opinions have been compromised, then so too have those of millions of TV viewers across the world – True Blood ranks as
HBO’s most-watched show since the heyday of The Sopranos – and the hype just keeps growing. The show hits the sweet spot, not so much capturing the zeitgeist as creating it with a pitch-perfect blend of nail-biting plot, modern satire, B-movie gore, graphic sex and Southern charm, with a cast of diverse and surprisingly human superhuman characters including, in no particular order, telepaths, vampires, werewolves, maenads and witches.

Manganiello is best known for his role as the werewolf du jour, the hunky, feral good guy Alcide Herveaux, introduced to the cast in season three as a travel companion-cum-bodyguard to Anna Paquin’s lead character, Sookie Stackhouse.

In the books on which True Blood is based, the Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris, the character of Alcide features more heavily in some books than others. But show creator Alan Ball seems to have taken a liking to Manganiello’s role, further infusing the plot with story arcs featuring the werewolf. When I suggest that this is a reaction to the character’s popularity with viewers, Manganiello shakes his head. “I don’t know that Alan’s somebody who caves to peer pressure – as evidenced by him killing off most of the cast after season four. I think Alan does what Alan wants, and Alan does what Alan feels is right,” he says with a laugh. “But whatever the reason is, I think I’ve greatly benefitted. I know for a fact that [Alcide] is going to play a bigger part [in season five.] My role is only going to increase, and I’ll wind up getting into territory that isn’t covered in the books.”

For Manganiello, getting the role of Alcide was a lucky twist of fate. The story goes that fans of his who had read the Harris novels began blogging that he should play one of the werewolves when the story delved into that territory come season three. “I was a big fan of the show,” he says. “And I saw [the blogs], so I ordered the books and read them. These blog sites ended up finding their way back to someone who was friends with one of the casting directors, and she saw my picture as a result and wound up calling me in.” The first role he auditioned for wasn’t Alcide, but Cooter, a secondary werewolf. “After my first audition, I walked out of the room and Alan said to everybody, ‘I think that’s Alcide.’ ” And so Manganiello had the daunting task of joining the cast of a show that was already making massive waves. Ironic for a guy who, when he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s acclaimed drama school, turned down a TV contract “because I was going to do film.”

“At the time I got out of college, television wasn’t what it is today,” he notes. “HBO really revolutionised; it made TV more appealing to show-runners and really creative people like Alan Ball. There’s more freedom now in cable TV than there is in film; film is really conservative now – very safe and very boring. I’d rather watch HBO shows than go to the movies.” He did so on the plane ride over.

It’s no accident that the bulk of True Blood’s cast members are classically trained actors, despite the show’s sex, blood and rock ’n’ roll rep. Rutina Wesley (who plays Tara), Carrie Preston (Arlene) and Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette) are all Juilliard graduates; Sam Trammell (Sam) is a Tony-nominated stage veteran; and while Anna Paquin lacks similar formal coaching, she was the second youngest Oscar winner in the history of the award. “You need to have that kind of training to handle [True Blood’s] kind of dialogue,” says Manganiello. I know it’s a show about vampires and werewolves, but it’s deceptively difficult and complicated, the actual performing of it. They need those people in cable TV more than they do for film.”

Twilight this is not, for sure, but I still have to ask – where do the shirtless scenes fit into that whole “serious acting” scheme? Manganiello and other cast members have more than their share of nude scenes and, to promote the show, nude or semi-nude photo shoots (he respectfully dons a suit for a change, at our request, for our portrait). Voted into People magazine’s notorious Sexiest Man Alive issue for 2010 and crowned Men’s Health’s top summer body last year, how does he carry the burden of being a sex symbol? “I wouldn’t call it a burden,” he smiles. “It’s pretty fun. It’s flattering. I was a fan of the first two seasons, so I got to watch what happened to Ryan [Kwanten], Sam and Stephen [Moyer], and then Alex [Skarsgård] as he emerged…I got to watch all of that stuff, so by the time I was cast, I knew what the story was. I knew that being cast as the werewolf meant that I was going to drop my pants and lose my shirt quite a bit.”

He gets to drop trou a fair amount in one of his next projects, too: Magic Mike, a Steven Soderbergh film about a group of male strippers. Manganiello plays one of them, the creatively named Big Dick Richie. If the 35-year-old worries about being pigeonholed as the shirtless guy, it doesn’t show. “Hey, I’ll take it. There’s a lot of jobs out there for that. Heck, it seems like every other movie is a superhero movie these days. I came from a classical background – Chekhov, Ibsen, Shakespeare, you know…I spent my entire career in my 20s with nobody wanting me to take my shirt off. Seems like I turned 30 and everything kind of flip-flopped. I don’t really think about it at all, especially with True Blood – being shirtless isn’t what the show is about, it’s just the icing on the cake. I’m not afraid; I don’t think I’m one-dimensional.”

Neither did the team at Buzzy Multimedia, who solicited his voice to narrate fantasy audiobooks by Patricia Briggs – no abs showing there. And as far as we know, there won’t be a lot of nudity in What to Expect When You’re Expecting, an ensemble romantic comedy based on the best-selling pregnancy guide.

Work certainly is steady for TV’s favourite lycanthrope. And it has been since just days after his college graduation, when he was signed by a talent agency and sent to audition for the role of Flash Thompson in Spider-Man, giving him a feature-film debut in the first film to gross US$100 million in an opening weekend. “The drama school I went to is one of the best in the world. They definitely prepared us. All the agents, they come and farm talent from the schools. That definitely shot me out of the cannon,” he says. It’s the Hollywood dream, and hardly the tale of a boy who valet-parked cars as he waited for his big break. But here’s a lesser-known part of the story: “I was cast in Spider-Man right away…but there was a six-month lag between when I moved to Los Angeles and when Spider-Man started shooting. I needed to pay the bills just until the filming. That first job I got in LA, I was a bodyguard for Tyrese.”

Hardly heavy lifting, I retort. Tyrese doesn’t need a bodyguard, does he? I recall the scene in 2 Fast 2 Furious in which he smashes through a car window with his bare fist.

Manganiello rolls his eyes at me – the oh-don’t-believe-everything- you-see-in-movies-honey look. “Uh, yeah he does. That guy is about half my size. Tiny.”

Then he generously gets to explaining how much of the industry – whether it’s a Southern supernatural show or a fast-driving blockbuster – is “movie magic.” “When I got the [True Blood] job, I thought I was moving to Louisiana. We film in Malibu. It can get really cold in Malibu, whereas Louisiana is supposed to be really humid and hot. Vampires don’t breathe oxygen, so in between takes they have to put ice in their mouths so that when it comes time to shoot the scenes, no breath comes out.”

The point is, if even vampire breath needs to be so painfully constructed, Tyrese probably can’t pierce reinforced glass with his knuckles. I get it. Then I sneak a peek down at Manganiello’s fist, closing over a glass of soda, which he downs in one fluid gulp at the close of the interview. Could he break that window? I’m pretty sure the answer is yes. But maybe I’m just projecting again.