Nearly a decade has passed since Stephen Moyer, as sexy vampire Bill Compton, sank his fangs into Anna Paquin’s neck on HBO’s supernatural soap “True Blood.”
Paquin, who married her co-star in 2010, played waitress Sookie Stackhouse and was billed as the star of the show, but Moyer’s slithering sensuality was one of its main draws. The series’ brand of unbridled bayou coupling reached its peak when Moyer, Paquin and co-star Alexander Sarsgaard appeared naked (and streaked with fake blood) on the cover of Rolling Stone.
How times have changed. Moyer, 47, is now married to Paquin and the father of four. And the family man is mirroring his real-life persona on Fox’s supernatural drama “The Gifted,” a Marvel production based on the “X-Men” film franchise. Moyer plays Reed Strucker, an Atlanta special prosecutor who’s assigned to bring an internment camp of mutants to justice. When he discovers that his own teenage children are mutants, he’s prepared to break every law to escape their apprehension by a government organization called the Sentinel Service. [“The Gifted” premiered Monday night to 5 million viewers.]
“Reed ends up in a sick situation,” says Moyer. “His son [Andy, played by Percy Hynes White] may well be taken off into a place where he might never return from. Reed has had a couple of people disappear into the system and they are never heard from again. He has no option except to run.”
The family’s journey is fraught with peril; at the end of the series premiere, Reed was separated from Andy, his wife Kate (Amy Acker) and their daughter, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind).
“The family gets stuck without him,” Moyer says. “A lot of it is about them coming together and finding a path forward. Once you have everything taken away from you and you can’t go anywhere, what do you do? You fight back.”
Moyer’s TV projects since “True Blood” haven’t always included paranormal elements. In 2013, he played Capt. von Trapp in NBC’s controversial live production of “The Sound of Music,” which drew 18 million viewers and the scorn of many critics, who remarked on the lack of chemistry between Moyer and his leading lady, country music superstar Carrie Underwood.
The British-born actor has no regrets. “We were the first [live musical] out the gate. So it was kind of balls to the wall,” he says. “Let’s get a barn and put on a show. It was amazing, really.”
Moyer was more in his comfort zone in Fox’s 2017 miniseries “Shots Fired” playing Lieutenant Breeland, a corrupt North Carolina sheriff covering up the murder of a white college student. “It was a great part. They don’t come along very often,” says Moyer, who lists working with veteran character actor Will Patton, cast as one of the county sheriffs, as a career highlight. “Not only did we become friends, there were times during that production where two or three minutes before I’m getting ready to shoot [a scene] he would say to me, ‘Why are we here? What’s about to happen?’ He sort of set the scene in character. I’d never done anything like that before.”
Moyer and Paquin are the parents of Charlie and Poppy, five-year-old twins, and Moyer has two teenage children from his first marriage. “I like the fact [that] Reed’s a parent,” Moyer says. “I’m a parent. I have a 15-year-old in LA and a 17-year-old in London. It was really nice to play a character who has the same responsibilities as I have. I’ve ended up thinking about some of the choices I’ve made.”
“The Gifted” 9 p.m. Monday on Fox