Amelia Rose Blaire’s ‘True Blood’: Entering A World of Sex

Amelia Rose Blaire’s ‘True Blood’: Entering a World of Sex, Southern Drawls, and Vampires

By Jeffrey Rindskopf

Amelia Rose Blaire was nervous about her audition. She’d been a working actor for a few years, but that was mostly playing bit parts on shows like Law and Order: SVU. This was the big time — for HBO — and a hugely successful series that she, herself, loved: True Blood.

The audition involved a character named Willa pleading not to be murdered, and Blaire was up against many other actresses who wanted this role. The question was how to make herself stand out in a real, authentic, and believable way; or as believable as one could appear in a world populated by vicious vampires.

But as Blaire prepared to read for the producers and casting director, she kept thinking about a recent surreal experience. It involved the day her sister’s cat was run over by a car.

“I went to my mom’s house, where [my sister] was staying,” she says thoughtfully. “My sister was holding her cat, and she was wailing like I’d never seen her before, screaming ‘Is he dead? Is he dead?’ at the top of her lungs. It was such a profound moment for me, because I’d never seen her like that and I’d never had an experience like that.”

It was a startling event, one she couldn’t get out of her mind, and this recent rush of raw emotion suddenly gave Blaire something new to work with.

“Under any other circumstances, if I had gotten that audition I would have made it about not wanting to die. Instead, I made it about wanting to live.”

That turn-around and display of authentic pain was exactly what the producers of the hit HBO series were looking for, and Blaire got the role. But that should be no surprise to fans of the show. From its inception, True Blood has turned the traditional gothic concept of vampires upside down, creating a captivating witch’s brew of comedy, drama, mystery and sex that constantly leaves viewers gasping for more.

In the sixth season alone, Blaire’s character was not only transformed into a vampire, but gotten caught between loyalties to her new master Eric (played by Alexander Skarsgard) and her traditionalist father, Louisiana Governor Burrell. When we last saw Willa, she was in a dark place — her father dead and Eric’s fate uncertain, after he had burst into flames while sunbathing naked at the end of the Earth.

For any actor — especially one who had been a fan of the show since it first launched — that kind of intense story arc would be a huge hurdle. But, like with her audition, Blaire used her own emotions to her benefit.

“That I was experiencing this intimidation worked with where Willa was, because she was getting swept up into this world which she knew nothing about,” Blaire says. “It paralleled what I was going through in a nice way.

“It’s been a real learning experience,” she continues, the excitement of working on a show she loves clearly evident in her voice. “I’ve never gotten to play a character this long before, and I have to play Willa without knowing how it will end. In a movie, you know where a character’s arc is, but with True Blood, I have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s like life, in a way.”

Now in its seventh and final season, Blaire’s role has been upgraded from recurring to regular, and Willa is going through some even bigger changes.

“So far this season, I’ve gotten to work with a very different group than I worked with last season,” she teases.  “The things I’m doing to prepare now are very different than what I did last season, because Willa’s in a different place.”

And how will Willa’s role play out as the show concludes?

“I have no idea how it’s going to end or where it’s going,” she laughs, perhaps hinting that she does know a little more than she’s letting on. “But we’re moving very fast towards something, and I’m excited to see what it is we crash into. I think it’s going to be the perfect end.”