Here is the best image we’ve got so far of the True Blood cover for the next issue of Rolling Stone. Um… Stephen Moyer, Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgard are all naked and covered in blood… and dirt, maybe? Or is it all blood? Couple things: Moyer’s got a cute little bubble butt, doesn’t he? And Sookie’s got no ass to speak of and she’s sucking it in, big time. Oh, and Alex. Um… yeah, why didn’t they just put him on the cover again? I think it would have been a bestseller for the magazine. Did they not think of that?

Since the cover is all we’ve got, how about some more quotes from Alex’s interview with The Telegraph? There’s some good stuff in here. The full piece is here, and here are some highlights:

On the appeal of True Blood: ‘You can sit back and enjoy it, but it’s also really intelligent. It says a lot about society today and about how we relate to each other.’

On his father, actor Stellan, and his family: At 33, he is the oldest of Stellan’s six children from his first marriage: three of his brothers – Gustav, 29, Bill, 20, and Valter, 14, have established acting careers. Sam, 28, has also dabbled in the family business. His sister, Eija, 18, is a model; his mother, My, a doctor. He grew up in Stockholm, on the island of Södermalm. Family life, he says, was ‘pretty chaotic’, the atmosphere ‘very liberal’. His father strolled around naked a lot. Aunts, uncles and grandparents all lived close by. ‘The doors were always open. On any given night, there would be 10 to 15 people around the dinner table. It was very loud, very crazy, there was a lot of food, a lot of alcohol, but it was also very loving. I was very much part of the chaos but I also had my room, and in there, when I was four or five, I would organise my cars and my action figures. I needed some kind of structure, I think, because it was so chaotic in the rest of the apartment.’

On growing up around theatre folk: His father was performing in repertory theatre at the time, and would often be rehearsing one play during the day and performing in another in the evening. ‘He worked a lot,’ Skarsgård says, ‘so I would hang out backstage at the theatre and just play there because it was pretty much the only chance I got to spend time with my dad. A lot of the plays were Ingmar Bergman-directed, but I didn’t care about him. It was more fun to play around in the costume department.’

On his dreams of a career in architecture: He briefly considered becoming an architect – ‘I spent a lot of time drawing buildings, even entire towns’ – but changed his mind. He spent his teenage years ‘not hanging out with his family’, listening to punk with his friends, getting drunk at the weekends and following his local football team, Hammarby, home and away.

His military career: ‘I come from a family of pacifists, so it’s not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month. For me it was just a personal challenge. I’m very happy that I did it. It was tough. I hated it at times; the unit I was in dealt with anti-sabotage, anti-terrorism in the archipelago, so some of the people who applied were total warheads. There were a lot of really cool guys, but the mentality sometimes got a little too testosterone-fuelled for my tastes.’

On leaving New York to go back to Sweden for love: ‘I had met this girl in Sweden three weeks before I went to New York. We had this long-distance relationship. We would speak on the phone once or twice a week. She broke up with me because it wasn’t working out, and I was heart-broken. I thought, I can’t do this, I miss her so much, I’ve got to go home. So I did. I got back and we hung out for a little while, but we were just too young and too different. She was 18 and I was 21. She’s a lovely woman but I didn’t even know her. I spent six months creating her in my mind.’

On playing cold characters: ‘I can definitely relate to them,’ he says. ‘But I’m different in real life. They’re subdued and calm, I’m more playful. I’m pretty intense when it comes to relationships, platonic ones as well. If I feel a connection with someone, I’m willing to go there.’

On being beautiful: ‘I see myself as most people see themselves, you have good days and bad days. I don’t think I’m better looking now than I did three years ago. I’m always looking for something that’s real and that’s got meat on it. I think it’s artistic suicide if you’re too vain, or if you’re afraid to play ugly. I would never fall for that.’

[From The Telegraph]

Sigh… Alex. So… f-cking hot. That’s all I’ve got to say about it. He’s so hot I almost forgot he was boning (operative word: bones) WhatsHerSmugFace.

UPDATE: Okay, Rolling Stone just put out the cover, but the header photo is still a better copy of it. Here’s the link to the RS teaser piece, amd here’s the slideshow, photographs by Matthew Rolston.

Rolling Stone cover courtesy of HuffPo.