'Eternally Yours' Changed Up Its Drinkable Blood Recipe Following a 'Red Pee' Scare
The stars of CBS' 'Eternally Yours' share the secrets behind getting their vampire on.
A red alert sounded by the Eternally Yours cast led to a change in the CBS comedy's recipe for drinkable (fake!) blood.
Matt Webb Mitovich
Hailing from Joe Port and Joe Wiseman (the same duo who adapted the UK's Ghosts for the U.S.), the freshman series stars Ed Weeks and Allegra Edwards as Charles and Liz Blythe, vampire lovebirds who have been together for some 500 years. Helen J. Shen plays the couple’s daughter Emma, who in the Oct. 8 premiere struggled with announcing to her fam that she is dating a very normal human named Max (Jaren Lewison).
The Blythes' coven also includes fitness coach Jesse (Parker Young) and his wife Phyllis (Rose Abdoo) — the latter of which is kept oblivious, via frequent mind wipes, to the household’s whole vampire sitch — as well as their teenage sons, Henry and Mort.
Matt Webb Mitovich
THE RED SCARE
Charles, Allegra et al. as a rule do not feed on humans, but instead get their fixes from a local supplier who semi-covertly stops by with bags of blood. They then drink the red stuff from water glasses — Rose thinks the others are simply ravenous for really tasty tomato juice — whilst slipping any actual human food to Argus the dog.
In the comedy's pilot, the fake blood was "beet juice, thickened," Weeks told me ahead of the show's first New York Comic Con panel. But that recipe was quickly scrapped after "a few too many people complained about red pee," Weeks shared with a laugh.
Matt Webb Mitovich
"We were warned about it," he noted, "but when [red pee] happens in the morning, and you forget you're on a television show where you drink blood...."
Yeah, that probably can be alarming.
Now the portrayers of Eternally Yours' vampires chug on-screen a blend of "hibiscus and strawberry [juices], which is delicious," Weeks said. "But it's a little less healthy, I think."
CLAWS FOR CONCERN
For when the coven members vamp out (as Charles and Liza did in the premiere, as soon as Max gleaned their secret), the actors slip on "very carefully molded" fangs that were customized for each of them across "multiple fittings," Weeks said.
"The fangs are very easy to put in — they put them in some mouthwash/a blue antibacterial liquid and hand them to us," he added. "It's very, very quick by design, because you're filming so many pages a week. But we have an incredible practical effects maestro named Bruno [Gatien] who's an absolute genius at what he does."
Matt Webb Mitovich
Weeks' leading lady suggested that the "hard part, actually" of going full vampire is the grotesque "claws" that sprout from all 10 fingers.
"I'll walk around with both my pointer fingers and my thumbs 'clawless', so I can use them to put in my fangs...," Edwards said. But even then, "I'm walking around with my hands in plastic bags, so if they pop off I've still got them in the bag. It's crazy."
Eternally Yours airs Thursdays at 8:30/7:30c on CBS.
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