Anna Paquin Opens up About Topless ‘True Blood’ Scene: ‘I Have to Reclaim My Own Boobs’

Anna Paquin was reportedly shooting a movie in Scotland last summer when she got getting Twitter notifications about a “scandal on BBC.”

The former True Blood star stopped by Conan O’Brien’s late-night talk show Tuesday and recalled how she clicked on the notification only to find out one of her sex scenes from the vampire HBO drama had been playing in the background of a news segment on BBC Nightly News.

“I was quite excited that somebody had brought this to attention, but also I was then like, ‘Holy sh—, those are my tits!’ Retweet,” Paquin said. “And people thought it was funny. But they’re mine. I was like, I have to reclaim my own boobs. Come on! Like, free the nipple or whatever.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, BBC anchor Sophie Raworth was reading a report in August 2017 when viewers noticed an employee in the background watching an explicit scene from True Blood with Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouse, Robert Kazinsky’s Warlow, in a graveyard. The supernatural drama, also starring Alexander Skarsgaard, Stephen Moyer and Sam Trammell, was infamous for its creatively disturbing, and at times bloody, sex scenes.

“Basically what seems to have happened is some person who works for the network was watching with their headphones on, but there’s a glass partition between the [bullpen] and I guess they didn’t really think about it,” Paquin said. “But what it went out as was that the BBC was broadcasting porn and people were asking to have their license yanked and various things.”

Paquin didn’t let the controversy get to her, tweeting out at the time: “MY BREASTS!! SO FUNNY ON SO MANY LEVELS,” Paquin tweeted at the time.

The actress stopped by the talk show to promote her new series Bellevue. Paquin plays detective Annie Ryder, who works to solve the murder of transgender teen Jesse Sweetland, as well as the 20-year-old murder of Sandy Driver.

The series also stars Shawn Doyle, Allen Leech, Billy MacLellan, Sharon Taylor, Patrick Labbe, Vincent Leclerc, Janine Theriault, Victoria Sanchez and Joe Cobden.

Bellevue airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on WGN America.