For seven seasons, it was hard to find a show that reveled in soapy, over-the-top violence and mayhem quite as gleefully as HBO's True Blood, which gave creator Alan Ball and his team every opportunity imaginable to push the limit in terms of blood and gore galore. But that novel series' author Charlaine Harris has another wild adaptation hitting the small screen soon with NBC's Midnight, Texas, and star Dylan Bruce spoke with CinemaBlend's Conner Schwerdtfeger about the amount of violence the network will allow in the late primetime hour.
It's up there for a network, it's pretty violent. It's over the top. It's a crazy show, but at the same time, you got romance and relationships that ground it in reality...fully fleshed out. But I mean, on Orphan Black, I was always like 'Can I get a fight scene? I'm like this badass ex-operative, gimme something.' And they wait till the end to give me something. I don't think you'll have to wait too long on this show for Bobo to go to work.
Without promising anything like "people turning into giant blood explosions," Dylan Bruce still stokes the anticipation of fans that were hoping Charlaine Harris' popular supernatural trilogy wouldn't get neutered when Midnight, Texas got scooped up by NBC as opposed to another premium cable network. Not that it's a story that thrives on nothing but eye-gougings and dismemberments, but any world with witches, vampires and assassins in it is going to get a little on edge. Co-star Peter Mensah, who memorably played Kibwe on True Blood, brought up to CinemaBlend that his vampire character Lemuel Bridger saps both energy and blood rom his victims, so that's a really easy way to limit this community's sticky messes.
The town of Midnight, Texas in the title refers to a community of "different" souls, such as the aforementioned character types. (Along with psychics, werewolves, angels and more.) In the show, Dylan Bruce plays Bobo, the mysterious owner of Midnight's pawn shop; it doesn't take Stephen King's Needful Things to remind everyone that pawn shop owners in small towns usually have ulterior motives going on. And in Midnight, everyone tends to stick together to ward off threats from the outside world, like cops and criminals.
When talking to CinemaBlend about Midnight, Texas during a recent NBC press event, Dylan Bruce also talked up how big and awesome the stunt work and action-y scenes are within the drama. So even if things aren't quite as gruesome and extreme as True Blood, we're still going to get some good times. Here's how Bruce put it, while also referencing his stint on The CW's superhero drama Arrow.
You know what's great about Arrow, which I learned a lot from being on Arrow even though I didn't get to do any of the stunts, is Stephen and a lot of the other cast members just really pick up on that stuff quick and really make it look great and they had a great stunt coordinator. And I think we have something similar on Midnight, Texas where our stunt coordinators do crazy shows, crazy features, and all our fight scenes - all our huge out of this world supernatural stunts - they all look really, really good, and they really prepared us as best they could in the TV world, where you don't have a lot of time.
I like the sound of that, too. Network shows usually have to get more inventive when it comes to action and violence, since the censors are a tad more stingy about visuals. (Although NBC let Hannibal get away with some extremely impressive effects on a weekly basis, if not all things.) So that's where the big stunts tend to pick up the slack, and we can't wait to see what the show has in store.
Developed for TV by former Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. producer/writer Monica Breen, Midnight, Texas also stars François Arnaud, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Arielle Kebbel, Jason Lewis, Sarah Ramos, Yul Vazquez and Sean Bridges. Sadly, it isn't set to hit NBC until Tuesday, July 25, at 10:00 p.m. ET. The new trailer on the next page will definitely raise your interests, assuming you're into this sort of thing, and to see everything else that's coming before and around that time, look no further than our midseason premiere guide and our summer TV schedule.
