Your character obviously has a huge life change occurring. How do you think she’s going to process this?
I think at the moment, Hayley is just holding on for her life right now, because she knows that if Klaus doesn’t help these witches that she is in a lot of trouble. So I think maybe in the next episode, we’re really going to see Hayley actually deal with the information that she is pregnant and that she is a young woman with a child, or a child about to come.
Vampire Diaries just had the characters graduate from high school, but The Originals seems to be beginning with more adult characters and topics. Is it fun for you to make that transition?
Yeah, it’s nice. Every show I’ve done for eight years, I’ve played high school, so it’s kind of nice not having lines like, “Oh, I’ve gotta get to class.” It’s nice to play a young adult finally. I’ve been playing 16 for a long time. And you know, also having an issue like pregnancy with it, an unplanned pregnancy, is a very real topical issue, and it’s nice to explore an issue like that within a supernatural world.
Klaus, at the end of the pilot episode, talked about having an heir and wanting be the “king.” Would he embrace Hayley as his queen or is it simply, “Well, she’s giving me a child.”
I think it's just the child will be the heir. I think he’ll be focusing on that child more than his queen. [Laughs]
Do you think Hayley is going to be trying to make that change for him?
I think those two go together very much as a one-night kind of thing. But now that they’ve been face to face, I think they’re going to have to reassess their relationship with each other.
