Nothing. I'm not kidding. I knew absolutely nothing. I didn't know if I was a witch, a werewolf, a normal person. I had no idea, and even at the audition, they gave me completely ambiguous sides, and I just made something of it. It was three pages of, “I have no clue about who this person is,” because everything's so confidential with the show.
So, I booked it and then, when I was there, and I read the script, I was doing so much background research because there's so much that's going on in this show. I'm like, who is this person? Who's Silas? And then Nina Dobrev’s playing these two different characters. I was so confused when I jumped in, but then it all came together. And I have my own interpretation of what I think it is.
If we came into the show with no idea of who everyone was, we’d be so confused.
Yeah. That's how I was. I had never seen it, and everyone's always telling me amazing things about it, so when I had the audition, I started to download episodes, and I was completely lost. I was Wikipedia-ing everybody and trying to do a family line of who's connected to who before the audition just so that I could have some reference point of the world that I was walking into.
Thankfully for your character, she doesn't know anybody. She doesn't know anything. All she knows is Shane, right?
Right. And that's what David Alpay said, the actor playing Shane. He said, “Well, you don't really need to know anything.” But it does help to know about what's happening with Silas, and that I was a witch. That helps. To get yourself in the world, I think it really does help to know what's going on around you.
We get the sense that Silas creates these hallucinations to work for him, but then, at the end, you're comforting Shane which we’d assume was another hallucination. Do you have any theories about what she is or what that was about?
My theory is — and now this is the great thing, I think, about Vampire Diaries, that it leaves a lot of things to the imagination — that Caitlin could be one of Silas's illusions, but I think that I'm working with Silas. Because he is the most powerful of all witches, the ones who have passed are working with him. But we’ll see.
So even her pretending to be good would probably serve a purpose of his in the end?
Absolutely, and plus I wanted to resurrect my son, and then my husband wanted to resurrect me. So I feel like it's kind of like a chain. If the most powerful one is out, then we all are out.
Are you in the next episode?
I'm not in the next episode.
Are you in any upcoming episodes?
I could be. Everyone's always like, “Well, do you die?” It's like, “I was already dead.” So that's good because you can't kill me.
Did they tell you anything about Shane and Caitlin’s life off screen in the good days?
I think it was for us to create ourselves. We had a very healthy marriage. We were very happy together, and when our son died, it definitely tore us apart, as you can imagine. The death of a child tears any relationship apart, but made me a little crazy because I knew that I had these powers and the ability to bring him back. So while doing that, that took my life. So, yeah, now I'm dead.
What was the cast like?
Everyone was great. I mean these people have been together for so long, and I think it's interesting to come in on this show of all young adults and a hit show and seeing how they work. And they were all fantastic.
And David's new. Is there a comfort in knowing not everyone has been there since day one, four years ago?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I've been doing this for so long that coming in is always a little bit like being on your first day of school. You keep quiet to yourself, but then by the end of the first episode, you're making jokes with everybody. It's easy. It was a very easy set to come into. Plus, I had worked with some of the wardrobe people before as well, on one of my very first shows that I was on.
Which one?
Raising Dad. It was a sitcom with Bob Saget. So it was really great to be working with her as well.
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