There’s no arguing that Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) has had gone through some developmental stages on HBO’s True Blood this season. She has come into her own when it comes to accepting her true nature as a vampire and it has made for some very memorable moments on Season 4.
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“Jessica is caught a little bit in her own kind of love triangle with Hoyt and with Jason,” executive producer and writer Alexander Woo tell The Hollywood Reporter. “The questions that are raised at the beginning of the season of whether she’s ready to be in this kind of relationship kind of get answered. She’s grown up a lot in the course of this season, and we’ll see how she puts that newfound maturity to use.”
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“She’s a vampire,” he adds. “And she can’t ignore these impulses within her.”
Woo says that of all the characters on True Blood this season, Jessica stands out the most in his mind for the journey she took in the course of the season. And he celebrates the bloodthirsty redhead with his five favorite scenes featuring the angst-ridden vamp below.
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1 and 2. Jessica first acts on her temptations. “Now maturity might not have been the right word,” Woo laughs. “She has to make a decision about whether or not she can stay in a relationship with Hoyt or whether or not she should suppress or embrace these temptations within her.”
“I would group the first two moments in episodes one and two where you see her first sign of temptation and then acting on it. I think those moments are really relatable and poignant. Then the sex scene with Jason would be the second time.”
3. Jessica and Hoyt break up for real. “This is actually as much a great acting scene for Jim [Parrack] as it is for Deborah. What turns out to be a dream of how Jessica thinks her breakup with Hoyt will turn out, and then how it actually plays out. Now, she has this image of Hoyt as being this incredibly needy boyfriend who can’t live without her. Then, when she actually does break up with him, he gets quite justifiably angry at her.”
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4. Jason (Ryan Kwanten) dreams of Jessica… and Hoyt. “Messed up, and memorable and sexy, all at once, which is what the show is,” Woo says. “If you could distill the show into five seconds, that was it right there.”
5. Jessica walks into the sun. “I loved the moment at the end of Episode 7 where everyone is chanting and then Marnie (Fiona Shaw) levitates, and then Jessica walks into the sun… I think it was a really strong ending.”
“This sticks out in my mind as an example of how she’s such a committed actor,” he tells us. “She had just shot the scene where she kills the guard by pulling him like a rag doll up against the bars. Deborah had injured her hand doing that, and it had gotten very, very swollen. So as she was climbing out, she was doing it essentially with one hand because she had hurt herself with the other. It was even more extraordinary watching her doing it… playing this great scene through what must have been pretty serious pain.”
The Season 4 finale of True Blood airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.
Email: Jethro.Nededog@thr.com; Twitter: @TheRealJethro
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