‘The Vampire Diaries’ season 6: Julie Plec tried to convince Nina Dobrev to stay

We do love it when showrunners get candid about topics on their shows, especially in long-form interviews where you don’t often see their quotes taken out of context and spun in some ridiculous way. That’s why podcasts are such a great medium (we do them here!), and that is also why Julie Plec’s interview on “The Spin-Off” (listen here) is very interesting. Within this podcast, you get a chance to hear about how she built an empire of shows on The CW, how she handles being a public figure now, and the nature of passionate fans for both “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Originals.”

Obviously, one of the bigger quotes that was in here is going to be about the exit of Nina Dobrev, and the sort of situation that comes when the lead of your show makes it clear that she wants to move on. In Plec’s case, she admitted that she did try to convince her to stay to no avail:

“Nina had said earlier this [season] that she wanted to be done and we spent a little bit of time trying to talk her out of it. [We’d say,] ‘Oh, look at all these great plans of how you can stay!’ And she finally was like, ‘No, I signed up for six years. I’ve done my six years. I’m ready to move on and spread my wings.'”

This is really a no-blame situation here. We get why Nina would want to move on given that she is still young and likely interested in movies. However, Plec of course wants to make the show the best that she can, and understands the popularity of the Elena character.

She also gives a really great explanation in here about why Nina’s exit was announced in advance: Given that fans of this show are so young, she did not want them to have the sudden shock and sadness of what happened when Josh Charles left “The Good Wife.” This was a way to prepare them for it. This isn’t always the right decision, but it probably was here.

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