Werewolf gives 'True Blood' added bite in season three premier

Forget lions and tigers and bears. Sookie Stackhouse and her human friends must contend with vampires and werewolves and fairies as season three of "True Blood" premieres Sunday, June 13, on HBO.

Adapted from Charlaine Harris' 2003 best-seller "Club Dead," the first episode picks up just seconds after season two ended, with telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) frantically searching for her vampire beau, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who vanished just minutes after proposing to her. Elsewhere, Sookie's brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), and Detective Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) try to get their stories straight about the killing of Egg, whose death has left Sookie's best friend, Tara (Rutina Wesley), wild with grief. And shape-shifting bar owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) continues on the road in search of his birthparents.

"We definitely have used the plot from the book as a starting point, but we have done a lot differently as well," says Alan Ball, the show's Oscar- and Emmy-winning creator and executive producer. "For people who read the book, they'll be surprised who kidnapped Bill. There's a lot of new stuff happening, a lot more about vampire politics and the introduction of werewolves into our world."

Series star Paquin, who avidly pursued the role of Sookie, says the new season - in which she gets a new romantic interest in the form of hot werewolf Alcide Herveaux (Joe Manganiello) and meets her very own fairy godmother (Lara Pulver) - is perhaps a little darker than seasons one and two.

"But it's still just as funny, in its weird and twisted way, as our show usually is," she adds, laughing. "You see a lot of pretty heavy stuff from many of our main characters that comes up throughout the season. It's going to surprise some people. And some people are going to be shocked."

But does Sookie really need a fairy godmother when she's being wooed in one way or another by Bill, Alcide and Viking vampire Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard)?

"Well, you can always argue that the attention from all her supernatural friends is not always a good thing," Paquin points out.

And Sookie's nemeses this season include both Bill's maker, Lorena (Mariana Klaveno), and Alcide's psycho ex-girlfriend, Debbie Pelt (Brit Morgan). Many of the show's fans, however, are most deeply invested in new cast member Manganiello.

Alcide is a major new character, and "True Blood" groupies started clamoring for the actor to get the role long before season three was even being cast.

"A friend shot me an e-mail with a link to a blog site where fans of the books were posting pictures and speculating as to who should play Alcide when he shows up," Manganiello explains. "This was going on a couple of years before this season. And some of the bloggers were putting up pictures of me and recommending that I play the part. That's how I found out about the books, and I made sure that I watched every episode of the show. And when I read the books, the character was described as looking pretty much like me. Well, over a year ago I started bugging my managers about getting me in for an audition."

Ball says Manganiello originally came in to read for another werewolf role, but he told the casting director he wanted to take a look at the part of Alcide instead.

"We lucked out with Joe, because he's trained and also physically appropriate for the role," Ball said. "I was looking for somebody who was kind of the anti-vampire, in that he's warm and his cheeks are ruddy, and he's somebody who would be heroic but without trumpeting himself. He's a really good guy, but also someone who can play the complications and the conflict of his lingering feelings for Debbie as his feelings for Sookie are growing. Joe just brought the whole package."

Manganiello immersed himself in reading and watching videos about wolves, and even spent time with the wolf who is Alcide's alter ego, to prepare for the role, but then just let the 4-year-old kid on Halloween take over.

"You tell a kid, 'Act like a werewolf,' and he doesn't have to think about it," Manganiello says. "He knows what to do, and for me, who grew up watching all the great black-and-white monster movies with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff, it was like I have been preparing for this for almost 30 years. You just know what to do."