This weekend Michelle is in Toronto at the TCON Polaris convention. You can follow the events in real time on Twitter, here are some queries you may want to use:http://search.twitter.com/search?q=michelle+forbes
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tcon
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=polaris
http://twitter.com/TCONTweets
We also have a Twitter feed on the blog sidebar.
TCONTweets: * Let everyone know Michelle WILL have photos at her table for Sunday!
* Polaris has arranged for 2 incredible 8x10 head shots of Michelle Forbes for Sunday at her table! They are FANTASTIC
* Michelle Forbes photos almost gone. If you have your own item (Cards, Magazine, DVD) bring it to have it signed!
* Michelle Forbes is super-gorgeous in person. YOWZA!
* thetelevixen: Michelle Forbes press conference was FANTASTIC! Such an awesome woman. Photos and video to come n the next few days!
* thetelevixen: Michelle Forbes on what's to come in this season: "It becomes so insane and outrageous this year it will blow your mind!" #trueblood
Update Sunday morning (Toronto time, it's afternoon in Amsterdam)
Deb let us know that she did NOT steal the Michelle poster:
* The con has been very fun. And geeky wonderful. Michael Hogan and Michelle Forbes are wonderful speakers, their Q&A sessions rocked. And when I get back from camping, I need to watch Durham County so Michelle Forbes won't think I'm a bad Canadian. :pSource: livejournal
Update
Here's an interview with 'a bunch of Canadian reporters' published on BlogTV
Criminal amount of fun, favourite Canadian films, Swimming with Sharks, the cut-throat world.
Greek Mythology, the statue, Battlestar Galactica, the glee & terror of True Blood, fun v. torture, sea of naked people, and turning European.
Durham County & Goodbye
(You may turn full-screen on)
Transcript of a (small) part of the interview:
The TV Addict: Earlier in your career, it was widely reported that you turned down a series regular role on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE because you didn’t wish to commit to a series regular role on television at that point in your career. Why the change of heart with TRUE BLOOD?Source: thetvaddict.com
Michelle Forbes: Alan Ball [TRUE BLOOD's creator]. He’s such a wonderful man to work for and I don’t think I’ve ever run into anyone who is not a fan of his. And, after DURHAM COUNTY and IN TREATMENT, I really wanted to do something light and fun. And while TRUE BLOOD is a very technically difficult show and there is a lot of depth to it, it’s illegal how much fun we’re having on the show. Which for me, was really important, to go and do something that was fun for a bloody change as supposed to being tortured all the time. Even though I was tortured on the show by having to face a few fears.
Would one of those fears have been TRUE BLOOD’s penchant for onscreen nudity?
Not really. I actually think we [as a culture] need to stop being so prudish about nudity and start being more european because it’s just nudity. For me what’s so great about being part of the TRUE BLOOD company, and I mean the entire company, the writers, the production team and definitely the actors is that it is the most fearless group of people that you will ever work with. Everybody’s just game for anything, everyone’s looking for that next challenge and when you’re surrounded by such courage, boldness and fearlessness, if you don’t join in, well… you just look like a stick in the mud. And I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say there are quite a few orgies on the show, and once you’re in the middle of the woods with a sea of naked people, it really becomes… just drinking coffee and chatting with the actors. Really no big deal.
Although we’re slowly learning what exactly Maryann is, we’re still waiting to find out what brings her to Bon Temps? Care to elaborate?
Is that not good television? When we don’t know quite yet! It’s really revealed over the season, as is so much about the show. If last year we were introduced to this very interesting and fascinating little town in Louisiana, this second year, the story blows open and sort of spins off into these little hurricane stories where Bill and Sookie go off to Dallas, you’ve got the Fellowship of the Sun story-line and then we have what’s still happening in Bon Temps with Maryanne and the crowd at Merlotte’s. It gets very insane this year [laughs].
There has been a lot of speculation online with regards to your character’s statue, can you elaborate as to its meaning?
The statue actually has enormous meaning as the season goes on. There has been a lot of interest about that statue and the Brooklyn Museum (which is where they [the creative team] found that statue and replicated it) have been inundated with people wanting to know about the statue, the history of it. So it’s really wonderful in a show that seems to be about vampires and what have you has now garnered this conversation about Greek mythology, ancient art and thoughts of injustice. That statue has a lot of meaning as we head like a train on fire throughout the rest of the season.
Do you have a theory as to why TRUE BLOOD seems to have made its way into the cultural zeitgeist?
My theory is that we’ve (America) been through eight years of nonsense and hell with the Bush administration — when our economy is just in utter chaos, people are out of work, and we’re stuck still in the middle of an endless war — there is something refreshing about being able to watch something that is fun and escapist. Plus, because it’s Allan Ball and our wonderful writers, the show still serves as a beautiful place for social commentary looking at injustice and compassion. Like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, it’s never preachy about it, the show doesn’t tell you how to feel — rather it raises the questions and it does so in a small sleepy Louisiana town that is very diverse.
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...then I looked at my watch and realised it was uncomfortably close to the time when Michelle Forbes's Q&A would begin; I really wanted to see her.Source: Serrico Livejournal
[...] So then we watched the Michelle Forbes Q&A, and wouldn't you know, within the first five minutes, some stereotype of basement-dwelling fanboy-hood asked the question about whether Forbes, as Ro, had been groomed on TNG to play the Bajoran on DS9. I cringed; Forbes was Very Sarcastic Indeed, although she did answer the question for--as she pointed out--roughly the billionth time. And it was at that moment I decided I wanted her to be asked something she didn't hear every time she faced a roomful of genre fans, so with a little prodding from C, I went up to the mic and asked her to tell us about her experience on In Treatment.
She mentioned the density of the material, the stage-play format, the way she and the other one-day-a-week actors had it easy compared to Gabriel Byrne (when she left the production after finishing a chunk of her work to go off and do BSG, Byrne was sitting in the chair, nodding his head; when she came back a few months later, Byrne was still sitting in the chair, nodding his head). The thing she liked most about it, she said, was the "intimacy" of the material.
All in all, she spoke for about five mintues on the subject, so I like to think she appreciated the question.
There were some questions about True Blood, some more Trek stuff, and a question about something she'd said at a previous Q&A about the nature of celebrity in this day and age. Somewhere along the way, she mentioned that, in the course of her twenty-year career, only about fourteen hours of finished product have been genre; she said she'd do a show in Albania about baseball if the material was good. (I learned she's in s2 of Durham County, which made me flail rather a lot.)
"Sunday morning (first thing again) I had a photo session with Michelle Forbes and some of my friends. I love her work and it was the only time I saw her on the weekend. She seems a lovely person. The group ahead of me in line gave her an honourary Canadian citizenship. :) I did hear that during her Q&As she was hyping Durham County, and quite right, too."
