Vampire Diaries fans, you weren’t the only ones who were desperately trying to keep Elena in Mystic Falls.
According to Yahoo!, the show’s creator Julie Plec pulled out all of the stops to keep her leading lady, Nina Dobrev, from leaving at the end of the sixth season.
“Nina had said earlier this year that she wanted to be done and we spent a little bit of time trying to talk her out of it,” Plec revealed on a KCRW podcast. “[We’d say,] ‘Oh, look at all these great plans of how you can stay!’ And she finally was like, ‘No, I signed up for six years. I’ve done my six years. I’m ready to move on and spread my wings.'”
Plec said that once Dobrev’s mind was made up, the next big challenge was deciding how to break the news to the legions of devoted Vampire Diaries fans. Ultimately, the decision was made to ease fans into the big reveal via Instagram, but the inspiration for that bittersweet post actually came from a surprising source: The Good Wife.
Plec said that she — and fans of Stern, Lockhart & Gardner everywhere — had just watched Will Gardner (Josh Charles) die tragically in the middle of a courtroom, and the ensuing fan furor convinced her to take a different route with her own audience.
“A lot of people had a hard time with that. It was a beautiful shock, but there’s grief attached to that. And I’m looking at Vampire Diaries, which is now six years deep, and it’s the main character,” Plec admitted. “A lot of our audience — they’re still teenagers — and there is a profound attachment to this character and to this show. I started looking at it from a fan point of view and being like, ‘We need to tell them that it’s happening before it happens. You can’t just end the season and do what we’re going to do to this character.'”
As for how Plec herself would react, had she been in our shoes? “As a fan I would die. I would be devastated.”
The showrunner also touched on Patrick Dempsey’s shocking exit from Grey’s Anatomy, the fallout from which seems to have only reaffirmed how she handled Dobrev’s exit.
“It’s really funny because watching this whole Grey’s thing now happen after the fact…” she said. “I’m like, ‘Mmmhmm, okay, interesting.'”
For a show with so many bloodthirsty monsters, the creator is definitely anything but heartless. At least now you know where you can turn if you need some support getting through this difficult time… or if you’re just still not over Will’s death.
The Vampire Diaries airs Thursdays at 8/7c on the CW.
Tagged: Julie Plec, Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries, TV
