‘True Blood’s’ Kristin Bauer Van Straten On Season 3’s Drama ‘Spiral’ & Her Amazing Abs

With nearly every major character on HBO’s “True Blood” in some sort of life-threatening peril, Season 3 of the Alan Ball produced series has been an eye-opening blast, and according to Kristin Bauer van Straten, who plays Eric Northman’s vampire prodigy Pam, fans are about to learn a lot more.

“[With] the whole vampire hierarchy, you’re starting to see that it’s a very tangled web now,” Kristin told AccessHollywood.com of the show’s latest revelations, which include Pam being held hostage by the magister for helping deal vampire blood, and details of Eric’s human Viking past and connection to now-Mississippi vampire King Russell Edgington.

Last week’s episode, which saw Russell (Denis O’Hare) propose to Queen Sophie Anne (Evan Rachel Wood), Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) prepare to die, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) attacked by Bill’s maker, and the unraveling of Eric’s steely cool due to his worry over the magister’s very-real threat to kill Pam – was just an appetizer.

“The king and the queen and she having to marry him, and [Eric] trying to save me, and Bill and Sookie and all of that is just going to continue to snowball,” Kristin continued. “It’s a dwindling spiral for all of us. Every script I read, I thought, ‘How are they gonna get out of this?’ Like heads are gonna roll on this thing, I’m sure.”

It’s Pam’s head that’s currently on the chopping block, and Kristin revealed that fans will start to learn more about how the blonde became the first vampire Eric made.

“Yeah, that’s the whole rest of the season really,” Kristin said of her story line. “Her drama and her tests are all related to her relationship to Eric. It was really fun.”

Not so fun was preparing for the last time Pam was featured on screen — two episodes ago at Fangtasia, where she was being tortured (in true “True Blood” style wearing just a teeny, abdomen revealing top), by the magistrate and his henchmen.

“The two weeks before we shot that, I watched everything I ate, I did cardio, I did cardio bar,” Kristin said referring to a class that uses the ballet bar combined with a heart-racing workout. “And I did crunches.”

The actress did reveal, however, that her ab region has been in great shape for quite some time.

“I had, for many years, the greatest personal trainer in the history of the world… Tony Pearson. He was Mr. Universe, Mr. World, Mr. Everything. For like seven years he held those titles back in the day and he had an amazing ab workout so all I’ve had to do is maintain it,” she said.

“Just discipline,” Kristin added of how she maintains her amazing figure. “I just spent a day with Joe [Manganiello, who plays werewolf Alcide] and he watches what he eats and he works out hard. There’s really, sadly, just no substitute.”

While surrounded by hunks like Joe, Kristin doesn’t work out with them.

“No, he’s going in a whole other direction,” she said of the tall and tanned Pittsburgh actor, a recent Rising Star. “I try not to eat meat and he’s eating, I don’t know, a cow a day, a couple of chickens (laughs) and just probably doing really heavy weights. I’m trying to do cardio and just stay tiny. As actresses we want to be tiny. He wants to be big!”