“Collider: Obviously, you can’t reveal details of the
finale, but what was your initial reaction when you read the script?
JOE
MANGANIELLO: The finale is pretty
crazy. Reading it, my brain switched
into seeing it the way that a fan would see what we’re doing. I was very shocked. I know this was something the writers that
have remained with the show in Alan Ball’s wake have been wanting to do for a
long time. It’s pretty exciting.
…
How
does Alcide feel about where things are at now?
MANGANIELLO: Unfortunately, I think they’re exactly what
he expected. I think there’s a reason
why he never took an active role in a pack.
He’d been a pack member before, but there was a reason why he left that
life. I think this is what he was afraid
was gonna happen and, sure enough, it is happening. After killing three successive pack masters,
he finally decided, “Okay, I’m gonna do something different and take it over,
rather than walk away from it.” But
yeah, it’s a complete mess. Werewolves
are, for the most part, pretty terrible people.
There’s a reason why he continuously chooses non-werewolf people over
his own kind.
At
this point, is Alcide feeling like the pluses of being pack master don’t really
outweigh all of the minuses?
MANGANIELLO: Yeah!
I think most werewolf women that he has run into have been pretty
manipulative and deceitful. As far as
perks go, the sexual perks come with a price.
They’re very self-seeking. It’s
not like they’re for free or for fun.
And at the snap of a finger, that same person is going to turn on
him. Rikki (Kelly Overton) completely
turned on him, on a dime. It sucks. What’s good about being pack master, other
than the three-ways?!
…
The
vampires have been in danger much more so than any of the other supernatural
beings this season. Will things heat up
for the werewolves?
MANGANIELLO: You had this little girl who’s a werewolf,
and both of her parents are dead – one at the hands of Alcide and the other
because of the Vampire Authority shift that Luna did. Now, she would have gone with her next of
kin, which would be her grandma, but there were no police and you couldn’t have
a custody battle. The authorities
couldn’t be alerted because werewolves live in secrecy. So, Alcide is doing something like what the
mafia would do, which is to serve as the police for people who can’t go to the
police. He brought the girl back to her
grandma. From there, Alcide is going to
carry out the law for people who cannot go to the law. Alcide wants all the wolves in that compound,
under one roof, and that’s related to all of the vampire craziness that’s gone
on. I think it has trickled down. There’s a level of paranoia, and he’s acting
accordingly. There are new rules for
werewolf society, right now.
…
Whether
it’s True Blood or Magic Mike, if you have to strip down on camera, does it at
least help that you’re not the only one who has to do it?
MANGANIELLO: At this point, I don’t care. It really doesn’t bother me. Once you’re the semi-naked guy in a room full
of 200 women who aren’t, nothing phases you after that. You’re completely fine with it.
MANGANIELLO: When we started filming, yes. When I first read the script, no. But once we started filming, and all the guys
got together and we started seeing each other’s routines, we had a strong
feeling that we were doing something pretty special. Magic was happening. We thought, “Something is going to happen
with this.” And sure enough, there were
studios that came every single day, the week that we were all doing those dance
routines, and there was a bidding war that started over the movie. And when Warner Bros. stepped up and bought
it, and planned to release it as their 4th of July movie, we had a pretty good
idea.
That’s
when we started talking about doing a sequel.
So, it doesn’t surprise me, at all.
We
thought it was going to do well in the theater, but none of us expected it to
have the opening weekend it did. It far
exceeded anything, any of us could have imagined. Would I like to do a sequel? I’ve never laughed so hard, in my life, when
I was working on that movie. It was
about as much fun as I’ve ever had at work.
I love those guys. Matt Bomer is
like my brother. Channing [Tatum] and
Kevin Nash and Adam [Rodriguez] – I love those guys. To get to go hand out with those guys again
would be amazing. But, I’ve gotta see a
script first and a director. There’s a
lot to be figured out between now and then, but it sounds like they’re trying
to figure it out. I would love to work
with those guys again.
What
made now the right time to have a book come out?
MANGANIELLO: I was approached to do the book. It was an incoming call. It wasn’t something that I had sought
out. I had certainly thought about it
because there’s been such an overwhelming interest, over the years, in what my
work-out is. My trainer gets bombarded
with questions and requests, and it just seems like everyone is really, really
interested in what I do when I work out.
It was something I had definitely thought about and talked to my trainer
about, but it was not something that I had pursued. So, I got an incoming call to do it, and the
examples that I was given, as far as work-out books go, I went and started
researching them. They were basically
these glossy PR tools, where the inside material was obviously outsourced to
someone else, so that the celebrity could sit back, slap on some shirtless
pictures and sell it.
I
wasn’t interested in doing anything like that.
I wasn’t interested in putting my name on something like that. That really contributes to a fitness industry
that is based in fear, and it’s all about scaring people into buying some
miracle diet or some miracle work-out with some ridiculous timeframe on
it. That’s basically just designed to
sell people a bunch of crap that they don’t need, and I didn’t want to do
that. I told the publishers, “Give me two
weeks, and let me put together an outline of what I want to say in the book and
what I want to write, and I’ll come back to you and you can tell me, if you
want to make that book.”
So,
I went back to them in about two weeks and they actually doubled my advance, so
that I could make sure that I did it the right way. I got the right photographer. I got my trainer on board to design the
work-out. I consulted with the best
fitness mind and fitness writer on the planet.
Rather than write this glossy PR thing that’s designed to sell pictures,
I made the book that is meant to stand on the shoulders of Arnold
Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding.
In fact, Arnold is endorsing it to the point that he wrote the forward,
which is cool. We’re rewriting and
revisiting the rules of fitness. It’s
where we are today. It’s the cutting
edge guide for everything you need. I’m
actually really, really proud of it because it’s something that needs to be in
the marketplace. We’re looking to change
the game with it.
…
Have
you given any thought about the direction you want to take your career in, once
True Blood is finished?
MANGANIELLO: Oh, of course! There are a few different components to that,
as evidenced by this past year. My
brother has been a producer for the past eight years. He’s worked in music, television and film, so
he runs the day-to-day of our company.
We have a slate of original material that we own, that’s being developed
right now. We’re getting that stuff
ready for once the show is over. So,
there will be a huge component of producing and acting that goes along with
that.
I
want to continue to work with good directors.
That’s really my only thing. I
was fortunate enough to work with Sam Raimi, and then Alan Ball, and then David
Ayer. There are certainly some other
directors, who I’ve met with over the years, that I didn’t get to work with
because of my schedule on True Blood.
While that’s frustrating, to an extent, it’s also exciting because I’ve
gotten recognition by those people, for my work on the show. I’m looking forward to working with all those
directors and being able to work on all those projects that I haven’t had time
to do. And at some point, I’d like to
get to Broadway and do a Broadway show.
I’ve been talking for years about doing that, but that doesn’t work with
my True Blood schedule either.”
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