An episode with . . .
Anna Paquin plays a small-town detective in the female-helmed drama Bellevue. She talks to Michele Manelis
You play a cop — did you know how to hold a gun?
I learned a bunch of cop stuff from consultants on set. As it turns out most actors have played cops hundreds of times, but I had never played a cop. And I grew up in New Zealand, as you know, so I didn’t know how to hold a gun. But as far as playing Annie, her grit and toughness and her general demeanour, meant I didn’t really need to do too much research on that.
Next up, you’re working with Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese in the upcoming film, The Irishman. Not too shabby.
Yes. It’s not only incredibly exciting and fun, it feels kind of special, if you’ll excuse the slightly sappy word, to be part of something like this.
You came of age professionally at a time before social media.
It didn’t exist, yeah. The Internet didn’t exist.
How much do you choose to share on social media with fans?
Well, I’m usually behind with technology so I kind of jumped on the whole social media bandwagon pretty late. I remember, it was Season 6 of True Blood. Some very lovely young social media person at HBO was hitting up all the cast members and saying, “Can you give us a hashtag for tonight”. I would love to find the footage because evidently there’s identical footage of me, (Alexander) Skarsgard and Steve (Moyer) literally all going, ‘I’m sorry. A what?’”
So you’re on board now then?
Apparently, you can teach old dogs new tricks. But it’s not for everybody. For me, there are certain aspects of my life that are just absolutely off limits, like my kids. But I do some silly, funny stuff which some people might find entertaining. You’ve been married [to Moyer] for seven years now. You’re both actors. Is there a competitive element in your relationship? No, no, we’re very supportive of each other. Also, it’s not a competition. Even if you have really close friends who are actresses, I don’t think of creativity as being something that is objective and therefore competitive. I think everyone brings a different thing to a different part in a different way and it’s all equally interesting.
Are most of your friends actors?
My best friends in the entire world are a costume designer, my on-set dresser and my makeup artist from True Blood. Those are three of my best friends on this planet to this day. They happen to be a really amazing trio of women and they have my back.
What can you tell me about your relationship with New Zealand? You haven’t lived here in a long time.
The entire maternal side of my family is there. I have a sister and I have a couple of nephews and a niece there. As my siblings and I have grown up and had children, we’ve made more of an effort to make sure we actually make sure the cousins all know each other. So I go back more often now as opposed to when we were all young and doing our own thing and able to be a little more self-absorbed.
Is it complicated getting everyone together? We take turns travelling, centred around whose schedule makes the most sense and then we get the families together. I look forward to my kids being old enough to be able to take them to New Zealand and travel around and show them what the country I’m from looks like, as opposed to it just being about seeing the relatives.
So you’re still very much a Kiwi? It’s in my DNA forever so there is part of me that will always think of it as home even though I haven’t lived there in a really long time.
What do you miss about New Zealand that you can’t get anywhere else? I almost always bring back here rather large shipments of those really spectacular Kiwi Feet slippers, the ones that have the stitching around the side that then end up being Christmas presents or wrap gifts. At first people are like, “These are very strange-looking.” Then they put them on and say, “This is the best thing that has ever happened to my feet!” I also have a dog who likes to eat them so we go through, on the home front, various phases of like, “Okay. That pair really and truly doesn’t get to call itself slippers anymore!”
It’s probably too early to tell whether your 5-year-old twins have inherited the acting gene from you and Steven. How would you feel if they followed in your footsteps?
They can do whatever they want . . . when they’re in college.
Can you see any signs yet of budding thespians in the Moyer/Paquin household?
No.
Some actors will say, ‘Oh, I knew when I was 3 years old I was going to become an actor.’
And I’m sure those people exist but I certainly wasn’t one of them. I’ll be very curious to see what kind of people my kids become.