Complete Coverage: TCA Summer 2014
Beverly Hills, Calif. — It’s not often that vampires are compared to a popular children’s juice, but that’s just what Guillermo del Toro did Monday at the TCA summer press tour panel for The Strain.
del Toro, who created the Vampire drama and directed the first episode that premiered on FX on July 13, said it was key to set up the vampires in the pilot for the audience to “see the first feeding” of blood.
“What do you do with a Capri Sun?” he asked. “You drink it and discard it.”
The acclaimed director of films like Pan's Labyrinth and Pacific Rim, del Toro wrote The Strain Trilogy of novels, the basis for the show, with Chuck Hogan in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Showrunner Carlton Cuse said the series differs from the books.
“It’s one thing reading it,” del Toro said. “It’s another thing witnessing it slowly.”
Our world is “permeated with the paranoia of takeover,” del Toro said, adding that that paranoia is the same people experienced in the Middle Ages.
“Horror is a pulse that responds to the social zeitgeist,” he said.
Other highlights from the panel included:
—Corey Stoll, who plays Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, commented on covering up his bald head with a wig on the show. “It was a relief to let my hair grow out to its natural state,” he joked.
—The Strain is a close-ended story, according to del Toro and Cuse, with a beginning, middle and end. They added that it will not last longer than five seasons.
