Other vampire fiction – and there’s a lot of it out there right now – has a very simplistic take on vampire mythology. You have a soul, you’re good. You don’t have a soul, you’re evil. ‘True Blood’ is interesting to me, in that the vampires do have to exploit humans because that’s where the blood lives, but they’re very nuanced. Some of them are nice and have respect for humans, some are primarily working their own agenda but they have some kind of sense of compassion… and then there’s your character Lorena, who is thus far… well… why is she so just evil?

“The writers have put just a tiny little nugget in an episode that has just been released, which I can’t say, of course. I love that it is more complex and each vampire, there’s a lot of gray area between what they do to fulfill their needs and how they relate to the humans. I think that’s one of the brilliant things in the show. She is evil, and it’s hard because, as an actor, you can’t judge your character. I just really try to focus on the fact that she’s… I don’t think that she’s evil for no reason. She’s focused on Bill, and, as weird as it sounds, she’s motivated by love, and that’s where it comes from, and it’s obviously a different plane than the one we live in.”