Joe Manganiello, who plays werewolf
Alcide Herveaux on the HBO vampire drama True Blood, says he
beat up bullies in It Gets Better PSA.
The 36-year-old Manganiello is the
latest True Blood co-star to reach out to troubled LGBT teens.
Manganiello says he was “picked on”
by older kids because he refused to become a bully himself.
“Got beat up, got my books dumped,
got made fun of, had big ears that stuck out,” he says in the
one-minute-forty-second video.
“Fast forward a few years to high
school. I grew to full size, and I saw other kids getting picked on.
And I made it my business to stick up for those kids and try to help
those kids out and be a friend to those kids,” he adds. (The video
is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
Anna
Paquin, who plays Sookie Stackhouse, Alexander
Skarsgard, who plays vampire Eric Northman, Rutina
Wesley, who plays lesbian cage-fighter Tara Thornton, and Kristen
Bauer, who plays vampire Pam Ravenscroft, have also recorded videos
for gay activist Dan Savage's It
Gets Better Project, which urges teens being bullied because they
are or are perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender to
hang in there, because life gets better.
More recently, Nelsan
Ellis, who plays flamboyant gay prostitute and vampire blood
dealer Lafayette Reynolds, and Sam Trammell, who plays Sam
Merlotte, also joined the campaign.