iF: You’ve done a lot of theatre in New York …

O’HARE: Yeah. I went to school in Chicago and I did all my early theatre work in Chicago, kind of where I learned to act, and then I moved to New York in the early Nineties and that’s what I did. I’ve been a stage actor, I’ve done a lot of Broadway, I’ve done four Broadway musicals, a lot of Broadway straight plays. That’s kind of my thing, that’s what I did, was Broadway. And then I’ve always done TV here and there because of Law and Order in New York, but then this [True Blood, which films primarily in Los Angeles]came along last fall and I was thrilled, because I love it.

iF: Had you worked with Alan Ball before?

O’HARE: I hadn’t.

iF: Do you know if he was a fan of your stage work prior to casting you in True Blood?

O’HARE: I think he’d seen me in Take Me Out [O’Hare won a Featured Actor Tony for his work in the production in 2003] and all those years, it kind of percolated, and when this part came up, I think it was a good fit. A whole lot of us are from New York – Carrie Preston [Arlene] is from New York, Sam Trammell [Sam] is from New York, Rutina Wesley [Tara] is from Juilliard from New York, Kristin Bauer [Pam] is from New York – a lot of these actors, we all come from the same place. Michael Hall, who did Six Feet Under [with Ball], I knew him when we did Romeo and Juliet together in Baltimore years ago, when he first got out of Juilliard. So it all kind of comes full circle, which is really interesting.

iF: A lot of the actors in True Blood are called upon to disrobe at some point. Do you have that?

O’HARE: No. Not yet. [laughs] It hasn’t happened. I’ve gotten this far in my career without having to do that, it’d be nice to keep some things private, you know what I mean? If I’m called upon to, I will gladly, but Russell has dignity. I think he needs to keep his dignity.

iF: Well, most of the characters who disrobe have dignity …

O’HARE: Yeah. They’re 25 years old [laughs].

iF: Do you perform any stunts and/or chomp anybody?

O’HARE: They don’t want us doing anything that’s dangerous, so even though we want to, they’re going to ask us to pull back. I have chomped somebody, I’ve ridden a horse.

iF: When Russell bites another character, do you discuss with the other actor, “I’m going to be chomping you now”?

O’HARE: Yeah, any actor thing you do when you’re being physical with someone in any way, you always check in with them and go, “Okay, I’m going to go here in the neck, you let me know if that’s all right.” You want to check in with them and make sure they’re not hurt and then it’s always a little surprising when you actually do it, because your adrenaline kicks in and you start making funny noises. We were doing one bit where we were attacking a girl and she kept giggling [laughs]. We were nuzzling her neck and making weird noises and she kept giggling.

iF: Are there any aspects of True Blood that you found surprising?

O’HARE: I have to say, I am bowled over by how friendly everyone in the cast and crew is, how hard everybody works, how professional everybody is. Everybody comes here to work. They do a really, really, really good job. Everyone is prepared to go, ready to go, and yet they manage to have fun while doing it. And it’s a really amazing balance. There’s no attitude from anybody, there’s nobody who has any sort of diva position. Everyone is great. It’s pretty amazing.

iF: In the scene you’re filming today, the other actors are comparatively deadpan and Russell is decidedly, well, not-deadpan. What’s that like?

O’HARE: You know what? I’m just going to stand out a whole lot more. I have no problem with that. Everyone’s got their own style, everyone’s got also their own thing going on, and Alan, when he first told me about this character, said, “He’s very charming and he’s very Southern.” And in other scenes, I have been deadpan and I have been quiet, but in the scenes where you’re called upon to have some kind of passion, I love that. [Russell] knows what he wants, he knows what he wants to achieve. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get there. He always improvises. He is not a careful person. He’s a planner and he is somebody who plots, but he’s very, very passionate and he’s very, very spontaneous. So he does things [laughs] in the moment. He’s also hotheaded. This is a person who has a temper – a big temper.

iF: This season, they’ve had some real wolves, playing the werewolves in animal form, on set. Were you around for any of that?

O’HARE: I was. My very first episode shooting, I was on a horse and there were wolves on set and I got to meet a couple of the wolves. I got to hang out with them, and I got to meet the wolf trainer and the wolves are extraordinary, unbelievable animals. They are so otherworldly. And as the wolf trainer kept saying, “They’re not just big dogs. They’re very different animals. Do not think of them as dogs [laughs].”

iF: Do you have to stand very still when the wolves are working?

O’HARE: The wolves are almost always separated from us. You’re not interacting with them very much. We worked with them outside. They had a wire that kept them separate from us, a wire that was electrified. They are a different kind of animal and you don’t know what they’re going to do, and they’re incredibly capable of incredible things. Mostly they’re just very skittish, so the problem with them is not that they’re going to hurt us, it’s that they’re not going to be able to focus.

iF: Is there anything else you’d like to say about  True Blood or your work on it?

O’HARE: I’m so thrilled to be here – I never expected or planned it, but now that I’m here, I don’t ever want to leave.