Long Lived

Starry Constellation Magazine -by: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you are working on?

A) I am doing the new season of “True Blood.” I have a little bit there in some flashbacks. I’ve been going out for stuff, too and finding the right pilot for the next project. I’ve also been playing around with my own projects, writing a little bit and editing a short I did in August that we just finished up and posted on YouTube. Then, I’m going back to Denmark in a few months to do four episodes of a Danish TV show. I just finished a music video with a Norwegian artist and we’re trying to get as many views as possible on the Internet.

Q) What is new this season on “True Blood” and can you tell us a bit about your flashback scenes of Godric?

A) Everything is as intense and exciting as they were last season. I am sure the fans will be excited with what is happening. The characters they really like are getting attention and you see a lot of them blossom. You get to know them better and better and their secrets more. I can’t say anything specific about the flashbacks of Godric. For myself, Godric is a great way of seeing what it is like during the different stages of the vampire life. In the second season, we see him at 1,000 years old when he lived in the wilderness and turned Eric (Alexander Skarsgard). We also saw the contemporary Godric and two polar opposites of the character. We saw him very beastlike and very humanlike.

Q) What made you want to be a part of the show?

A) I came from Denmark and I got the show when I was in Denmark. I didn’t even know what the show was, but it was a huge step and a huge adventure. It was right after I finished high school and in Denmark you take a year or two between high school and university. So, I was ready to do anything and this was a great opportunity for me to do something that I would never have thought of doing. I just embraced that and accepted the part. I knew that it was a part on “True Blood” and I did all my homework on the show.

Q) What did you find the most challenging about the role?

A) The character is 2,000 years old, but I am supposed to be a kid. In the script, it said that he looked like a sixteen year old. The hardest part of being the character was to ooze this experience, age and wisdom that a 2,000 year old vampire would have. I had to make it believable because no one has any idea what a 2,000 year old person has been through and how much all these experiences and all this knowledge will weigh down and show. You just have to imitate it. It was challenging to come up with a way to imitate this and to carry the authority of a 2,000 year old vampire.

Q) Was there instant chemistry when you joined the cast or did it take some time to develop?

A) There was instant chemistry. They are all great people. The first flashback scene I had was with Alexander, a guy from Sweden and a guy from Finland. I hadn’t met Alexander outside of the production so we had coffee so I could just get to know him. We met the other guys there because we had to sit down and translate the lines into Swedish. They were just great people.

Q) Why do you think people continue to tune in to see “True Blood?”

A) I guess it is like with any show, in a way, there is a story that you find fascinating and a universe you find fascinating. It’s exciting, scary and sexy. It’s appealing in so many ways. I watch the show because I like the characters and how they develop. I like to see how the storylines go and the cliffhangers are good. You just want to watch more. It’s got so many layers. You have the funny aspects and the scary aspects. It’s just got a little bit of everything and I’m really excited to see what happens in the third season. If you sit down and think about it, it’s a comment on society. It deals with everything and the problems that we see in modern society, but doesn’t pull specific things out of their element so you have to think about it.

Q) Where can people go online to learn more about you?

A) They can go to my management’s website at http://www.teamplayers.dk/.

What the phototgrapher, Tyler Shields, says about Allan Hyde:

“Allan Hyde played the amazing 2000 year old vampire Godric on True Blood, in real life he is 19 which makes his performance even better!!! Such a great guy and smart kid he will do very well that I am sure of…”

And for fun:

@ Nylon Party

Danish actor Allan Hyde is a relative unknown stateside, but his subtle and heartbreaking take on the role of Godric has left fans clamoring for more of the young star. AccessHollywood.com caught up with Allan just days before his gripping recent episode.

(Spoiler Alert!)

Was Sunday’s episode the final time fans will see Godric? “It is the last episode of my character,” Allan told Access last week before viewers saw Godric take his own life on a rooftop in Dallas as the rising sun caused his body to combust into flames. “Unless, they decide to do like flashbacks, but I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

Though he’s thus far unknown to most of America, Allan has a slew of Danish films and stage credits to his name along with voicing Ron Weasley in the “Harry Potter” movie in his native country and appearing on the international soundtrack to Disney’s “Camp Rock” – a far cry from his role on “True Blood.”

”[Preparing for the role was] hard because obviously you can’t imitate a guy with the wisdom of a 2,000 year old person because that’s impossible,” he explained. “The way I approached it was to think about how he would react. His scheme of reactions.”

Allan admitted he was able to tap into a small part of his own past when it came to playing someone who had to feast on the innocent in order to survive.

“I found stuff in my own life that I could compare it to. I had stuff in my early years of primary school where I was kind of a bully. It’s nothing compared to the stuff Godric went through,” he continued. “I came to a realization where I was just like, ‘Whoa, this is just wrong! And the way I felt bad about myself for doing this stuff was the equivalent of Godric’s feeling just on a smaller scale.”

Sunday’s epic episode was the first time the actor saw the final product of his hard work.

“I haven’t seen it! I’m so excited to watch it!” he said days before it aired. “I felt it was amazing to shoot [my final scene.]”

Allan explained that he, along with AccessHollywood.com’s newest Rising Star – Alexander Skarsgard (Eric Northman) and Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) — had just minutes to film his death scene in downtown LA. The three actors and crew raced to capture the morning’s natural light.

“It was amazing, not just because it was such a touching scene. The performances of Alex and Anna in that scene were so amazing just to watch,” he told Access. “I never tried anything like it. I had very good feeling about the scene and I’m excited to watch it.”

And just how did the 20-year-old actor find his way into one of TV’s hottest shows?

“The auditioning process was almost non-existent. I got a call from a casting director in Hollywood saying that they cannot find a guy to play [the] part,” Allan told Access. “I had never had the idea of doing anything outside Denmark at that point.”

The scene that Allan auditioned with is one that devout Fangbangers could never imagine seeing.

“It was a scene between Godric and Eric, which is not in the show because it ended [with me] ripping Eric’s head off and that obviously does not happen!”

Allan told Access that because “True Blood” hadn’t even premiered yet in Denmark, when he auditioned (Season 1 is set to air in September) he had no idea what a big deal it would be to work with the Oscar-winning director and “True Blood” creator, Alan Ball.

“Within a few days everyone within the Danish industry had heard about me auditioning for this thing,” he explained. “I received calls from different people I had worked with before who were just like, ‘You have to like say ‘Hi’ to Alan Ball for me,’ because they were all like huge fans and I was like, ‘OK, this guy is quite a big deal.’”

Soon after wrapping his work on “True Blood,” Allan returned to Denmark and missed the vampire fever that has since swept over Hollywood. He wasn’t able to attend the show’s premiere or hear the screams of fans at San Diego’s Comic-Con. But now, Allan has returned stateside and plans on making the most out of every door that playing Godric has opened.

“I just want to work. I just want to act. And I don’t really care if it’s here or if it’s in Denmark.” He told Access. “It’s just about doing good stuff, doing stuff you like.”

The rising sun may have ended Godric forever (unless they get super creative in the writer’s room), but Allan said his “True Blood” ending is actually a beginning. “

You know, it feels…the thing is,” Allan said with a moment of reflection. “It’s really just started.”

Copyright 2009 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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~M.