Full TVD Panel From Comic Con

Kevin Williamson Scoop on Season 3

We’ve now met Klaus’ family, father Mikael played by Sebastian Roche – who got resurrected but is currently dead again – and mother Esther, played by Alice Evans …

We’ve also had some flashbacks where we’ve show the whole family and we’ve set up some of the mythology of the original family, how it came to be, what are their weaknesses, what are their strengths, and how vampires came to exist. We’ve already done that storyline and so that’s already aired, and now we’re going into the next wave.

There are a lot of parent/child issues this season, with witch Bonnie [Kat Graham] and her mom [Persia White] and of course vampire Caroline [Candice Accola] and her father Bill, played by Jack Coleman, who is so anti-vampire that he tries to de -vamp Caroline, using sunlight as aversion therapy. Bill’s attempts to make Caroline stop being a vampire seem analogous to some techniques used by anti-gay groups that claim to be able to “convert” gay people. However, Bill as 
a character is a gay man …

Essentially, the father being gay is not really the story. He is a gay man, a gay character. What we’re doing is his point of view about vampires. It’s very specific. He’s part of the Council, he’s against all vampires, but he also has a daughter who’s a vampire. What do you do?  So it’s more of the father/daughter relationship, rather than any sort of other story.

Jack Coleman is known to genre audiences from four years of playing Noah Bennet on HEROES. Are you planning on casting any other genre favorites in upcoming arcs?

Yeah, that was fun. And he was great. I’m trying to think. No, not at the moment.

Are there going to other metaphors for social injustice we may be seeing in the story, a la the aversion therapy?

I think yes and no, actually. We do actually have another beat of that to play as we move forward, but it’s not so much aversion therapy as it is, is there a way to perhaps curb your instincts? If your instinct is for blood, or your instinct is to kill, whether it be a vampire or a werewolf, is there any way that you can learn to curb that? Which actually goes into mind control. One of the things we’ve started to play with is if you’re a hybrid, it’s not so much about only being mind-controlled by a vampire, but in a weird way, Tyler [played by Michael Trevino; the character was a werewolf, now turned vampire/werewolf hybrid by Klaus] is bound to Klaus, simply because [Klaus] sired him. And so there’s a connection there, and it’s a bond that’s really strong and there will be some aversion to, “How can I break that bond?”

How do you feel about how VAMPIRE DIARIES Season Three has gone so far overall? Is it going pretty much as you imagined it would at the outset?

Things always change when you start breaking the storylines, but I think from the day beginning when fellow VAMPIRE DIARIES executive producer/show runner Julie Plec and I sat down and laid out how are we going to get to the finish line of the very end of the entire show, we’re still on track. It’s going to end where we always said we were going to end. And we’re doing it all within the right time. We said, “This is going to happen in Season Two, and this will happen in Season Three.” And so we know where we’re headed at the end of the season to launch our fourth season.

I don’t want to give too much away, but we’re in addition to following the books to some degree, we keep going back to the books and saying, “What can we pillage? What have we not done yet? What have we not used? How can we take this storyline and manipulate it and change it and turn it around?” This year, we’re diving into the Original family, we’re still playing with the hybrids and so the whole thing with Klaus is going to lead us right up to the climax of the season.

Anything else you can preview?

The storyline that I was just talking about, that I was kind of excited about, believe or not, Alaric [Matthew Davis]. Alaric was one of the people sidelined for the first part of the season while we dealt with Jeremy [Steven R. McQueen] and his witch/ghost girlfriends, who are dead, and now that we’ve thrashed that storyline out, we’re moving into a really good storyline for Alaric and his positioning in the new Council and the town and how he’s going to get involved with the Original family. Alaric actually takes on a huge role as we bring in Meredith [Torrey DeVitto]. She’s one of the characters in the books that we sort of changed who she is, a little bit, but now we’ve got her and she’s a new love interest to take [Alaric’s] mind off Aunt Jenna, and she’s also involved with one of the Founding Family members, so their dynamic is really interesting and so they get into some interesting shenanigans.

You said you know where this is all going. How many seasons do you think you need for VAMPIRE DIARIES to get to where it’s going?

We could wrap this thing up in six.

Do you have any plan to accelerate it if you have to?

Yes. We have no problem pacing ourselves. We’ll pace it up if we have to.

By the same token, could you extend it past what you currently have planned?

We can extend it with no problems, but we know that if we needed an endgame by, say, Season Six, we could land. We could also extend.

Anything else you’d like to say about VAMPIRE DIARIES right now?

I love it. I’m loving this season. I think Julie Plec and her writers are doing an amazing job, and I’m glad they still let me be a part of it [laughs].

Kevin Williamson - TVD Interview January 2012

While at the TCA Winter Press Tour, Williamson talked about why it was finally the right time to have that Damon-Elena kiss that many have been anxiously waiting for, how Stefan is now a true tragic hero, knowing the right time to kill off a character, embracing the melodrama in a way that makes it epic, and what he’s excited about for the remainder of the season.

 Why did you finally decide that it was the right time to have Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Elena (Nina Dobrev) share a real kiss?

Well, we would have pulled it off sooner, if we could have. We felt like it was time. We just had to wait for the audience to truly respond to the kiss. We have our Elena fans, who have been craving it, but those fans would also reject it, out of hand. There are people who want Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Elena forever, and they were going to reject the kiss, so it had to be an honest thing for Elena to do. We had to make it real for her, and we had to tiptoe towards it. If we hadn’t, you would have hated Elena. Stefan had to take that turn, so she turned her attention to the one person who’s showing her the love, and she’s tempted by him. Who wouldn’t be? He’s a vampire. He has a power over her, and he’s being really good to her. And, he’s being tormented by it, too. In a weird way, he’s never going to let anything bad happen to his brother.
It’s a great love story because everybody loves everybody. No matter how much they hate each other, everybody loves everybody. It’s a perfect three-way, if they would all just come together. If they could all get along, it would be a hot time. Look, we’re in our third season. I don’t think we have a lot of new audience members, at this point. It is our fans. They’re the ones that are keeping us on the air. They’re our bread and butter. Even beyond that, we just want to be honest to the characters. You can’t just have Elena jump into bed with someone because that’s what the writer wants them to do. You have to earn it, and the character has to do it. It took us this long to earn it. From the second episode of this show, when she walked into the Salvatore mansion and she met Damon for the first time and he kissed her hand, that’s when it began. It just took us two and a half years to say, “I think they can kiss. We’ve earned it.” 

How difficult of a line is it to walk with what you’re doing with Stefan and how far you can push it before he’s no longer redeemable?

 It’s hard because the sad part about it is that Stefan is such a man of character. He has such a good soul. And now, he’s taken this horrible turn, so no matter what he does, at this point, he’s never going to be able to forgive himself. So, if he can’t forgive himself, how can he ever expect forgiveness from a woman that loves him? He’s never going to be lovable again, in his eyes. He has such a journey. It’s so sad to watch because now he’s in tragic mode. He’s a true tragic hero, in the greatest sense, even more so now then Damon ever was. It is a fine line to walk, and I hope we’re playing it with just enough tragedy that the audience can hold onto him and nurture him, even though he does go down that terrible road. It is a tragic fall. I’m hoping it’s one of those situations where the audience will love him until he can learn to love himself again. That’s what’s happening. We love Damon and, every week, Damon was killing someone new. When he killed Lexi, I hated him after that, and it was my idea. I knew it would turn the audience against him. 

When do you know it’s the right time to kill off one of your characters?

Well, Lexi was a one-off. We brought her in for that birthday episode, and her purpose was to be a good friend and make Elena jealous, but ultimately impart on Elena that love is worth it. Epic love is worth epic risk, and that’s what she said to her. At the same time, she served a great purpose for Damon to throw the Council off his tracks. The good storylines start churning, and I just want to be surprising, all the time. I think, “If I do this, how would I earn it?,” and I have to backtrack and figure out the storyline and figure out how to do it. Luckily, it’s all in Julie Plec’s hands right now. How’s that for passing the buck? I’ve been working on my Fox pilot, so I haven’t been able to play as much as I’ve wanted to. Julie and I still talk at 4 o’clock in the morning. I go, “Who are you going to kill?” I’ve let her decide this year ‘cause I killed enough people. She called me up and said, “I think we’re not going to kill anybody,” and I said, “Oh, no. No, you’ve got to kill somebody.” 

Is there anything coming up with any of the other characters on The Vampire Diaries that you’re excited about for fans?

I’m really excited about what’s shaking down between Klaus (Joseph Morgan) and Stefan and Damon, and that triangle, and how that climaxes at the end of the scene, with the hybrid of it all. And, there’s going to be more exposure to the Original family. And, Alaric (Matthew Davis) is going to be a lot of fun, in the second half of the season. He’s been sidelined with his grief for Jenna (Sara Canning), and we’ve been dealing with Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) and his dead ghost ex-girlfriends. Now, Alaric is ready to take a front-and-center role again and really get involved. He’s got a good storyline coming up, so I’m excited about that. 

What storyline made you most concerned, but ended up being the most exciting for you to do?

I didn’t want to kill Jenna. I did not want to kill Aunt Jenna. I still miss her. And Anna (Malese Jow), but I got to bring her back for a little while. But, Anna was probably the hardest call to make because I knew how much I loved her, and I was on Twitter every day then, so I knew the fans loved her. Part of me was like, “Kill her! The fans will get so excited by it, even if it’s not in a good way. They’ll get aggro.” I still hated doing it, though. Julie and I will sit in a room and talk the scenes out, and if she’s crying or I’m crying, we know we’re on to something. 

Source: collider.com