Not only did this Televixen get to see a Vampire Diaries panel at New York Comic Con, I also got to chat with the panelists in the Press Room following the panel! This edition of “Inside The Vampire Diaries NYCC Press Room” features Executive Producer Kevin Williamson and actor Zach Roerig!
Do you have any plans to bring Melinda Clarke back as Kelly Donovan?
Kevin Williamson: Well, you know, it’s funny. Matt’s mother went off and got this job teaching Nikita how to kick butt. So, I don’t know. I would love to bring Melinda back. Are you kidding me? We love her. You know how great she is? She’s pretty awesome. Every time I see her, I want to bring her back. I don’t know if we can get her though, because she’s busy.
Would you consider casting another actor in her role?
KW: No, we’re not going to recast. I’d probably bring in his dad before I did that. We don’t know who the dad is. The dad could be lizard man. So, we don’t know. There are so many characters that we can create. What’s fun about Matt right now is he’s sort of on his own. He has nobody. And he’s sort of paving his own way through life. And he’s sort of our human character, our sad human character who seems to rise above.
Can you tell us a bit more about the upcoming flashbacks, pre-1864? And will we learn why Katherine came to Mystic Falls in the first place?
KW: 1492 in Bulgaria. We go back in time and show a lot about how Katherine became who she was. We answer a lot of questions, basically. I don’t know if anyone’s interested about the doppelganger, or how did the line continue if it ended with her. She’s the Petrova. We get into the Petrova line of it all. So we kind of go down that road and we sort of flashback to 1492 Bulgaria. We show how she started, where she went, why they wanted her, why she was necessary to the story of the vampires.
Will we meet Katherine’s maker?
KW: Eventually. We might go down that road eventually. We have a whole storyline.
With everything that’s been revealed so far this season, are you confident that there will be enough story to take you through the remainder of Season 2?
KW: Yes. I mean, we are already into the third season. We are actually trying to figure out the breaking point. Where are we going to stop at the end of this season? We kind of know our season finale. I know a couple of the cliffhangers already, at least a lot of them, and I’m trying to figure out, “Where do I stop?” It’s so much fun. It’s a hard show to write. There’s a lot of mythology. I like slowing it down for the relationship stuff. So you don’t know how far we’re going to get.
For those who have read the books, we know that Elena is eventually turned into a vampire. Are there plans to make this part of the show?
KW: I don’t know when, but we have a pitch for that – that would get us in and out of that – but that won’t be this year.
Is it possible that Damon’s first kill was not just a random woman?
KW: Maybe. Whenever we create a character, and say, “Well this character is here for this purpose,” you’re sitting in a room full of writers, and we instantly start thinking about who that person could be, the potential of every character. Like we brought in Lexi to kill, I wanted a character to come in, to kill, to show Damon, to set somebody else up to take the fall. That was the origin of that character. She shouldn’t just be anybody. It should be Stefan’s best friend, and then it would be emotional. So that’s how you do it. So yeah, that person could turn out to be someone very, very important. We actually flash back to that time a little later. That will be another flashback after the Bulgaria flashbacks. We have four planned.
How is Matt’s relationship with Caroline going to develop as the season progresses?
Zach Roerig: In the teaser clip, she was having this kind of longing look from across the room and then I appear. That shot kind of says it all of how Matt and Caroline are going to move forward for a little while. Caroline’s doing the right thing. For once, she’s not thinking about herself. She loves Matt and wants to save him, and I think Matt is at this point in his life has had to deal with so much crazy whatever. It’s like he doesn’t have the time to stop and deal with it. He wants to be there for her and be a good friend, but if you can’t be there for yourself and have your shit together, he doesn’t have time for it.
In the mythology of the show, and with Zach’s character having his mind wiped quite a few times, is there a limit to how many times you can have your mind wiped before there’s not much of you left?
KW: I think yes, there is actually. We haven’t really sort of – no one has actually been compelled and compelled and compelled yet – to prove that. But yes, that has come up. We’ve actually talked about the rules. And one of the things that we’ve tried to be conscientious of is not give anyone too much power. For instance, Bonnie – she’s coming into her own and she’s learning how to be a witch and how to be a strong witch. But we’re also expressing her weaknesses and we’re sort of showing that there are some weaknesses involved and she’s got to be careful. And she doesn’t really know. She doesn’t have Master Grams anymore to teach her anything. She’s on her own. She can do stuff, but there’s a price that she has to pay. It’s going to be very interesting. It’s kind of cool.
Can you talk about what other supernatural beings we might see this season? Will we be introduced to any new creatures?
KW: We have no plans to introduce any more creatures, or things that go bump in the night. Just witches, vampires and werewolves are kind of the thing. I’m not saying there won’t be more of them. Wait til next year to bring in a new creature.
Can you share anything about what’s coming up?
KW: Halloween’s coming up. We don’t have a Halloween episode, because we had that last year, and a whole year hasn’t passed in our timeline. So we’re doing a masquerade ball. So there’s this big, huge fundraiser/masquerade ball – that’s what the clip shows – over the next two episodes.
I was watching a rough cut of 2-06, and I got to the end and I gasped. And I was like, “Oh, that’s a great ending,” and I was like “No! There’s another act!” And I was watching it again and it was even better. 2-06 is fun. I thought it was like a season finale. I know I’m quite full of myself, but it’s nice for me to watch an episode and get excited about it, because I wrote it. It was just such a headache.
ZR: There’s such good energy. The hair and makeup people went to town. The girls looked amazing. The hair and makeup took hours.
At a masquerade ball, someone always kisses the wrong person …
KW: Yeah, exactly. It’s a good opportunity for Katherine to come in and prance around and take care of some business.
Is Katherine is working with anyone else besides the characters we’ve already been introduced to?
KW: We introduced that in the last episode with Uncle Mason. She answers to herself. That’s not to say that it’s [not] a huge big complicated story. Like I said, one of the reasons for the flashbacks to 1492 is to sort of lay that out.
In the final edition of “Inside The Vampire Diaries NYCC Press Room”, we’ll sit down with Katerina Graham and Sara Canning!
Photo by Sheryl DaSilva – Copyright © 2010 TheTelevixen.com
