The Untold Truth Of The Vampire Diaries

If you loved vampires in the late '00s, chances are you were hooked on "The Vampire Diaries." The series tells the story of Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a high schooler in turmoil after her parents' deaths, and vampire brothers Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) who fall in love with her. The series takes place in the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia, and includes a dash of Civil War historical fiction during its many flashbacks. Rounding out the regular characters are Elena's witch friend Bonnie (Kat Graham), blonde popular girl turned vampire Caroline (Candice King), Elena's younger brother Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen), and human nice guy Matt Donovan (Zack Roerig). 

Over the course of eight seasons, "The Vampire Diaries" features romance, love triangles, old-as-heck vampires pretending to be teenagers, and the drinking of literal gallons of blood. The show premiered right at the height of the 2000s' vampire craze when the "Twilight" movies and "True Blood" series were fresh in people's minds. Could audiences stand more vampires? As it turned out, they absolutely could. But making this idea into a hit was a journey. Here's the untold truth of "The Vampire Diaries."

In 2009, the "Twilight" novels had already taken the world by storm and half the series had already been adapted into a movie franchise. Was the entertainment landscape tired of vampires? Series creators Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec decided to take a leap and develop Smith's novels into a TV series. Plec had a background in co-producing some of the "Scream" movies and the sci-fi series "Kyle XY," so her prowess in horror and supernatural storytelling was obviously beneficial. Even though he put his name on the map by writing the first "Scream" film, by the late '00s, Williamson had become slightly more famous for masterminding the teen drama "Dawson's Creek." 

Williamson was reluctant to dive into the vampire trend but began reading Smith's books at the urging of Plec, who thought the idea would make for a good series, The Independent reports. "In the beginning when I read it, I didn't want to be involved with it because I felt it was a sort of 'Twilight' rip-off, no matter which came first," he said. "The premise was exactly the same: girl falls in love with vampire, and I felt that it had been done and that nobody was going to do another vampire story. But then Julie [Plec] kept telling me to keep reading the books and then I began to realize that it was a story about a small town, about that town's underbelly and about what lurks under the surface." 

Finding the right actor to play Elena Gilbert's first love interest, Stefan Salvatore, proved difficult for Plec and Williamson. Paul Wesley initially auditioned for the role of Damon, but ultimately came back to audition over and over again in a hilarious audition whirlwind that had him try out over 15 times, according to stories from Plec, Williamson, and Wesley in Entertainment Weekly. "It was one of those auditions that everyone was vying for ... And they wouldn't see me for Stefan because they thought I was too old," Wesley said. "So I went in and read for Damon and had a callback and did okay. Then I didn't hear anything and went on with my life."

But the team was having a hard time finding their Stefan, Plec said, adding that, "It's the kind of role that you can't just cast the smoldering pretty boy because there's such depth and layers of loss and loneliness living in that character."  Wesley was brought back in over and over again. "Paul came in like 100 times and every time he came in we'd be like, 'Alright, here's Paul Wesley again.' I liked him; I just didn't love him. And only once we found Nina and put them together did I go, 'Oh he's really good, who is that? It's the guy we passed on 15 times,'" Williamson said. 

Naturally, there were plenty of changes made between the book series and The CW's version of "The Vampire Diaries." The first thing to go was Damon's ability to travel around as a crow. "Damon traveled in the form of a bird in the pilot, because he was the crow in the book. We went, 'Nah, we can't have him turn into animals so we're just going to skip that part of the book.'" Williamson told Entertainment Weekly. Another big change was the renaming of the book's Virginia town of Fell's Church to Mystic Falls. "No disrespect to Fell's Church, but it felt very based in religion and spirituality, and we knew we didn't want the show to be the kind of vampire show that's just about heaven and hell and demons and the devil and God — that kind of thing," Plec told The Hollywood Reporter.

Other changes came about during the series such as the phasing out of Elena's journal entries despite their significance to the title of the show, changing the Salvatore brothers from Renaissance Era Italians to Civil War Era Americans, and the general abandonment of many of the other supernatural beings and locations that appear in the books but are made difficult to summon by the constraints of a TV series budget. 

Elena Gilbert's resemblance to their vampire sire Katherine is what initially drew the Salvatore brothers to fall for Elena to begin with. In the books, the Renaissance Era vampire is named Katherine von Swartzschild and she hails from Germany. But for the series, Nina Dobrev was able to use her own Bulgarian roots to transform Katherine into Katerina Petrova. Katherine's German nationality was changed to Bulgarian so that Dobrev could use her fluency in the language to enhance the character's realism. Indeed, Dobrev's full name is Nikolina Konstantinova Dobreva and she was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, before moving with her family to Canada when she was 2 years old.

According to Plec, the show-running duo "had not decided that Katherine and Elena would be played by the same actress until we really started breaking that story," according to an interview she provided to Entertainment Weekly. "We had to decide in the pilot what the picture was going to look like that Stefan pulled out. Because in the books, all they ever said was, 'She bears a striking resemblance to Elena.' And so it wasn't really very clear just how striking that resemblance was. So we thought, 'Let's just go for it.' And then from that, the whole doppelgänger idea was born."

Despite being the star of "The Vampire Diaries" for six years, Nina Dobrev eventually wanted to leave the series once her contract was up. Over the years, Dobrev had not only played Elena and Katerina, but the doppelgängers Amara and Tatia as well. But Dobrev wanted to move on; sticking around for only six years "was the plan from the get-go," she told Harper's Bazaar. "If anything, the fact that [leaving] terrified me drove me even more. I needed to feel that fear of, 'Oh my God, what if I never get a job again?' That just made me want to work five times as hard."

In another interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dobrev elaborated, "This is a show about vampires, but ultimately, I'm a human and I have to go live my human life now. Six years is a very long, great, great time. We did more than 100 episodes, which is in my eyes considered a huge success." Plec added, "I've been getting a lot of heat about [why we're not just ending the show], but it never occurred to us...losing the character from the show actually creates a tremendous amount of emotional opportunity and story for all these other characters that we love just as much." So what did they do next?

There's no denying that "The Vampire Diaries" was an absolute hit. Over the course of its eight seasons, it broke a number of records. The pilot episode that aired on September 10, 2009, brought in 5.7 million viewers, the highest rated CW premiere at the time. The eight seasons of "TVD" also broke the record for the longest-running vampire series, beating out "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "True Blood," which both ran for seven. And unlike other series where stars fight over top pay or billing, BuzzFeed reports that Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, and Ian Somerhalder all worked together to make the same amount of money per episode. 

In other random "TVD" trivia, if you go back and check out the episode titles in Season 6, you'll notice many of them are popular '90s songs like "Yellow Ledbetter" or "Black Hole Sun," in an homage to the fact that Bonnie was trapped in the '90s for a good chunk of episodes. The Season 8 episode titles are homages to Season 1's most memorable lines, such as "Today Will Be Different," and "You Decided I was Worth Saving." Even Damon's last word in the series mirror his first line: "Hello brother."

"The Vampire Diaries" spinoff "The Originals" ran for five seasons from 2013 to 2018, but it wasn't the only spinoff born of "TVD." In 2018, The CW premiered "Legacies," which follows Hope Mikaelson, the child of Hayley and Klaus whose existence made up so much of the drama during the early seasons of "The Originals." Now 17 years old, Hope, played by Danielle Rose Russell, attends the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, the boarding school started by Alaric Saltzman and Caroline Forbes at the end of "TVD." Also in attendance at the school are Josie and Lizzie, Alaric and Caroline's twins born during the events of "TVD." Over the course of four seasons, Alaric is a lead character while the show has guest appearances from Jeremy Gilbert, Caroline, Klaus, Rebekah, and Matt Donovan from "TVD."  In May of 2022 it was announced that the fourth season of "Legacies" was the show's last.

As for more? Plec says absolutely. She told Entertainment Weekly that it "exists in our brains, but not on the page yet ... There will be another one. We're a little sad, we're going to take a beat, but yeah, there's more ideas. There's more to do." Looks like Williamson was wrong. Vampires are definitely not over.