The Vault – TrueBlood-Online.com

True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten is excited that season 5 of True Blood will show a smarter and more mature Jason Stackhouse.

“When you look at Jason in season one he had a very tunnel view of the world and some would say an ignorant view. And now, that speech he gave to Newlin was ‘Look, I accept who you are, whether it’s a vampire, whether it’s a gay man, or both. But that’s not the way this dog barks,’” the handsome and talented Aussie told Parade.com. “That’s a huge step for Jason to change his spots…Towards the end of the season, which we are shooting now, he puts the things he has learned into practice and starts to show his true colors.”

Below is a portion of an interview Ryan Kwanten gave to Parade:
 
 
On his relationship with Jessica.

“As you know, with relationships on True Blood, things can go askew pretty quickly. And Jason’s not known for being the most stable of fellows.”

On Jason possiby being turned into a vampire.

“I don’t think he would enjoy that. As much as he wants a supernatural, superhuman power, he’s enjoying, almost as much as I am, being one of the few humans left in that town.”

Jason: the new sheriff in town?

“Andy is sort of losing his stranglehold on being a sheriff so Jason is very much taking the reigns of authority and responsibility, which knowing his history, that’s a pretty scary thing putting this guy in charge.”

How he matures this season.

“Even in that first episode, you get a good indiciation that Jason, at the very least, is trying to be a better man. He’s aware of his fallibilities where before there was an innocence to him. He would keep making the same mistakes, never really learning. Now he’s aware how much his faults hurt him and other people. Him and Sookie towards the middle of the season find out new information about their parents. It will give the audience a real weight about what the characters have gone through and the reasons they do the things they do; why they are the way they are.”

Jason’s driving motivation.

“He’s making a conscious effort to have some direction in life and he’s making a conscious effort to put other people before himself. That’s the bane of existence of being a policeman. He first joined for the cool factor, to carry a firearm and those accoutrements, but he quickly realizes there is a responsibility that comes with that power. He mans up pretty well. Towards the end of the season, which we are shooting now, he puts the things he has learned into practice and starts to show his true colors. I’m kind of proud of the way he has grown up.”

On his upcoming film Hands of Stone with Robert De Niro.

“I’ll be playing a guy called Ken Buchanan who is the most famous Scottish boxer. It’s the story about Roberto Duran who, if you follow the boxing world, was a huge boxer in the seventies and early eighties. He fought Sugar Ray Leonard. De Niro would play this coach who comes out of retirement to train Roberto because he sees a real hope in him. The producers are finding the last bit of money for that and we’ll hopefully start shooting that this year.”

On his knack for accents.

“It’s funny, I’ve never really had problems doing them. I’ve never had dialect coaches or anything like that. I take great pride in doing it myself. That’s just how I’ve always done it. I don’t have that many talents but doing accents may be one of them.”

On playing Charles Manson.

“That [project] is still there but it’s the nature of Hollywood where you get signed on to these projects. They still want me but they’re still finding the last bit of money. I don’t know if that’s shooting this year because my schedule is already pretty full. That may be next year.”

 
read the entire interview by going to: parade.com

In last Sunday’s episode of True Blood, I Wish I Was The Moon, we found out that Jason was not going to turn into a werepanther. I wonder why he had to spend four episodes tied to a bed being repeatedly raped if there wasn’t going to be any outcome other than him escaping. But, with that said, I’m still glad that it turns out that he is not a supernatural. I like True Blood when we see the vampires co-existing with the humans; that’s its magic, so I’m glad that we have kept this our Bon Temps resident very human, at least for awhile.

In the article from The Atlantic, below they investigate the humanity that is Jason. We read more about why we want Jason to stay as human as he can.

Jason is one of the main anchors still tying Bon Temps to normal: even though he has been kidnapped by were-panthers, joined and then been hunted by vampire-hating cults, developed and overcome an addiction to V, and wandered into any number of other insane situations, he maintains an amazing naivete and small-town aura. He’s got some sort of normality Teflon—all the weirdness just rolls right off him.

Some of Jason’s best lines exist at least partly to demonstrate his small-town cred. The best this week was Jason’s voicemail line: “If this is an emergency, dial 911 and ask for me.” Last week’s winner was his shocked “Good GRAVY!” as he sat up in bed after some intense and guilt-ridden sex dreams about Jessica. Poor Jason used to be the normal one protecting weirdo sister Sookie, but now just about everyone turns out to be some kind of magical freak of nature, tossing normal into the minority. Jason’s best friend is dating a vampire; his friend Lafayette is a reluctant witch; his ex-girlfriend turned out to be a psychopath were-panther; his sister finds a way to get mixed up with any kind of supernatural imagined or unimagined. As Jason confides to Jessica in his panic-attack induced introspection (Jessica’s lovingly pitying line about panic attacks was possibly the best-delivered line of the night—Jason gets a lot of loving pity), sometimes he feels a bit left out of all the special. Just as it seems that he is finally going to be—unwillingly—provided with a power of his own by being turned into a were-panther, his terror at the thought is immediately followed up by disappointment when it turns out to be a false alarm. Of course Jessica consoles him by telling him how very special he is—he’s a football star! and so good-looking!—but we know better. He’s endearing, adorable, sweet, dumb, and normal.

To read more go to: theatlantic.com

June 26 is only a month away and that’s the day when we will all end the wait to see True Blood Season 4 begin. HBO has released some screen test videos for the cast members and below are those for Stephen Moyer (Bill), Sam Trammell (Sam), Ryan Kwanten (Jason), Rutina Wesley, (Tara), and Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette).

source: HBO youtube.com

This post has been updated with a high quality version of Bill’s promo.

These are hoto’s of the True Blood set in Louisiana, it is the house used as Jason’s house. Fairness tells us that her parent’s house was used for the shooting of True Blood.

She says: “My parents live just south of Shreveport and their house will be used as Jason’s house. I was home this weekend and down the road they were working on the smashed up aftermath of the Drainers’ trailer house. I didn’t go investigate closely, but did see a few trees knocked over and a demolished trailer house — convincing as a freak tornado / Bill’s revenge. I also know that a local plantation type house and a cemetery are under contract for filming. Now, having grown up in North Louisiana and then later reading the books, I think that the locations they’ve chosen so far are spot on. Seriously, when I read a decription of Jason’s house, I knew that my folks’ house would be perfect. Yeah, I’m biased. Anyway, they are shooting the outside scenes at my parents’ house and re-creating the interior on a sound stage. The HBO folks were at the house last month measuring the width of the wood paneling, matching swatches of upholstery and paint, taking a million pictures and making sketches. It’s certainly going to be surreal seeing my childhood home so accurately recreated on tv.”

“I can guarantee that at least Jason’s house will look “authentic.” My mom asked the HBO folks if she should power-wash all of the spider webs off the house (in Louisiana there are tons of spiders and they leave webs everywhere). They told her that if she knocked down all the webs, they’d just have to put some back up. They also insisted that my Dad NOT clean up his junk piles in the yard. Mom wasn’t too happy about that! Not to imply that our house is trashy or anything, but in the country, piles of “good stuff” (i.e., junk) tend to accumulate in the yard. Yeah, we got a real kick out of the HBO people taking pictures of the pile of car batteries and empty propane bottles in front of the shed, as if it were some fabulous prop.

click image for bigger pic.

Jason’s house as seen in S1E9 shown below.

These photo’s were taken by Fairness.

Photo’s of the set of Jason’s backyard with boothouse as seen in Season 1 Episode 9.

click image for bigger pic.

Screenshot from S1E9 below

Ryan Kwanten is the very definition of “man pretty.”

Clad in an expensive suit, the 32-year-old Aussie sits in the Four Seasons hotel restaurant in Toronto, flashing his dimpled smile as he speaks in his charming accent. Not only is he easy on the eyes, but he’s very gracious to the attentive waitress, first politely declining anything to drink before timidly asking if they have any green tea.

“I felt bad not ordering anything,” he explains after the waitress leaves. “Like I’m taking up valuable room.”

The restaurant is practically empty.

The real-life Kwanten is a stark contrast to Jason Stackhouse, his character on True Blood, the HBO vampire drama from Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. The actor agrees, admitting that he has very little in common with the “modern-day, redneck Casanova” he plays on the show.

“He has no willpower; he has an addiction complex; he has an insecurity complex,” Kwanten says. “But I think everyone knows someone like Jason – well, maybe not to the full extreme of the trouble that he gets himself into.”

He soon discovered that the hardest part of playing Jason wasn’t mastering the Louisiana accent, performing the frequent nude scenes or even acting opposite vampires and demons. No, Kwanten struggled most with making Jason a three-dimensional, sympathetic character.

“It was a scary thing for me because at first, [Jason] doesn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities to him,” Kwanten explains, adding that he didn’t want Jason to be a caricature. “But I think if you look past what he gives you, he covers his insecurity by sleeping with women or not really being who he is. I think it’s in the moments when you see him by himself, in his apartment or his parents’ house, you see a little snippet of who Jason really is. I think of those times when he’s alone are really powerful.”

Luckily for the actor and everyone else involved with the show, vampires are experiencing another surge in popularity. While teenagers are all about Twilight lately, older viewers immediately gravitated toward True Blood, prompting HBO to order a second season after only two episodes had aired. The ratings have continued to grow as the weeks go on, with viewers continuously posting on True Blood message boards, eagerly anticipating the season finale this Sunday (Nov. 23). For his part, Kwanten still can’t get used to overwhelming fan reaction to the show.

“I’ve done shows and films before that have had positive responses, but people are addicted to this show,” he says. “It’s great being a part of something like that. It’s very rare in an actor’s life where you have such a great, visceral response from people in all types of ways.”

Of course, it’s not Kwanten’s first experience with an enthusiastic fan base. His last big TV role was as (natch) an Australian surfer on the CW drama Summerland and, despite the show being axed in 2005 after two low-rated seasons, he continues to hear from fans who obsessively watch reruns on Nickelodeon and are still heartbroken over its cancellation.

“It’s a totally different kind of fan [from True Blood fans],” Kwanten says. “Even the ones who have since gotten older since Summerland was cancelled, they seem more wide-eyed, whereas the True Blood fans are more inquisitive. They want to know about the character and they want to know about the series – where is this character going? What happens then?”

To be fair to any Summerland fans, True Blood is certainly more layered and has more to analyze than the fluffy CW series.

“Well, you said it,” Kwanten replies, chuckling. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

And unlike Summerland, he adds, when his parents watch True Blood, they say it’s one of the few times in Kwanten’s career that he’s played a character completely different from himself – although they still aren’t completely used to his nude scenes.

“Obviously my parents have seen me naked at some point in my life – but not in those positions,” Kwanten says, grimacing. “But at least this way is certainly better than being over there and watching it with them. That would be a whole other thing.”

So between taking all of his clothes off, starting a relationship with a witch, getting addicted to vampire blood and being framed for several murders, what else could the writers possibly think up for Jason in Season 2? Kwanten doesn’t even want to guess.

“I’ll put it this way: If I’d just suggested something at the beginning of the season, anything I suggested would pale in comparison to what they put me through. I’m happy to just leave it in the writers’ hands and say, ‘Look, whatever you want to bring to the table, I will do,’” he says. “I don’t know what it’s going to be – and I like that.”

source: dose.ca