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“The Vampire Diaries” might have run for eight soapy, horny seasons, however star Ian Somerhalder requested to go away the CW drama after simply three, in keeping with the behind-the-scenes e book “I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral Historical past of the Vampire Diaries.” In an excerpt from the retrospective shared by Selection, Somerhalder and collection co-creator and showrunner Julie Plec revealed that the star as soon as met with Plec on the verge of tears, asking to be taken off the present. The explanation? He thought Damon Salvatore was going mushy.
“All I saved listening to have been rumblings like, ‘Ian’s not blissful; Ian would not like this season,’ Plec recalled. “I’ve a sit-down with him after I lastly get to Atlanta, and that is what he was upset about,” she defined. “He simply was so unhappy that Damon needed to be the hero and that Stefan acquired to be the villain and that Klaus was the villain and everyone else was the villain, and it felt like an identification disaster.”
As followers little doubt vividly bear in mind, “The Vampire Diaries” kicked off with the introduction of the immortal Salvatore brothers. Paul Wesley performed brooding, romantic Stefan, whereas “Misplaced” alum Somerhalder performed his playfully sadistic, usually villainous brother Damon. Human teen Elena (Nina Dobrev) fell for Stefan however had plain chemistry with Damon, and within the third season, the present was lastly able to dig into their dynamic with a shock position reversal.
Somerhalder wasn’t eager to discover Damon’s mushy aspect
Season 3 of “The Vampire Diaries” spent loads of display screen time incorporating the forged of the future spinoff “The Originals,” nevertheless it additionally turned Stefan right into a heartless Ripper, making Damon the present’s unlikely however inevitable hero-to-be. It was an element Somerhalder apparently wasn’t set on taking part in, at the least not with out some assurances that he’d finally make his method again to the darkish aspect.
“I used to be so upset concerning the trajectory of Damon, a lot in order that at one level I used to be sitting throughout from Julie in her workplace in Atlanta nearly in tears — truly, my eyes have been fairly misty — and requested out of the present,” Somerhalder stated within the e book. “I used to be so offended about it. I wished off.”
Somerhalder went on to clarify that he “noticed the writing on the wall” and knew Damon was coming into agency love curiosity territory. “I used to be like, ‘They’ll flip me right into a sappy character,'” he recalled, noting that he had “quite a lot of this warmth due to this present” and was sure that if he left Damon behind, he may discover one other position in a “actually cool and darkish and edgy” mission. After reminding him that he was in a six-year contract and was a part of “the beating coronary heart of the present,” Plec assured Somerhalder that “The Vampire Diaries” hadn’t misplaced its edge. She remembered telling him that it was Wesley’s time to play with the darkish aspect, and that “if one [brother is] going darkish, the opposite has to go gentle.”
Ultimately, Plec chalks Somerhalder’s disaster of confidence as much as cast-wide “collection fatigue,” which got here partly as a result of she had been spending extra time writing for the household of vamps often known as The Originals, who would debut their very own present alongside “The Vampire Diaries” in 2013. Plec, who instructed TVLine she’s nonetheless down for extra “Vampire Diaries” tales earlier this yr, finally satisfied the star that Damon would not be a “one-trick pony,” and he stayed on for the remainder of the collection run.
“‘This can be a one-hundred-episode arc of a person, there are ups and there are downs, and there are occasions when he is the villain, there are occasions when he is the hero,'” Somerhalder remembers Plec telling him. “I needed to belief in that course of.” Vicious, humorous, and indelible, Damon Salvatore was a foul boy whose arc truly ended up taking nearer to 200 episodes. We’ll by no means know what the actor might need completed if he left the present early, however Somerhalder acquired to play each the cold-blooded killer and the romantic antihero up till the very finish.
