True Blood Star Boasts HBO’s Hit Series Had a ‘Really Overqualified’ Cast

True Blood was a huge hit for HBO, and is constantly the subject of revival talk among its many fans. According to star Joe Manganiello, one reason for the show’s success was the quality of the cast, which he believes was vastly overqualified for the series.

True Blood became known for its gory, sexy take on the vampire genre from the moment it debuted in 2008. Based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries novel series by Charlaine Harris, True Blood ran for a total of seven seasons, and won itself a huge fandom as well as a swathe of awards nominations to boot. As Manganiello suggests, that is perhaps not surprising given the caliber of the assembled cast.

As he told the Podcrushed podcast:

“What’s funny about True Blood was, you know, we were all really, really overqualified. 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.

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.”

A True Blood Reboot Was Previously in the Works at HBO

Fans of any big TV show are always sorry to see it come to an end, and that was the case with True Blood. However, the series was starting to lose its shine towards the end of its run, and there was certainly a strong case for it to come to a close when it did a decade ago. In the last few years, though, it seemed that there were plans being put together for a reboot of the franchise, although that has not panned out as expected.

Rumors of a True Blood reboot originally surfaced in 2021, but due to the Covid pandemic, there was very little movement on the subject for many months. When things did seem to get moving, with talk of a pitch and script being worked on in 2022, it seemed that, along with a revival of another former HBO hit Six Feet Under, True Blood would be back on screens pretty soon.

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In February last year, the reboot of True Blood was officially scrapped by HBO. According to reports at the time, multiple versions of the reboot had been looked at, but the return of the series was “not on the cards” anymore because “nothing felt like it got there.” There has been no further talk of True Blood being put back in contention following the overhaul of HBO and MAX brands, the franchise still has a huge fanbase, and it is always likely that the idea of a reboot will roll around again at some point in the future.