Sam Trammell meets TV Choice
If interviews are running late, there are worse places than the bar of London’s Soho Hotel in which you can be ‘forced’ to wait. And while sitting chatting to some lovely PR ladies, I spotted Sam Trammell – the reason why I was waiting – breezing in.
The hunky 39-year-old plays bar owner Sam Merlotte in the hit US vampire series, True Blood. Not only does he pull pints – and the occasional woman – but he’s also a shape-shifter, and mostly transforms into a cute dog in times of trouble.
Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to conduct my interview with him in the noisy bar. I was shown up to a spacious hotel room on the second floor, where I very quickly made myself at home by re-arranging the furniture! Well, a girl’s got to put her dictaphone down somewhere, right? The only problem was, by moving the table closer to where Sam was going to sit, meant that Sam moved further away from my chair.
‘I can see myself in the mirror and it’s making me self conscious,’ he explained, as I feared I’d done something wrong. ‘You move your chair closer. Come on.’
Instantly at ease at the sound of his Californian twang – a world away from the southern drawl he uses for the show – we began to talk about what’s in store for his character, Sam, in True Blood, as he casually leaned back and threw one leg over the side of his armchair, happily chatting away while munching on a selection of posh biscuits.
‘These are sweet. Do you want one?’ he asked, as I confessed that I sometimes had trouble understanding the True Blood accents, and revealed that I initially thought the character of Tara was Terra! ‘We say Taaaara,’ I blushed, and Sam repeated the name with his best stiff upper lip!
With vampires the main focus of the third series due to be shown on FX in the new year, I asked if he’d ever seen Being Human, which has gone down a storm with US audiences and an American version is also being made. He admitted he’d heard of it and liked the idea of it, but said he was a fan of Prime Suspect – and the UK version of The Office.
With minutes to go before my allotted time was up, I managed to get him to sign a photo for a colleague in the office – and had a quick picture taken. It was all in the name of duty though – for this blog!
By Elaine Penn
