Exclusive Interview: The Season 3 scoop on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES from Kevin Williamson

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Contributing Writer

Posted: February 9th, 2012 / 03:36 PM

Candice Accola, Zach Roerig, Claire Holt, Daniel Gilles, Paul Wesley, Ian Somerhalder, Casper Zafer, Nina Dobrev, Susan Walters, Joseph Morgan, Nathaniel Buzolic in THE VAMPIRE DIARIES - Season 3 - "Dangerous Liasons" | ©2012 The CW/Quantrell D. Colbert

In the third season of the CW’s THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, Thursdays at 8 PM, events are unfolding at what is, for this show, typical and sometimes literally breakneck pace. Stefan (Paul Wesley) went bad, but may be good again. Stefan’s brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and the humanish (she’s also a doppelganger) love of Stefan’s life Elena (Nina Dobrev) kissed. The family of Original vampire/werewolf hybrid Klaus (Joseph Morgan) has returned from being dead for centuries. There are ghosts. There are witches. There’s a mysterious murderer running around, attacking people on the anti-vampire Council working inMystic Falls,VA, where the story is set. And did we mention it’s senior year of high school?

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES executive producer Kevin Williamson adapted the series for television from the novels by L.J. Smith. The North Carolina native also created DAWSON’S CREEK and the SCREAM film franchise. At a cocktail party at the Television Critics Association press tour, Williamson takes some time to talk about where the show is at right now and where it’s going.

ASSIGNMENT X: 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 …

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: 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.

Paul Wesley and Kat Graham in THE VAMPIRE DIARIES - Season 3 - "All My Children" | ©2012 The CW/Bob Mahoney

AX: 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 …

WILLIAMSON: 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.

AX: 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?

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

Joseph Morgan in THE VAMPIRE DIARIES - Season 3 - "The Ties That Bind" | ©2012 The CW/Quantrell D. Colbert

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

WILLIAMSON: 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?”

AX: Are you still working on SECRET CIRCLE, the CW show about witchcraft that’s also based on an L.J. Smith book series? Or did you help launch SECRET CIRCLE and now you’ve stepped back a bit?

WILLIAMSON: Yes. Andrew Miller was always the executive producer. What happened was, they brought me in to help him get the series up and running and I worked on the pilot and the first six episodes, and then I stepped back. That’s all I was doing. I was like a helper. I’m at Warner Bros. and at CW – it’s like a family thing. I talk to them all the time.

AX: So VAMPIRE DIARIES is still your primary focus?

WILLIAMSON: VAMPIRE DIARIES and I’m working on a new pilot at Fox.

AX: What’s it about?

WILLIAMSON: Serial killers.

AX: Can you say anything about SCREAM 5?

WILLIAMSON: I don’t know. I’m not doing it.

AX: 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?

WILLIAMSON: 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.

AX: Anything else you can preview?

WILLIAMSON: 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.

AX: 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?

WILLIAMSON: We could wrap this thing up in six.

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

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

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

WILLIAMSON: 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.

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

WILLIAMSON: 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].

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Related Link AX’s interview with THOMAS DEKKER on THE SECRET CIRCLE

Related Link: photos from The CW’s THE SECRET CIRCLE

Related Link:VAMPIRE DIARIES review of Season 2 finale – “As I Lay Dying”
Related Link: More VAMPIRE DIARIES reviews and interviews

Related Link: For AX’s exclusive interview with CANDICE ACCOLA

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: The Scoop on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and its future from executive producer Kevin Williamson

[Editor’s Correction: In the original text, the subtitle GENERATIONS was added to the Scream 5 question. In subsequent research, we discovered that subtitle refers to a SCREAM fan film. We’ve omitted the GENERATIONS part to avoid further confusion from other media reporting on the story. The omission of the subtitle does not change Williamson’s answer to the question of whether he’ll do a SCREAM 5]

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Exclusive Interview: The Season 3 scoop on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES from Kevin Williamson

The executive producer also talks how many seasons he thinks the series may run

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Exclusive Interview: The Season 3 scoop on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES from Kevin Williamson

The executive producer also talks how many seasons he thinks the series may run

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Article: The Scoop on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and its future from executive producer Kevin Williamson