Posted by Vee | August 5, 2009, 3:24 (EST) | 10 Comments
Category: TV Series

Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev, and Katerina Graham, along with executive producers Julie Plec, Kevin Williamson, and Bob Levy, answered questions from TV reporters and bloggers during the CW’s Vampire Diaries panel today at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena. (No, Ian was not there, nor Steven R. McQueen – it’s a feat that any of the cast was there considering they’re in mad filming mode right now.)

We sort of live-re-tweeted during the panel this morning (while multi-tasking!), but below is a list of links to various articles, blogs, live blogs, and odd bits of consequence, and then under the spoiler-cut will be quotes and tidbits of particular interest to fans. Put your spec helmets on.

TCA 2009 Vampire Diaries panel coverage:

• HitFix.com: ‘Vampire Diaries’ team discusses those ‘Twilight’, ‘True Blood’ comparisons
• Ausiello Files: Press Tour Diary: ‘The Vampire Diaries’
• Zap2it/KorbiTV: TCA TV Press Tour: Liveblogging ‘Vampire Diaries’
• TVSquad: CW wrap-up: Vampire Diaries, Melrose Place, Life Unexpected – TCA report
• USAToday: CW aims for young women with ‘Vampires’, ‘Melrose’
• The Torch Online: Kevin Williamson’s ‘The Vampire Diaries’ has that ‘Scream’ sensibility
• Los Angeles Times: TCA Press Tour: It’s all about vampires
• IMDb Television Blog: Continuing education and ‘The Vampire Diaries’…discuss
• The TV Addict: TCA Live Blog Day 2: The Vampire Diaries
• The Hollywood Reporter: The Live Feed: How ‘Vampire Diaries’ isn’t a pervy ‘Twilight’ rip-off
• MediaWeek: The CW at the TCA: The Vampire Diaries panel
• New York Magazine: Vulture: New vampire show on the CW isn’t really about vampires, creators insist
• Channel Guide Magazine: Paul Wesley talks “The Vampire Diaries”
• The Insider: ‘Twilight’ vs ‘The Vampire Diaries’
• IGN: Scream creator talks Vampire Diaries

Photos from TCA panel:

• Associated Press images (watermarked as you have to buy them)
• Reuters Photos via Yahoo News

(Oh, so – yeah. Spoiler banner. We realized spoiler-cuts don’t show up for those clicking through on direct links via Twitter, email notifications, and RSS feeds. Hopefully this will help prevent any unintentional spoilage.)

A few random tidbits of info you might be interested in:

• Paul, Nina, and Katerina have all read the books. (Katerina even has video proof, we might add. Also? She apparently keeps a good old-fashioned diary.)
• Seeing a bunch of TV critics/bloggers trying to make heads or tails of “verbane”/”verbena”/”some root”? Priceless.
• Kev revealed that a new series regular will soon be joining the cast. A “he” from the books with an “agenda” related to the revelation that Mystic Falls has a serious vampire problem. Gee, I wonder…? (And no, still no word on Meredith. Sorry, guys. We’re in the dark, too.)

Williamson on the concept of the show, once again stressing the importance of the town (via MediaWeek):

[It's] not just a teen show. We’re trying to not make it a high school show. It’s sort of more of a small-town show. Once we you get past the premise of girl and vampire, we start to develop the story about a town. And what we love so much about the books is the mythology of the town and what they created. The vampires are our way into that.

He also addressed concerns about Twilight comparisons after the pilot (via HitFix):

“The pilot was very tough because it does have a lot of similarities to ‘Twilight,’ and there’s no way around it,” he said. “We had to introduce — we had the story as he comes to town, the first day of school. That is the book. So we sort of are telling it in sort of that fashion, but we’re switching things around. Once we get into it and we can establish all the characters, which is what — you know, the pilot, we had 10 characters to get out in 42 minutes. It’s tough. And so now we can get — sort of sit back and start telling stories on a weekly basis. Then it all changes. That’s when you’ll see the differences, because you’re watching a weekly show.”

For everyone wanting more clarification on how the show will parallel with the books (via BuzzSugar):

For fans of the books: Plec and Williamson said they’ll follow the first three books in the series quite closely and then branch out. After the panel, Dobrev said things happen fast in the show, with new revelations coming quickly in the first couple of episodes.

Now before everyone freaks out, think about it: this is television. They want to grow into a multi-season show and they need to evolve. It’s been stated repeatedly by the showrunners and the network that they’re taking all of the books into account. They may not follow the plot after the original trilogy, but it doesn’t mean they’re not going to take elements from the existing canon when it’s appropriate to do so. Trust me: I’m one of the biggest defenders of Dark Reunion I know; it’s my favorite book in the series. But from their standpoint, I see the problems it presents as part of a longer story. I bet my Ibanez that elements of post-Fury books will filter through in other ways. (And if I’m wrong, I will deny I ever said this – I love that thing.)

On show’s vampire effects (via The Insider):

“I hate cheap effects and I hate when it gets really cheesy and you don’t really have really money or the time to do things to any sort of big budget scale — and everybody who is watching this show has seen what you can do with $150 million on a feature film,” Williamson says. “So it’s kind of hard. We want to do something a little more subtle and just keep it to some sort of, like, biological sort of physiological response, so when they get excited we just sort of see the blood rush under the skin, pales their face out a little bit, but it all goes to the eye and they kind of have these bloody eyes. And then, of course, they have teeth.”

There was an interesting revelation about the show’s spin on the vampire transformation process. From LA Times:

“You have to feed on their blood,” Williamson explained. “You have to die and come back, and then you have to feed on a human, and then you’re a vampire. It’s an ordeal.”

Adds Julie Plec (via BuzzSugar):

“There’s an actual choice element when you are reborn,” she said: feed or die. She said there will be flashbacks to 1864, so we can see what made the now-mild-mannered Stefan choose to feed.

Seems like the show will take L.J. Smith’s canon one step further with this idea of choosing to feed on human blood in order to complete the change. In the books, Damon explains that if there’s not enough of the vampire’s blood in the human’s bloodstream when they die, they may rise from the dead but be unable to complete the change and die (again) if they don’t feed on human blood. Obviously the TV creators are taking that idea and running with it, and I’m intrigued. Certainly adds a whole new dimension to Stefan’s character.

Speaking of Stefan, Paul had this to say in an interview with Channel Guide (and go read that interview, by the way – good stuff in there):

“Vampires,” he says, contrasting with the werewolf role [on Wolf Lake], “Stefan at least … he’s more of a thinker. He’s an introvert, an intellectual, he sits there and writes. There’s more finesse.” …

“Stefan hates being a vampire,” Wesley points out. “He doesn’t want to be a vampire. He’s constantly struggling with the dark side. He has a need to feed on human blood. It’s not easy for him not to do it. He wants to experience life as a normal human being, whereas his brother loves vampirism; he’s enjoying it.”

And of course he fielded the whole Edward Cullen comparison. Again. From The TV Addict:

“If there are any similarities to Robert Pattinson in Twilight so be it. All I can do is take the scripts that Kevin [Williamson] and Julie [Plec] write and do my own honest portrayal. I don’t think it would be wise for any actor to make judgements on their character based on anyone else.”

And what about Damon? From Michael Ausiello:

Somerhalder is “in every single episode,” Williamson says. “He’s the devil. He just comes to town and makes everyone’s life hell.”

And from BuzzSugar:

“He has an agenda, and it’s big and it’s huge and it goes beyond Elena,” Williamson said. And contrary to stereotypes, Damon’s a happy vampire: “He tap-dances through life — oh, let’s kill this person!”

So what about Vampire Diaries characters in the “real” world. And what does Damon have to say about vampires sparkling? From The Torch Online:

So do the Diaries characters exist, as in Scream, in a world that is overrun with fictional vampires?

“Yes, the characters live in the real world,” Williamson tells TheTorchOnline.com. “They go to the movies, they turn on the TV at night, they’ve read Twilight. We actually wrote the scene yesterday when one of the characters finds out Ian Somerhalder is a vampire, and her first question is ‘Why don’t you sparkle?’”

“Because I live in the real world where sunlight and vampires don’t mix!” adds Diaries co-writer and executive producer Julie Plec with a laugh.

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