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"    Photo: Getty Images   What&amp;#039;s a political activist doing on a show about vampires? Trying to help shifters, werewolves, and other supernaturals fight for their rights, of course\u2014and getting a little bloody in the process. The stunning Jurnee Smollett-Bell brings the passionate supernatural-rights fighter Nicole to life, and if you don&amp;#039;t already love her from Friday Night Lights, prepare to get on board with her cause this weekend, when her first True Blood episode premieres. We caught up with Smollett-Bell before the show airs on HBO this Sunday to chat about working with the A-list cast, having cult fans, and why Joe Manganiello has great style. Were you a fan of &amp;#039;True Blood&amp;#039; before you started working on the show? I actually hadn&amp;#039;t seen the show before I started. My husband and I were working our way through Downton Abbey, but I&amp;#039;ve watched it all now!   Who were you most excited to work with on &amp;#039;True Blood?&amp;#039; I was just excited to get to be a part of a great ensemble cast. I&amp;#039;ve had that experience before, and the show is made of amazing actors. It&amp;#039;s thrilling to be in the company of pros, because it makes your job easier and harder at the same time. They&amp;#039;re so great to work with, but you have to be better and improve in every single scene. How would you describe your character Nicole? She comes to Bon Temps as an activist, as an organizer, to help with the war the humans have waged against the humans and supernaturals. I come to Sam [Merlotte, played by Sam Trammell] initially to try to recruit him and get him to come out of the closet as a shifter. It terrifies him. Nicole would be occupying Wall Street in the regular world, but it&amp;#039;s the vampire cause here.  She&amp;#039;s a bit of a crusader, certainly, but you are too. Does all your charity work give you some common ground with Nicole? Yeah, I&amp;#039;m actually on my way to this board meeting for Artists for a New South Africa. It&amp;#039;s kind of a bittersweet day for me, because the organization is closing down. It&amp;#039;s been a part of my life since I was 12. It&amp;#039;s a group of artists, like Blair Underwood, Samuel L. Jackson, all these amazing actors, who founded it in 1989 as an anti-apartheid effort, then they switched and transitioned to help South Africa rebuild. We&amp;#039;re assisting with HIV/AIDS, adopting children, and getting them on a program. I started doing a lot of peer education there, in high schools and such, speaking and doing social activism. I&amp;#039;ve traveled all over Africa doing awareness and testing.  What&amp;#039;s the best advice you received from your mentors there? Never let anyone silence your voice. There are so many people who will try and make you feel like your opinion doesn&amp;#039;t matter, and I&amp;#039;ve learned how important it is to use your voice. There&amp;#039;s room for differences and opinions, but no one can take that power away from you. I love this quote by Alice Walker: &amp;quot;The most common way people give their power away is by thinking they don&amp;#039;t have any.&amp;quot; Whether it&amp;#039;s an election or volunteering, we all have an important role we play. True! And speaking of roles you play, what&amp;#039;s surprised you most about &amp;#039;True Blood&amp;#039; thus far? It shoots like a film. We have stunts and animals and gallons of blood, it doesn&amp;#039;t feel like I&amp;#039;m shooting a television show at all. The set of True Blood is its own world. You have actors walking down the lot eating a sandwich drenched in blood like it&amp;#039;s normal. It&amp;#039;s so cool. There&amp;#039;s nothing like it on TV. I&amp;#039;m just getting to know how awesome the fans are, but they&amp;#039;re so passionate. The live chat during the premiere was so cool, to see how excited they were. &amp;#039;True Blood&amp;#039; isn&amp;#039;t your first show with a passionate fan base\u2014you were also on &amp;#039;Friday Night Lights.&amp;#039; Did that prepare you for the cult following? What&amp;#039;s amazing about Friday Night Lights is that I feel like even more people are discovering it now that it&amp;#039;s off the air. I get a lot of people who saw it streaming on Netflix or they got the box set for Christmas, and they&amp;#039;re like &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe we didn&amp;#039;t watch this show!&amp;quot; When people watch it, they&amp;#039;re sucked in. I&amp;#039;m a little bit like, &amp;quot;Yeah, I know, if you&amp;#039;d watched it then we&amp;#039;d still be making it!&amp;quot; So how do the experiences of being on both shows compare? I wasn&amp;#039;t as involved with Twitter as much back then. I don&amp;#039;t know if we all knew what we were really involved with while we were shooting. I knew the show was special and that I was being spoiled creatively. It was criminal how much they allowed us. They really encouraged us to rewrite things, ad-lib, come up with things spur of the moment. I was cleaning out my closet over the weekend, and I found a script I had marked up, and I was like, &amp;quot;How did they allow me to do this?&amp;quot; I think because we were so involved in the process we didn&amp;#039;t have as much connection with the fans instantly.  Who is the most stylish cast member of &amp;#039;True Blood?&amp;#039; Joe [Manganiello] has the best style on the show, hands down. I feel like he&amp;#039;s a big brother to me\u2014all we talk about is workouts. I don&amp;#039;t know if it&amp;#039;s because I&amp;#039;m married, but I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Oh, whatever he&amp;#039;s just Joe, who cares.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s like a cool older brother. While &amp;#039;True Blood&amp;#039; isn&amp;#039;t really a fashion-focused show, the wardrobe plays an important role in defining its characters. The costume designer, Audrey, is so detail-oriented and really thinks like an actor about the choices the character would make. We found ways to build Nicole&amp;#039;s personality through jewelry and accessories, but other than that it&amp;#039;s not very flashy.  So have you picked up any style advice? Anna [Paquin] told me to always be careful what you wear at the end of the season because you&amp;#039;re going to be wearing it the rest of next season. It&amp;#039;s a trick she&amp;#039;s learned over the last few years, after getting stuck in the same dress for months at a time. So when we were working on Nicole&amp;#039;s outfits for the last episodes, I was extra careful to make sure everything was comfortable! I didn&amp;#039;t realize that when I did my fitting at the beginning, but it&amp;#039;s true. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a23325/true-blood-jurnee-smollett-bell-interview/>