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I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries - Softcover

Highfill, Samantha

 
9780593475959: I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries
Softcover
ISBN 10: 059347595X ISBN 13: 9780593475959
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

From Entertainment Weekly writer and debut author Samantha Highfill, a definitive and deliciously nostalgic look into the creation and legacy of the hit show The Vampire Diaries, as told by its cast, crew, and creators.

In 2009, the CW released a show about grief, love, redemption, and, oh yeah, vampires. A graveyard meet-cute, a bit of fog, and one “Hello, brother” later, a cultural phenomenon was born, one that would last for 171 episodes across eight seasons and deliver two spin-off series.

I Was Feeling Epic takes us back to Mystic Falls for every first kiss, decade dance, and unforgettable death. With brand-new interviews from cast and creatives like Nina Dobrev, Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Kat Graham, Candice King, Joseph Morgan, Michael Trevino, Zach Roerig, Michael Malarkey, Julie Plec, Kevin Williamson, and so many more, I Was Feeling Epic relives the show’s best moments, unearths never-before-told stories, and delves into some of the most widely discussed topics surrounding the series and its legacy, all in the words of the people who know it best.

Transportive, nostalgic, and perfect for old fans and new, I Was Feeling Epic is the in-depth story behind the vampirically immortal hit: The Vampire Diaries.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Samantha Highfill is a writer based in Austin, TX. She’s an executive editor at Entertainment Weekly, where she’s worked for more than a decade and has written features on a number of shows and movies, including The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Peaky Blinders, Yellowjackets, Mean Girls, and many, many more. Growing up in Mechanicsville, VA, she fell in love with television about the time that Ryan Atwood showed up on her screen, and it’s been the epic love story of her life — TV, not Ryan, sadly. She graduated from the University of Missouri. Go Tigers!

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Chapter 1

Twilight for TV

Hey kid, get ready for the ride of your life."

Sitting on the Vancouver set of The Vampire Diaries pilot, Ian Somerhalder had no idea how right he was when he spoke those words to his costar Zach Roerig. They were just starting work on the first of what would become 171 episodes of television that would help mold a network, launch numerous careers, and create a fandom more rabid than Stefan on a Ripper binge.

The idea started on a beach, of all places. Leslie Morgenstein, who'd go on to become the president of Alloy Entertainment, wrote the pitch for the book series when he was still an assistant. His boss, Elise Howard, had asked him to come up with a YA vampire series as he headed off on vacation. "My older sister was reading Interview with the Vampire in a funny vampire voice aloud on the beach, and I was like, 'What's the YA version of that?' " Morgenstein says. "I came back from vacation and I wrote up a pitch, and in fact many of the characters are named after friends of mine from high school. Damon Salvatore is named after my buddy Damian Salvatore, who's a chef back in DC, where I grew up."

With the concept in place, L. J. Smith was tapped as the author of the Vampire Diaries book series. But despite Smith's first book being published in 1991, it wasn't until a certain early-2000s vampire craze came about that Alloy, which owned the books, realized that they'd been sitting on the perfect project for an adaptation. And yet, some worried that the vampire trend was on its last leg. With Twilight and True Blood already glamouring audiences, was there room left for another show about sexy bloodsuckers? "I thought we would be the nail in the coffin," Vampire Diaries cocreator Kevin Williamson admits. "We kept talking about how we would kill the vampire craze."

But instead, in the fall of 2009, audiences quickly fell for the story of Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), the high schooler who'd recently lost her parents, and Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), the mysterious vampire who brought her back to life. And then, of course, there's Elena's angsty little brother, Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen); her witchy best friend, Bonnie Bennett (Kat Graham); her all-American quarterback ex-boyfriend, Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig); head cheerleader (and not-so-typical mean girl) Caroline Forbes (Candice King, née Accola); angry jock Tyler Lockwood (Michael Trevino); Stefan's big, bad older brother, Damon (Ian Somerhalder); and many more. The world of Mystic Falls, Virginia, was rich in possibility, the cast was electric, and it didn't hurt that they were all supernaturally attractive.

"You had an unbelievably engaging cast across the board with Paul, Nina, Ian, and the rest," says Mark Pedowitz, CW president from 2011 to 2022. "It was a high school series, so there was a coming-of-age relatability. It was two brothers who loved each other and hated each other, which seems to have been a popular theme at the CW, and it was a love triangle. Who doesn't like a brooding vampire, and who doesn't like a bad-boy vampire?" (Elena, and audiences, would come to love them both.)

After its premiere on September 10, 2009, The Vampire Diaries delivered the highest-rated pilot in the CW's short history. (The network had been created in September 2006.)

"Vampire Diaries was a success right off the bat, but I can tell you that it wouldn't have mattered," says Dawn Ostroff, CW president from 2006 to 2011. "We believed in it so strongly that it was going to stay on the air no matter what."

And stay on it did, for eight seasons of romance, shocking twists, and so, so many doppelgängers. By the end of its impressive run, it had outlived all five Twilight films and all seven seasons of True Blood, and along the way, it had managed to launch an entire universe with not one but two successful spin-offs in The Originals and Legacies.

"The reason why Vampire Diaries worked is because [cocreators] Kevin [Williamson] and Julie [Plec] started from a foundation of: Here's this series of books; there's a really cool ensemble of characters-some are human, some are vampires, some are witches-and we're going to treat all of them like multidimensional realistic characters," series writer (and The Originals showrunner) Michael Narducci says. "When you have realistic characters, you don't know how they're going to behave, so the show is unexpected. There aren't good guys and bad guys. On Vampire Diaries, you don't know what these characters are going to do, let alone who is going to win."

Throughout its long journey, the series never stopped surprising audiences, whether it was by killing a beloved character, creating an unexpected new romantic pairing-sorry, a ship-or bringing in a villain who nobody saw coming. Thanks to a passionately dedicated audience, the show-unlike its characters-never had to fear for its life. It even survived star Nina Dobrev's departure after season 6.

In the end, the show decided when it wanted to say goodbye, and it aired its final episode on March 10, 2017, leaving behind an epic legacy.

"It was the glue that solidified the CW," Ostroff says.

Which is ironic, considering the CW originally didn't want anything to do with vampires.

Jennifer Breslow (The CW vice president of drama development): We always did a retreat at the beginning of every [development] season with the whole team, and we'd set goals for ourselves. One of the things that everybody said at the time was "What about a vampire concept?" And it was very, very clear coming away from that retreat that there was no room in the world for another vampire show. True Blood already existed; Twilight had already come out.

But Alloy Entertainment, which was already in business with the CW with Gossip Girl, had seen success in rereleasing the Vampire Diaries books (originally published in the early nineties) thanks to the recent interest in the genre.


Leslie Morgenstein (Alloy Entertainment president; executive producer): It started as a trilogy, which wound up being four books, and they did okay, but they didn’t really light the world on fire. And then when Twilight became a big hit, we went back to the publisher, HarperCollins, and said, “We’ve got to do something with these books. Let’s reissue them.” So they did, and the books really took off with new jackets.


Bob Levy (Alloy Entertainment executive vice president of television and film development and production; executive producer): The reissues blew up. This seventeen-year-old book is suddenly, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller. And that was my cue. The pitch was very simple: It was TV Twilight. But we had the magic bullet of avoiding the accusation that we were ripping off Twilight by the fact that our books came first. . . . We had a first-look deal at Warner Bros. so we went to the studio first, and then in partnership with the studio, we approached networks. And Warner Bros. passed. But that didn’t stop us. We basically went around our studio, which is quasi not kosher, but we were just so committed that TV Twilight was a no-brainer, which is when we approached the CW. So [vice president of TV development and production] Andrew [Wang] submitted the book to Jen, and I heard from Andrew that her boss, Thom Sherman, wasn’t interested.


Jennifer Breslow: Andrew had sent me the books. I literally put them on the credenza, and they sat there all season.


Leslie Morgenstein: Something came back to us via Warner Bros. the studio, that the CW doesn’t want to do Twilight for TV, and my response was, “What are they talking about? Of course you want to do Twilight for TV.” It was the biggest thing in entertainment.


Bob Levy: I called Thom and he’s like, “I don’t get what the...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
059347595X
ISBN 13 
9780593475959
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
425
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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