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GHOFS General Hospital Official Fan Site BLOG: GHOFS Exclusive Interview with Graham Shiels - Starring in HBO's TrueBlood, General Hospital 
Sat, Sep 27
Friday, September 19, 2008 GHOFS Exclusive Interview with Graham Shiels - Starring in HBO's TrueBlood, General Hospital I had the pleasure of Interviewing Graham Shiels the GHOFS sites. Graham is a man who is totally dedicated to his craft, he truly enjoys what he does. He is very busy juggling his work on GH along with his guest starring roles on primetime, his current role on HBO's TrueBlood, and his film career. It is also very obvious when talking with Graham that he is completely devoted to his General Hospital fans! Here's how our conversation went. Robin, GHOFS. Hi Graham, thanks for taking the time for this interview! A reader from GHOFS.net wants to know if you see any future for Cody and Lainey coming back together and what would it take? Graham. Yea yea, I would love that. What it would take would be the writing team and the producers seeing that there would be potential there. Right now Cody's just been Jason's right hand man, and hasn't been bumping up against any other characters except for Clarice and maybe Spinelli. R. And that was fun the day when you ran into Clarice. I saw a little flirting going on, did you throw that in or was that planned? G. Oh of course I threw that in. R. Have they mentioned bringing Cody and Lainey back together at all? G. No, the only time it ever came up was in the first scene back when they wrapped up the storyline. R. I hit a lot of message boards, and it's just all over the message boards (wanting Cody and Lainey hooking up) and I don't know if people are communicating that back to TPTB or what? G. Well I sure hope they are! R. So you would like that direction for Cody? G. Yeah, because that would round me out, ya know, because of the testosterone and guns and mob stuff. I mean that's great, don't get me wrong. R. Well, that's another thing that's not in my questions, but we hear a lot of people complain about too much mob on GH. They would like for it to be more rounded out so that we get back to a good balance like it was in the good ole' days. We don't need to get rid of the mob of course, we just want it to balance out, it's kinda gone overboard. Who could you see Cody with on the show if it wasn't Lainey? Other than Lainey? G. It's tough because most of the women are spoken for ya know right now. But I think somebody like Sarah Brown's character Claudia would probably go for a bad boy like Cody. R. Here's a question from Leslie from the GHOFS Myspace site. GH had 3 war vet characters brought in within a very short time. Cooper was brought in as a criminal turned good guy before killing him off. Logan was turned into a twisted jerk before he was killed off. Now Cody is back months later as a recovering drug addict who seems to have gotten past the war, but is working for the mob. How do you feel about GH's treatment of war vets with these stories. G. I think there could be more in terms of (juiciness). For instance when I did Night Shift last year it was kind of a post traumatic stress disorder [storyline], whereas I don't think there is room for that in the writing that they have been throwing at me recently. But I think if there were that again, it would add another dimension to the character, and it would also deal with a more topical matter. And again, I am not watching every day. When Coop and Logan were on, I don't remember them talking about it too much really. There could be a lot of mileage there. R. There could be, other soaps are doing it, people have it in the back of their minds. We have three characters that were war vets, please don't kill off our third. It's topic of conversation. What direction would you like to see Cody go on the show in the future? G. I would love to see more conflict and more interaction with more of the canvas. I don't mean firing guns at each other, I mean like social conflict. Because every actor wants to flex their muscles and show their range so obviously I would like to be pushed in a direction where I can show more range and be challenged that way. I'm confident with [my character], I'm back at square one. It's like they are re-introducing the character. R. Where do you see Cody living in Port Charles? G. I think Cody's apartment would be above somebody's garage that he found on Craig's list. On the other hand, here he is working for the mob. He can't be doing too bad in terms of financially. I tell you this, forget my apartment for now. Let's talk about my wardrobe. Let's hope Cody spends some better money on clothes. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't think this is a man with a lot of taste, he would have to have a woman in his life to dress him, or dress up his apartment. I think he lives some place close to the docks. R. Is there anyone on the set you totally enjoy working with? G. You know who is really cool, there's a woman in the sound department, her name is Sandy Masone. She has been employed with the show like 30 years or something. And she is the most happy, friendly person to see. And when I go there she is the person I look forward most to saying hi to. Actually, she taught me how to smoke!!! I don't think you'll remember but Cody set off the ambulance explosion in the very first episode of Nightshift by lighting a cigarette and the perfectly wrong time. I/Graham do not smoke, EVER!. So Sandy worked with me extensively to make it look natural having and lighting a cigarette in my hand!!! But in terms of no surprise, (actors) probably Bradford Anderson. And, the times I have worked with Kirsten Storms, you know Maxie she is a delight, she is great. R. They both light up the screen, so I am not surprised. Let's talk about HBO's TrueBlood. I am totally into that, I am loving the show! What did you have to go through to get the part? G. Actually, it's quite funny, and a long story. There's a series of casts by 2 women, Junie Lowry-Johnson and Libby Goldstein and they are very tough, difficult casting directors to get in front of in Hollywood, very exclusive. They do a lot of the biggest shows on TV. I had read for 6 Feet Under 5 or 6 years ago. I met with them, and they were looking for a sexy, intense actor. Every intimidating adjective an actor doesn't want to hear. And the word came back to my agent that I wasn't sexy enough. My agent's assistant is a personal friend with Ms. Goldstein's assistant and she heard this. She said that's ridiculous, and she got on the phone with Ms. Goldstein's assistant and said watch his demo reel. So he watched my demo and I guess he petitioned on my behalf again, and that's how I got the appointment. So I got the appointment, I go in and do it, it's from the scenes this Sunday night, it's a great scene. Alan Ball was there, he gave me some direction and I did it again. I left thinking that was a good audition. The next day, I get a call back from their office saying they want to see me again on Monday with some very specific direction. And that's really unusual. You usually get a call back or you don't. Usually if they want to work with you, they work with you in the room. They won't give you notes to work on over the weekend. I went in on Monday morning, and I was the only guy they saw. I was thinking this is great! And so, I do it the way I prepared, and Alan Ball was like "great, you've got that, now let's try it this way" and he gave me direction a couple more times, then he left. And I got a call the next day, I booked it. It turns out the whole story was I guess my agent said Alan Ball fell in love with me as soon as I walked in the room. The reason I had to go through all that direction was to satisfy some of the other people in the room. But he clearly liked me, wanted me in the role, and that's how I got it. R. Where exactly is TrueBlood shot? G. It is shot in Los Angeles. They go to Louisiana outside of Shreveport sometime to shoot location. The exterior of Bill's house is an old plantation home which is 300 years old and during the civil war it was used as a hospital. R. Which is 100 miles from where I live. G. I know all about the casinos there. R. Is the character of Liam going to be in season 2? G. He meets his demise in episode 7. R. I want to know about the make-up process. Obviously I don't think you have all those tattoos on your back and I know you don't have that blood and teeth in your mouth. I'm curious what it takes to get all that on your body. G. Well the tattoos are typically designed by a guy named Eric from the special effects production house, the same people who did the teeth. You do a mold of your teeth like you do at the dentist like a night guard. The crazy thing about those fangs is they are very intrusive on your upper palate you use to make S's, T's, and a lot of your consonant sounds. So the three of us, and Bill too were lisping all the time so we took them home to get use to them. I think we did a pretty good job. Those bloody things are sharp. When your mouth is at rest, they are poking into your bottom lip. R. When it shows the fangs pop down, is that CGI? G. Yeah, and I love the sound effects it has. R. And the part where your eyes popped back in your head last week and you scared the *&^% out of everyone, there's been a lot of comments about that on the web too. Do you know when you are filming a scene like that they are going to do special effects? How does that work? G. They do special takes of camera shots of just that and they have the make-up guy come out and put little dots on your forehead so that in post the CGI guys use the reference dots to help them. It's always a battle between the CGI guys and the production guys because the production guys want to move, move, move, go, go, go. And the CGI guys want to slow this down, we've got to get this frame right or it will never work. R. The blood that they put in your mouth, does it taste bad? G. It doesn't taste like crap, but basically it is like corn syrup and dye, but you will see in this next episode I drink blood, literally from a glass. And this isn't the TrueBlood synthetic stuff, this is suppose to be like real human blood and the mixture they used for that was berries, brown sugar for consistency, I'm basically drinking about 8,000 calories. It's so much sugar. R. How many takes did you have to do of that? G. I had to do quite a lot, you will see. Because every time they had to change the angle of the camera, I had to drink it again. It wasn't fun, but it is all good. R. Is there anything you would like to say to your fans? G. As far as General Hospital goes, I appreciate all the support and it totally helps when anything is acknowledged. Thanks! We chatted for a moment about Graham's upcoming scene's in Yes Man with Jim Carey, and he jokingly says, "Yes, I do have lines in the movie". He plays the scary boyfriend, and I did check out the clip. You can see Graham at the end of the clip behind Jim Carrey. Thanks Graham for your interview, it was a delight! You are a true craftsman to your art. You can visit Graham's Website at http://www.grahamshielsonline.com/ Check out Graham's demo reel's at www.reelaccess.com/talent/grahamshiels And hit Graham up on Myspace at www.myspace.com/grahamsheezzy You can send fan mail to Graham below at: Graham Shiels c/o General Hospital 4151 Prospect Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90027 Contact General Hospital: Brian Frons Pres., ABC Daytime 2300 Riverside Dr. Burbank, CA 91506 Comment Line ABC 818-460-7477 You can also view this interview at www.ghofs.net/graham.html Note: Interview and content property of R Kelly, GHOFS. No interview in part or whole may be used without the written permission of Robin Kelly. E-mail GHOFS. Originally post date: Sept. 19, 2008 EXCLUSIVE Graham Shiels Part 2 - Will General Hospital Offer Graham (Cody) a Contract? 9.27.8 Posted by General Hospital Official Fan Site at 2:46 PM Labels: Cody Paul, Graham Shiels
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