Joe Manganiello Says the "True Blood" Cast was "Really, Really Overqualified"

[JamesG]

Joe Manganiello Says the Cast of "True Blood" was "Really, Really Overqualified"
by Lester Fabian Brathwaite
July 24, 2024


"True Blood" was a campy, blood-soaked, incredibly naked cultural phenomenon when it aired on HBO from 2008 to 2014, and according to breakout star Joe Manganiello, the cast was way too overqualified for it.

Manganiello was a guest on the latest episode of Penn Badgley's podcast with Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, Podcrushed, where he discussed developing his acting chops at Carnegie Mellon.




And while he called "True Blood" a "really wild, crazy, intelligent" show that "pushed the culture forward," he noted that pretty much the entire cast had some serious thespian pedigrees.

"What's funny about True Blood was, you know, we were all really, really overqualified," Manganiello said, adding, "Well, I should say the material was deceptively tricky because it was kind of written in like Tennessee Williams. It was very operatic at times."




"But, you know, but it's all theater kids," the actor/host said. "It's like people with Tonys and Oscars and, you know, Mike McMillan and I were the Carnegie Mellon kids, then there was Rutina [Wesley] and Nelsan [Ellis] were the Juilliard kids, then Chris Bauer was the Yalie, then you get West End of London, then you get this international cast.

You got [Alexander] Skarsgård from Sweden. You had, [Stephen] Moyer from England. And Anna [Paquin], obviously, from New Zealand by way of Canada. It was really, really intelligent, trained actors."

https://ew.com/joe-manganiello-says-...lified-8683343