It is. I went to see this movie called Flicka, a family movie about a brother and sister and a horse, and he was the handsome, charming, not-so-intellectually developed brother. He was Jason. I called my casting director that day. So Kwanten is particularly good at playing dummies? Ryan is tremendously underrated. I think that because he is so good at portraying Jason, who is not the brightest bulb in the drawer, people tend to think that that just must be who he is … Ryan is actually really intelligent. He's a really eloquent, deep, smart guy but he doesn't have the vanity to feel like he has to let us know that he is not as dim as Jason. I also admire Ryan's ability in a very clean, very economic way to let you know exactly what his character is thinking. How do you explain the popularity of vampires? Somebody asked me, ''Why do people like vampires so much?'' This was right after Obama had been elected and I said, ''Because we just spent eight years being sucked dry by one.''

Were you surprised Six Feet Under ever got off the ground? Before Six Feet Under premiered, HBO was concerned the show was very dark. Everybody would say the family in Six Feet Under is so dysfunctional. OK, but who's abusing who? Who's the crazy alcoholic abusing the mother and molesting the daughter? To me, that's dysfunction. But I guess in America we're so sold on this ideal of the perfect, well-adjusted family that is able to confront any conflict and, with true love and understanding, work things through. I'm sure they do exist but I never knew any of them. It wasn't my idea to do a show about a family in a funeral home. That came from Carolyn Strauss at HBO. When she pitched it to me I thought, ''I've never seen that.'' That was about 10 years ago and I'd certainly had enough experiences with death in my life with my family and being a member of the gay community, where people died very young. Your older sister died in a car crash when you were 13. How did that affect your family? All of a sudden my family's entire life started to centre around a very Gothic, grief-centred religion. My mum got into the whole school of thought that we were living in the end of times and the rapture was coming. It was not really helpful to anybody; it was not helping us process the grief. It seemed to be a sort of latching on to some weird obsessive mythology in a way to avoid actually going through the grief itself. But you turned to Buddhism?

Life is suffering. We have desires and expectations and egos and we compare the reality we have, which is miraculous and wondrous, with this reality we desire. That somehow distances us from actually taking part fully with the reality we do have and that creates suffering. For me, the thing that I love is that it's all about the present moment. It's not about processing something that happened 20 years ago over and over and over again, and still carrying it with you, or not living today because you've put all your eggs in one basket for these goals down the road that may never happen. Sacha Molitorisz True Blood Showcase, Thursdays, 8.30pm.