Anna Paquin’s next dark TV role in The Affair
Anna Paquin — of True Blood fame — has taken on a new TV role where she starts a dangerous and dysfunctional affair that tears lives apart.
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It took just one season of The Affair to win the heart of its new star, Anna Paquin.
Long before she was sent scripts by showrunner, Sarah Treem for the fifth and final chapter of the complex drama series, the True Blood and Flack favourite admits she was hooked.
And like the show’s obsessive viewers, who can blame her — with the Golden Globe-winning series tantalising fans over four seasons and hanging off every traumatic twist and turn.
It says something of the quality of season one that Paquin signed on to play Joanie Lockhart and then binged the remaining episodes to prepare herself for filming.
“I had seen and loved the first season, but I rarely have time to keep up with TV shows so I hadn’t seen the subsequent seasons,” she tells TV Guide/Watch.
“I did a full marathon of all the episodes when I was hired to make sure I fully understood the world of the show — it was helpful to get to know my onscreen parents as their characters and learn about Joanie’s childhood.”
Paquin plays the daughter of Alison Lockhart (played by the brilliant Ruth Wilson), who begins this story of betrayal when she meets father of four, Noah Solloway and starts a dangerous and dysfunctional affair that tears their lives apart.
The ramifications of that union promise to play out in these final episodes, with two time frames dividing the storytelling: one in the present day, as an adult Joanie returns to Montauk still searching for answers to her mother’s life and death.
At the end of season four, Alison appears to have committed suicide, throwing herself into the sea. In truth, she was murdered and 10 years on, it’s her daughter — broken by her upbringing and still grieving her mother’s death — who is left to pick through the pieces.
For Paquin, it’s yet another psychologically challenging role, which comes hot on the heels of her acclaimed performance as PR disaster, Robyn in Flack (streaming, Foxtel Now)— the series she produced with actor husband, Stephen Moyer which has been commissioned for season two.
Her tendency towards dark characters, warped by the world around them, is not planned, she says, but telling of her interests away from the cameras.
“You may think that listening to serial killer podcasts is a weird way to chill out or go to sleep but I find it really relaxing,” she laughs, admitting “my taste has always skewed a little dark like that.”
The New Zealand-born actor, who won her first Academy Award at the age of 11 starring in Jane Campion’s esoteric epic, The Piano, has enjoyed one of those rare Hollywood careers — scandal-free, critical acclaim and consistent credits.
Meeting her husband on the set of True Blood added to the effortless story, with the couple marrying without fanfare at a private home in Malibu in 2010.
The twins, daughter Poppy and son Charlie, were born in 2013; with the Moyer also co-parenting his daughter, Lilac and son, Billy from a previous relationship.
The only real headline-grabbing she did was in coming out as bisexual for a LGBT advocacy campaign in the same year she married Moyer.
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Moving into making her own film and TV opportunities with Moyer, she says, is about working with the man she loves and loves working with; and crafting the stories she wants to tell at this point in time.
While commenting on Flack, Paquin could be speaking on same themes examined in The Affair when she says “it asks a lot of interesting questions about the fantasy around morality, the nature of truth, where we get our information from and how do you know that what you are seeing is the whole story. [Flack] also asks, ‘would you cover that up for somebody?’ How important is being good at your job versus being a person that you can live with at the end of the day? And what do you need to do to look yourself in the mirror and feel okay about who you are?,” she ponders.
With so many of The Affair’s key characters not returning this season, Paquin may also have to stare down the question of whether the series can kick the final season curse.
Wilson requested to leave the series, so was killed off at the end of season four, but will feature in some flashbacks; while Joshua Jackson (Joanie’s father Cole), Catalina Sandino Moreno (as Luisa Leon) and Omar Metwally (as Vik Ullah) will not return.
* The Affair, 8.30pm, Sunday, September 01, Foxtel’s Fox Showcase