Anna Paquin explores a dark mystery in new series ‘Bellevue’

Anna Paquin spent seven seasons as telepathic Sookie Stackhouse on HBO’s vampire hit “True Blood,” which ended in 2014.

While Paquin has been busy since then, she is returning to series TV as a detective in “Bellevue,” an eerie mystery that debuts Tuesday on WGN America.

“Occasionally as an actor your interests get to correspond with what you get to do,” says Paquin. “‘Bellevue’ is like that for me in that I finally get to be in a really cool, gritty, sophisticated cop show.”

Paquin has been a lifelong fan of mysteries and crime stories, and when she read the script for the first episode of “Bellevue” she immediately wanted to know what happened next.

As it turned out, Adrienne Mitchell (“Bomb Girls”) — one of the show’s co-creators along with Jane Maggs — was going to be in Los Angeles the next day.

“When we met, it was just a natural creative meeting of minds, and all the stars aligned,” the actress says.

Paquin quickly signed on not only to star but to be executive producer of the Canadian series about the disappearance of a high school hockey star who is wrestling with his gender identity.

Despite a career that started when she was 10, the actress — now 35 — has never played a detective before. In fact, she notes, she has rarely even played someone with a real profession. Sookie was a parttime waitress. Then, as the mutant Rogue in four “X-Men” films, all she needed was superpowers.

Of course, a lot of her roles came when she was younger. In 1994, Paquin became the second-youngest Academy Award winner ever, receiving best-supporting-actress trophy at the age of 11 for her role in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

Because that film was made in New Zealand, most people probably don’t know she was born in Canada (her dad is Canadian). She lived there until she was 4 before her family moved to New Zealand.

Ironically, because she is an actress, Paquin has gotten to spend a lot of time in her native country.

“It seemed like every year growing up I was shooting something up there, and so I got to know the country well,” says the actress, who now makes Los Angeles her home with her husband, actor Stephen Moyer. They were co-stars on “True Blood” and he’s currently on Fox’s “Gifted.”

And Paquin, the mother of 5-year-old fraternal twins, has been going up to Canada a lot the last couple of years. Not only did she film “Bellevue” there, but also Netflix’s “Alias Grace” and Moyer’s first directorial feature, “The Parting Glass.”

In “Alias Grace” she played the murder victim, whose gruesome death is told from different angles. “That was a pretty bizarre shooting day because the murder had to be shot at different angles depending on who is telling the story.”

The actress-producer wouldn’t mind another season of “Bellevue.” She calls her character reckless, but “an alley cat” who always lands on her feet.

“Although we wrap up the mystery, I think on an emotional scale there’s a lot more in these characters, which I would personally be fascinated to explore.”

“Bellevue” was shot in Quebec, and Paquin notes that there is a lot of women represented in the crews — departments that are traditionally very dominated by men.

“It’s really nice when my daughter comes to work with me, and she can look around and see that it’s not just boys who get to do certain things,” she says.

Currently, Paquin is filming Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman.” She plays the daughter of Robert De Niro’s character, a mobster who worked for the Italian Mafia, and on his deathbed confessed to the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster boss who disappeared in 1975.

Another dark story suits Paquin. “You’d need a magnifying glass to find the non-dark items on my resume. That’s kind of where my taste skews,” she admits.