Trinity Blood pg. 4

Mike: The Trinity Blood world, to me, sounds like everything's a secret, almost. Like, conversations between two people are meant for only those two people and someone 10 feet away shouldn't be hearing what they're talking about. There's lots of shadow conspiracy-type situations, there's an underground organization that's there the whole time too. You don't know when someone's being manipulated, you don't know when someone is showing their true intentions or whether they're showing a secondary face. It seems to me there's so much secretive stuff going on that the world itself feels secretive and you don't know who you can trust.

Troy: What I love is that even though it's in the future, it's not futuristic. It's actually more of a Neolithic throwback to almost Victorian or Elizabethan times. You're going to see people taking trains. You're not going to see people flying around in cars. The way that people dress is very much more of an Elizabethan-era type. There's flowing robes, and it's not super über modern. It's very cool how they kind of combine everything. They don't make it a period piece; at the same time, they don't go over super futuristic. There's a surreality to everything, even though it's very easy to believe. Your suspension of disbelief is very low in this because you believe that you could be there, this is what it would look like, you know, several hundred years in the future.

But at the same time, like what Mike said, when you look at any of the Methuselah cities, there is very much a mystique and an air, and almost a haze over everything. There's not a lot of hustle and bustle, which has been used in a lot of anime. This is really standout, in the way that it's drawn and scored, even. The music is Gothic, almost true Gothic, but it's not a Latin choirs type thing, you know? But then they'll switch and move to something more electronica, as well. They really bring two things together to help you realize you're not just only looking at an old world, but that you're also looking at a world that's in the future that's simply clung to its heritage and its culture, and it's very European.

Troy, I hear you're doing a lot of live action work in the future?

Troy: I owe a lot of how I got into this from Chris Sabat, who is quite well known in the anime world. He's the person who first cast me in my first show, which was Case Closed. I played the man in black, basically. And then through that, I developed a relationship with Mike, and when we first started working together, we found that we work very well together, so that's definitely helped me. This has really opened the doors because it's finally beginning to be recognized as acting. It's not just, you know, filling in the blanks. There's true acting that's required for this, and people are starting to hear that and see that. It's opened up some other doors for me.

I just finished filming an incredible movie in Santa Fe that's part of the Lonesome Dove series. It's written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who both did Brokeback Mountain. I mean, you're working together with Oscar Award-winning and Emmy Award-winning actors; it's incredible. It was with Val Kilmer, Steven Zahn, Rachel Griffiths, and Karl Urban, who played Eomer in Lord of the Rings. It was an incredible opportunity. I mean, it's surreal when you're sitting out in the middle of the desert on a horse in full cowboy gear, shooting guns and chasing Indians and there's not a road or a power line or anything in sight. It's very, very easy to believe that you're there, because you've got ten other guys around you doing it. So yeah, I just finished that. There's two other movies that I'm going to do this year as well.

Mike: What he neglected to mention right then was that he wasn't like, Cowboy C or like, Guy Who Brings in the Prisoners. Troy was one of the leads. He was right up there with Val Kilmer and all those guys. He was one of the prominently displayed leading characters.

Troy: It was an amazing character named Pea Eye Parker, who was played by Tim Scott in Lonesome Dove. He was also played by Sam Shepard in the final installment, called “Streets of Laredo.” I was in very good and intimidating company because of those actors—Tim Scott was an amazing, amazing actor and Sam Shepard is just unbelievable. I had the benefit of looking to see what they had done. The movie that we did takes place about 15 years before Lonesome Dove, so I had the benefit of seeing where this character ended up, and kind of just got to establish a way that he got there. It was incredible, but yeah, I was one of the Texas rangers who's with Gus and Call, who were Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones' characters in the original series.

Mike: Uh oh, spoiler. Actually, no, the ending's already out. They can see it.

Troy: Right. I'm actually one of the only two Texas rangers that makes it to the entire end of the series. It's myself and Woodrow Call. It was an incredible opportunity and I'm very, very blessed. If you look, statistically speaking, 90% of the people in our industry are unemployed. So the fact that we get to work is an incredible blessing in and of itself, and when you get to do something from both sides of the spectrum like a huge epic movie like Comanche Moon, which is on CBS in February, to Trinity Blood, which is on the other end of the spectrum. It's going to be viewed by more of a true and smaller audience, but people who are passionate about seeing something like this… what an incredible opportunity to get to be a part of this! I know people who are great actors that don't translate to doing voice over, so the fact that I'm able to do both, I feel incredibly blessed.

Before we end, could you two provide a few lines using your best Abel and Cain voices?

Troy: "I would like a milk tea with 13 spoonfuls of sugars. The best part is when you can always translate to this: I am a Crusnik, a vampire that feeds on the blood of other vampires."

Mike: "Hello Abel, so nice to see you again."

Troy: That's soft Cain.

Mike: Yeah, um... you might get kicked out of the hotel... cuz I'm in a sound-reinforced booth that keeps that from escaping... "ABEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"