‘True Blood’ season 7: How Joe Manganiello uses Alcide as motivation

At this point in his life, Joe Manganiello is kind of a big deal. He is well-known around the world for his role of Alcide on “True Blood,” and also has done some memorable roles on “How I Met Your Mother,” “White Collar,” and in the movie “Magic Mike.” But at one point in his career, he was an actor really struggling to keep himself afloat as an actor, and to stay sober (which he has now been for 11 years).

But who knew that playing this part on the HBO hit was one of the things that really pushes him to be a better guy? Speaking to Radar Online, Joe admitted that this part was one of the things that really allowed him to reach what was more of his true potential, mostly because he was not really giving himself that much of a great opportunity to do so beforehand courtesy of some of his bad habits:

“The role of Alcide on ‘True Blood’ was an opportunity to push myself and see what I could possibly become. There was no gun to my head, nobody forced me to do any of this. It was basically at 33 years old, what do you want the rest of your life to look like? Do you want to know what you’re capable of or not? And I used it as my motivator.”

“True Blood” starts filming its final season next month, and for Alcide, he has a chance to really end this time around on a high note. The last we saw of his character, he was in a relationship with Sookie Stackhouse that seemed to be going reasonably well. But will it actually stay that way? She’s always had a knack for getting herself into dangerous positions, and so the irony here is that she may somehow get herself into a place where she starts to feel a little bit too safe, and feels a temptation to really throw herself into the fire once again.