THE VAMPIRE DIARIES – What Can We Expect?

The Vampire Diaries is something of a TV phenomenon that has attracted a devoted fan-base drawn to it’s modern day take on the classic mythos. While at first some may have thought it was cashing in on the ‘Twilght’ craze, ‘Diaries’ quickly set itself apart with it’s intricate storylines and well crafted twists and turns that have made the most avid fan of the genre take notice.

Adapted for television by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec from the best selling books by L.J.Smith, the show has quickly evolved into something more distinct and while executive producer Williamson acknowledges the stories take cues from the books, the TV series is more it’s own beast that continues to captivate audiences.

The second season is currently on hiatus and returns April 7th, however fans are eagerly awaiting the arrival of  Klaus, one of the ‘original’ vampires who’s set to turn things upside down at Mystic Falls.

While the Salvatore brothers and Nina Dobrev‘s dual characters are likely to stick around for some time, the show has pulled plenty of punches over the last two seasons with some character’s running out of luck, and as the season finale draws near fans are wondering who’ll be left standing in the wake of the events of this season’s aftermath.

At the recent C2E2 convention executive producer Julie Plec along with cast members Candice Accola (Caroline), and Michael Trevino (Tyler) shed some light on what fans can expect.

You can watch a video here taken from the audience as the panel answered questions about the show.

Julie Plec gave plenty of insight and talked about the writing of the show as well as casting the newest villain Klaus, whose character is intertwined with ‘The Sun & Moon Curse’.

Thanks to Chris Schrader of ScreenRant for this fascinating Q&A.

Plec described how Joseph Morgan won the  role of Klaus:

Contrary to what it may look like with the beauty of the people that actually end up on the show, we do actually look for actors first. With Klaus, we knew it was important that we found a fresh face. Someone who could carry the Old World vibe of that kind of character and also a contemporary, fun swagger who could go toe-to-toe with Damon and be different enough from Elijah. When we saw Joseph’s tape we were kind of blown away, because he’s this charming, charismatic, British fellow.

Throughout the season audiences have seen a different side to Ian Somerhalder‘s character of Damon, who’s become somewhat less menacing than originally depicted.

His relationship with Rose was one of this season’s highlights, and Plec laughed that Somerhalder has approached her on several occasions, objecting to his character being softened up:

Every now and then he’ll be like ‘What are you guys doing to me? I gotta be all honest and vulnerable and caring.’ And we’re like ‘Yep, it’s called a journey – a character journey.’ You know, the beauty of Damon – when we learned the thing that had brought him to town was the love of a woman, that was a game changer for his character … he really was the deepest, most powerful emotional character that we had – and he hates that. Damon hates that about himself. The battle that is going on within him between his humanity and the part of him that really actually misses being human and then the part of him that doesn’t want to feel that at all – it’s a series long journey for him.

As far as the structure of mapping out how episodes go, Plec revealed the process evolves similar to writing for a movie:

There is no formula … starting each new episode is like starting a movie from scratch and I think that’s the one of the reasons it’s got a nice, unpredictable quality … it drives structure purists crazy and it makes our jobs really difficult, but I think it actually also makes for a pretty wild ride.

‘Diaries’ has well developed story arcs, but they prefer to divide things into more manageable chapters as the stories converge towards the conclusion:

We like to have our seasons in chapters and we had the werewolf chapter and the Rose and Elijah chapter and we’re heading on a collision course right now with the Klaus chapter and the sacrifice to break the curse of the sun and the moon.

Everything that we start up when we get back off hiatus is all about where is Klaus? Does he know about Elena? What is Isabel doing back in town? Is this sacrifice ritual gonna happen or will we be able to get ourselves out of it? Will the doppelganger die? Will a werewolf die? Who will the werewolf be? Who will the vampire be?

During the discussion, actors Accola and Trevino seemed uncertain if all the characters would make it to season three – Plec reinforced that no one’s survival is guaranteed and the severity of events demand that a few fan-favorites be lost:

You’ve got these Originals, these Old World characters who are nearly impossible to defeat. Klaus, who is the most terrifying and feared vampire in the history of time. We try not to do anything to be gratuitous or have blood for the sake of blood or gore for the sake of gore – but we do like to get bloody. We like to get dirty. And people are always gonna die. People that you love are always gonna die, because the situation is life and death. The stakes are that high. It’s our job as storytellers to continue to deliver on that so that you guys never feel like we’ve gone stale.

Elijah (Daniel Gillies) is one of the examples of a great actor who warrants more exposure and Plec said that even though story arcs are mapped out, sometimes it’s important to let the story wander into unexpected places:

We’ve had a couple of really fantastic success stories in doing that. Which is the creation of the John Gilbert character last year. That came out of us realizing that we don’t want to go down a road that we were planning on going down with one particular storyline, but we still needed to fill three or four episodes before we got to the end … the character was originally conceived as a Fell cousin coming into town and stirring up trouble and we realized we could make him a Gilbert. So he’s still part of the founding families, but also a relative of Elena and Jeremy – so everything just clicked …

The same thing happened this year with Elijah who really was meant to kind of give us a little mid-season oomph while we waited for Klaus and he has grown into this tremendous character … so we’ve actually had good luck kind of straying from the path.

Plec revealed that the story of the ‘Originals’ was not intended to be such a significant part of the story, though it looks like it could become more prominent:

When we first started talking about The Originals, we never considered them to be immortals  until we realized how much we liked Daniel [Gillies] as Elijah.  And then we thought, well how hard can we make it to kill him and still give all those great twists and turns? So the idea of removing the dagger was something we came up with to have freedom to revisit Elijah’s character. So yeah – Originals are going to be with us for a looong time.

Actor Michael Trevino was asked when viewers might see the character of Tyler again, and he said that he’s not featured in the episodes made after it’s recent production hiatus. Though he was asked about his character’s transformation this season:

It’s great. It’s fun. I mean, the transformation scene was just exhausting and took a lot out of me. Two fourteen hour days just non-stop. But everything else, it kinda just flows – the way that they’ve written the story, everything’s making sense. They didn’t just rush it in … there was a big, long, grueling transformation and I appreciated that they didn’t rush it.

Of the love triangle that’s been developing between Tyler, Caroline, and Matt – that’s something to explore when his character returns to Mystic Falls,  “that has to get resolved.”

Candice Accola spoke about her character’s significant alteration and that executive producer Williamson gave her the heads up –  she’s thrilled how things have turned out though:

It’s been such a great learning experience throughout this entire season. It’s been fun to go to work every day, I mean it’s always fun to go to work … but you know, you can’t beat that as an actor – to open a script and just be so excited about what you get to do. I think it’s a testament to the writers and what they’ve done. I’m constantly surprised and excited and intrigued by all the scripts coming out … and I’m still sneaking like a vulture around all the different department heads being like ‘So what does the next script say?’

As for the other cast members of ‘The Vampire Diaries’, Accola revealed how opening up the latest script can be somewhat perilous finding out whether their character has been killed off. However she realizes that this tension plays to the success of the show:

It was something that was told to us day one – ‘Welcome to Atalanta, anyone can die.’ As an actor, is it scary? Yes it is. As a viewer, I think it’s important and badass … because it does keep you on your toes … I mean, when you get to third, fourth, fifth seasons and it’s like well, everyone’s dated everyone, everyone’s fought with everyone … that’s the thing – you need fresh faces.

The Vampire Diaries returns on Thursday, April 7th on the CW, and on the GO! network in Australia.

via: Screen Rant