TV Talk: Stephen Moyer talks Pittsburgh, ‘Art Detectives,’ ‘Elsbeth’

Actor Stephen Moyer, best known for his role as vampire Bill Compton on HBO’s “True Blood” (2008-14), has a new British detective drama, “Art Detectives,” streaming on Acorn TV on June 9.

But before we got into his new show, Moyer wanted to talk about Pittsburgh.

“My daughter (Lilac Emery-Haynes) was at Carnegie Mellon,” he said via Zoom from his New York City home last month. “She studied drama, and she’s out in the world doing her stuff. I used to love coming to Pittsburgh because it’s a refreshing change from being elsewhere, and specifically that (Oakland) area.”

In the six-episode “Art Detectives” — episodes debut weekly on Mondays — Moyer stars as Detective Inspector Mick Palmer, the sole member of the police department’s heritage crime unit, which investigates murders connected to the world of art and antiquities. In the premiere episode, he recruits a partner, Police Constable Shazia Malik (Nina Singh).

Unlike in some detective shows, there’s no hint of romance between Palmer and Malik. Instead, Palmer directs his dithering romantic intentions toward museum curator Rosa (Sarah Alexander, “Green Wing”). At the same time, Palmer attempts to avoid run-ins with his estranged father (Larry Lamb, “EastEnders”), a notorious London forger.

“I shoot photography, and I think the reason that I gravitated towards photography was because I was such a terrible artist,” Moyer said. “It’s like putting the crayon in a baby’s non-dominant hand, that’s what my art looks like, so I’ve always been really, really interested in it. When they came to me with this idea, they only had one episode in place. And I was really piqued, ‘Oh, this is interesting. This is something that I’ve not actually seen before.’ ”

Palmer has a sunny, sweet disposition most of the time — until he enters the same room as his dad.

“I think he’s been hurt and quite broken in the past, firstly, by the loss of his mum, and then the loss of his mum has had an impact on the way that he integrates with female (romantic) partners,” Moyer said. “He’s found it really difficult to find that relationship. And we find out that he has had a relationship with somebody who’s left him with her daughter, who is not his daughter but somebody who he thought of as his stepdaughter, who he was really close to, and that’s broken him too. The sunny disposition thing is definitely a smoke screen.”

But Moyer said taking on young Shazia as a partner fills the void a bit.

“It brings out in him that paternal feeling that he had for his previous partner’s daughter,” he said.

As for Palmer’s relationship with Sarah, Moyer said his character is “just a disaster” when it comes to romantic overtures.

“He can’t make any decisions. He’s completely useless, but she knows why,” Moyer said. “She knows that there’s breakage in him. She knows that there is torment in him. She knows that there is an inability to commit. She has to take the bull by the horns. I really liked that duality and those obstacles that he’s playing, because it just makes it more interesting.”

Moyer will next be seen in PBS’s third iteration of “Masterpiece” drama “The Forsyte Saga,” reimagined as an ongoing series called “The Forsytes.” Moyer plays the senior Jolyon in the six-episode first season that’s expected to air later this year on PBS.

Most recently, Moyer returned for the second season finale of “Elsbeth” after playing Alex Modarian, a villainous theater director, in the show’s pilot episode. Moyer said “Elsbeth” star Carrie Preston, who was a series regular with Moyer on “True Blood,” called him and asked him to play opposite her in the “Elsbeth” pilot.

“We were very close, and I adore her and I think she’s a genius,” Moyer said. “I basically said, ‘Look, I’ll come and do it,’ and she said, ‘Well, let me send (the script) to you.’ I said, ‘I don’t need to see it. I’ll do it 100% just to get to work with you.’ ”

Moyer said when asked at Comic Cons during the “True Blood” days which character he’d want to play other than Bill, he always chose Preston’s Arlene Fowler.

“I loved what Carrie did with that character, so it just gives you an idea of the esteem that I hold for her,” Moyer said. “We had a ball on that (‘Elsbeth’) pilot, an absolute ball.”

Even when filming the “Elsbeth” pilot, Moyer said he and Preston talked about the idea of Elsbeth visiting Alex in prison to get Moyer back on the show.

“They weren’t quite sure how they were going to do it,” Moyer said. “Like, would she come to him for acting lessons?”

In the recent season finale, Elsbeth ends up in prison, where she confronts several characters she previously sent to jail, including Alex, who winds up murdered. They shot all of Moyer’s scenes first because he was filming a new season of Netflix’s “The Night Agent” at the same time. Initially, Moyer’s schedule didn’t allow him to be available for the “Cell Block Tango” musical number in “Elsbeth” (from the Broadway musical “Chicago”).

“Then I looked at the schedule for ‘Elsbeth’ when it came through, and I had a day off on the day they were shooting the ‘Cell Block Tango’ (dream sequence),” Moyer recalled. “So I wrote to (‘Elsbeth’ showrunner) Jonathan Tolins, and I said, ‘I can be in that day if you want me to announce it, because obviously they’re singing the “Cell Block Tango” about my (deceased) character,’ so they wrote me in. I was very, very happy to get to make that part of the show happen.

“You know, the young people say, ‘Oh my God, she’s eating,’ ” Moyer continued, “and my kids watched the that cold open (of the ‘Elsbeth’ season finale) the other day with all my character stuff, and my daughter, the Carnegie Mellon (2024 grad), went, ‘Oh, my God, Steven, you are eating,’ because I obviously am having the time of my life.”