(chicagotribune.com)  As the wild and largely enjoyable second season of HBO’s “True Blood” came to a close on Sunday, most of the residents of Bon Temps, La., wanted to put the insanity that had gripped the town behind them.

No one was more interested in sweeping things under the rug than Lafayette Reynolds, the cook at Merlotte’s, Bon Temps’ favorite watering hole.

Like most of the people in Bon Temps, Lafayette had fallen under the sway of the charismatic Maryann (Michelle Forbes), who was actually a creature known as a maenad.

Over a period of weeks, Maryann had turned more and more townsfolk into her unhinged acolytes, and though Lafayette had held out longer than most, he eventually succumbed.

[Events from "True Blood's" Season 2 finale will be discussed below. If you haven't seen the episode, be forewarned.]

Once the town’s maenad encounter was over — and it took a clever scheme from a vampire and a shapeshifter to engineer Maryann’s demise — most of the Bon Temps residents could not recall what insane or criminal things they’d done under her influence. And according to Nelsan Ellis, the Chicago native who plays Lafayette, that was just fine with the tart-tongued Merlotte’s cook.

“He tells [waitress] Sookie [Stackhouse], ‘I know you know what happened. Take it to your grave,’” said Ellis.

The actor, who was born in Harvey, spent much of his youth in Alabama, and returned to the Chicago area at age 14 to attend Dolton’s Thornridge High School. He later studied at Columbia College Chicago, at Illinois State University and at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School.

As Lafayette, Ellis has been a rousing success since 
”True Blood” debuted in 2008. The character, a gay man in a small Southern town, is a favorite among fans for his wit, his outrageous style and his ferocious desire to hustle his way into a better life.

Ellis couldn’t be less like Lafayette; the actor is humble and seems flummoxed when his status as a fan favorite is brought up.

“I don’t understand that, maybe because I’m so critical” of his performance, said Ellis, who watches each episode 20 times in order to critique his acting. But the attention is “very flattering,” he adds.

So what’s next for Lafayette? Ellis says he doesn’t usually talk to the show’s writers about what’s coming for his character, though he will mention to executive producer Alan Ball one idea he has for Season 3, which begins production in December. He wants Lafayette to get some flashback scenes with his mother.

“There are so many lines about how his mother treated [Lafayette],” Ellis said. “It would be nice if we found out in the flashbacks that she was a vampire.”

That kind of situation wouldn’t be unusual in Bon Temps, which is full of creatures that aren’t quite human. Sookie (Anna Paquin) can hear people’s thoughts, bar owner Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) is a shape-shifter, and Sookie’s true love, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), is a vampire — just one of many on the show.

Ellis has read the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, which were the original inspiration for the TV show, so he knows that in Harris’ third book, werewolves are introduced. But the third season of the TV show may not closely follow the books, Ellis noted.

“I think Alan has been great in keeping even fanatical readers [of the Harris books] on their toes. He’s changed things,” he said.

As Season 2 came to a close, Bill was kidnapped by persons (or creatures) unknown. Were they agents of Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood), the capricious vampire queen of Louisiana? She certainly wasn’t happy that Bill knew Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard) was dealing in “V” or vampire blood, which, in the world of the show, is a powerful illicit drug. Sophie-Anne, it seems, is orchestrating V sales through Eric, and the more Bill knows about her V operations, the more dangerous that could be for her.

Whether or not the queen was behind Bill’s disappearance, as Season 2 closed, there were echoes of the end of Season 1, when Lafayette went missing. During Season 2, things got even worse for Lafayette, who, at times, sold V in Bon Temps and worked occasionally as a prostitute as well.

“I didn’t understand why they took me in such a drastic direction [in Season 2], but then again, somebody who is used to being on top because of his charms — once he’s completely powerless to defend himself, that can be completely traumatizing,” Ellis said.

One of the things that traumatized Lafayette was being held hostage by the powerful vampire Eric. To heal wounds incurred while he was with Eric, Lafayette had to drink some of the vampire’s blood, which has healing properties. The result was a special psychological bond between the two men (a bond that is deeply uncomfortable for Lafayette, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after being set free by Eric).

Ellis said he wouldn’t mind if his character was turned into a vampire, or if, at the very least, Lafayette and Eric have more scenes together in future.

“I love working with Alexander Skarsgard. He brings such gravity to a scene,” Ellis said.

And Ellis brings a lot of charm, skill and energy to “True Blood.” His parents may not be fans of the show — Ellis said his deeply religious mother and father don’t approve of their son playing a character like Lafayette — but the actor said he gets praise from unlikely quarters.

“I have the most straight-arrow men coming up to me and saying, ‘I like your hustle. Keep doing your thing,’” Ellis said.

Below are a few more thoughts from me, Maureen, about the “True Blood” Season 2 finale.

I had thought there was a good chance that the finale would be a bit of a mess, but what actually transpired was more organized and cogent than what I’d been expecting.

I’ve talked a lot in previous “True Blood” posts about how the central couple of Bill and Sookie don’t do all that much for me, but I have to admit, the proposal scene won me over more than I had thought was possible. Bill’s emotional vulnerability was touching, as was Sookie’s visible distress. She has been through so much, and her confusion was understandable, as was her ultimate assurance that Bill was the right man for her. It really capped what has been a gradual process during Season 2 — the mellowing of Sookie to the point where I actually don’t mind her, or even like her a little. I’ve always enjoyed Bill, but now I can see more than before why the two characters make sense as a couple.

So now I guess I’m invested in that relationship, which last season would not have remotely been possible for me. And now we have to wait until next year to find out what happened to Bill. That’s going to be a long wait.

As for Maryann’s “wedding,” well, that was “True Blood” in full-on crazy mode. That aspect of the show can be fun, but I’m glad those scenes weren’t dragged out. The way that Sam and Bill worked together to kill off Maryann was interesting, and I didn’t need to see any more of the black-eyed townsfolk, given how long that particular story line had been stretched out.

It was a bit ungainly for the show to suddenly stop with the crazy and then calmly revisit every character for the last half of the episode, but I did appreciate “True Blood” trying to close off or tie up all the open story threads.

The resolution that was least effective was the Eggs story line — why wasn’t he able to accept that all of the townsfolk did bad stuff when they were “under the influence” and thus weren’t accountable for their actions? Why didn’t Sookie have the sense to refuse to help him dredge up those memories? Why did Eggs have to, in his distress, throw a policeman on the ground and mime stabbing him with a giant knife, thus resulting in Eggs being killed by Jason?

Then again, every episode features a character or two or three doing something dumb because the plot requires them too. But as has often been the case this season, there was so much other relatively enjoyable stuff going on that I didn’t quibble over the sigh-inducing stuff that much.

I’m sad that Maryann is gone, mainly because Michelle Forbes is so wonderfully compelling in everything she does. But dragging out that arc any further would have been a disservice to the character and to the audience, so I’m presuming the maenad and her nutty parties are gone for good.

So to sum up, we got a wedding, a half-human sacrifice, a proposal, and a funny line (”You may have your faults, Andy, but at least you have your pants on”). We saw Hoyt finally tell off his mama and Jessica revert back to her teen-vamp-vixen ways. We saw life more or less returning to normal (whatever that is) in Bon Temps. We saw that Sophie-Anne and Eric are quite a devious team, and something tells me we’re not done with the diva-licious vampire queen yet. And perhaps most intriguing, we saw Sam pursue his birth parents, who, I have a feeling, will turn out to be more trouble than he bargained for.

So long, “True Blood.” Don’t wait too long to bring us another tasty jambalaya of drama, melodrama, comedy, crazy and creatures.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 7:54 am and is filed under Nelsan Ellis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.