Anna Paquin avoids scandal of Amazon’s ‘Flack’ and ‘True Blood’ reboot
Anna Paquin didn’t have to do much research for her latest role as a publicist who puts out fires for celeb clients in the dramedy “Flack,” now streaming on Amazon.
“I’ve lived in the world of entertainment my entire life,” Paquin, 38, tells The Post.
“I don’t live in the sort of scandal tabloid-heavy end of it. That’s not how I conduct myself and I’ve always been serious about my work. So I don’t have firsthand experience of, ‘Oh Lord, my publicist is going to kill me this morning!’ But I’ve seen it.”
Premiering Friday, Jan 22, on Amazon, “Flack” (which Paquin also executive-produces) follows Robyn (Paquin), an American public relations exec living in London. Brisk and unflappable, she’s got a knack for getting clients out of hairy situations — even as her personal life is in shambles (when the show begins, she’s living on her sister’s couch).
“The pace and the intellect and the wit of the dialogue was just delicious. Originally [Robyn] was supposed to be English, and it was an entirely English show,” says Paquin, who’s Canadian/Kiwi and resides in California with her husband and 8-year-old twins.
“We sort of ended up with this hybrid model of her being American. One of the things that was very important to me was establishing that her life had been there long enough that we could keep the English humor.”
Before the series landed at Amazon, “Flack” aired its first season on Pop. Season 2 was originally bound for Pop but was axed over restructuring at parent company ViacomCBS.
“Nobody can account for a corporate merger that eats your network — their entire slate was canceled. So that’s not personal,” she says. “I didn’t see it as an obstacle; it was more like, ‘Okay, we’ve got another opportunity.’”
Paquin, who’s the second-youngest Oscar winner in history (for 1993’s “The Piano” at age 11), is best known for playing Rogue in the “X-Men” movies and telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse in HBO’s hit “True Blood” (which introduced her to her husband, former co-star Stephen Moyer).
Most recently she appeared in the Martin Scorsese crime movie “The Irishman,” the final season of domestic drama “The Affair” and historical murder mystery “Alias Grace.”
“It’s not by calculated design, but also I get bored of doing the same thing over and over again,” Paquin says about the variety in her projects.
“I finished childhood and did adolescence and young adulthood on camera. So the evolution of [my interests] has been both just because I grew up and also because I don’t like being put in a box. I don’t want to just do the thing that you expect me to do.”
In December, news broke that HBO is developing a “True Blood” reboot, produced by original showrunner Alan Ball. Paquin says she found out when the rest of the world did.
“Not a single member of the cast or crew knew anything about it. We literally all found out on Twitter. I don’t know what the concept is, but it’s a rich world,” she says. “The reason I feel like reboots and reimaginings do so well is that there’s an endless number of stories you can tell. We told seven years’ worth, but there’s no limit in genre stuff.”
On the possibility of appearing in the reboot, Paquin says there are several factors.
“It depends on in what regard,” she says. “I think Alan Ball is part of it and I owe him a lot of my career. So if he asked me, there’s a solid chance I’d say ‘yes.’ But I had absolutely no idea what that would even look like or if they’d want us old folks. These were some of the best years of most of our lives for the cast and crew.
“That was our family.”
