Nina Dobrev dives into the deep end of acting
Nina Dobrev flew out to Savannah for the weekend to kick off the
Savannah Film Festival, before returning to Atlanta to shoot the 100th episode of “The Vampire Diaries.”
Currently in its fifth season, “The Vampire Diaries” is one of the biggest shows on the CW, with over two million viewers weekly. There is never a dull moment, especially for an actress with two roles — Dobrev plays Elena Gilbert and her evil doppelgänger Katherine Pierce.
After five years of filming this hit drama, the cast gets to celebrate this big accomplishment.
“You dream that it’ll get to the hundredth episode and now it’s actually happening and it’s sort of surreal,” said Dobrev. “It’s an homage to the last five years and it’s very reminiscent.”
The excitement showed as she inched to the edge of her chair, leaning forward aching to spill the details.
“I’m excited for it, excited and sad. It’s a very great episode and people are going to be very fulfilled in watching because of many reasons that I can’t — I really can’t share,” said Dobrev.
After being part of a team for five years, playing the same roles, most would think that it could get tiresome or mundane, but Dobrev explained how the characters evolution challenges her as an actress. It’s her job to analyze their roles and understand them.
“Every season I feel like I’m playing a different character because, like real people, they change and they grow. Elena is much stronger and more confident and just becoming a woman over the last five years,” she said.
Dovrev still learned more about herself playing two completely different kinds of characters—Elena the calm, rational girl in love and Katherine the manipulative ex-lover of the Salvatore boys. The script sets Dobrev in intense situations, forcing her to examine tough subjects like death and love.
“It changes you at your core, whether you like it or not,” said Dobrev.
She has to take these characters and experience what they’re going through to a certain extent. Filming dramatic scenes in “The Vampire Diaries” puts her in a lot of situations she didn’t want to explore.
“It’s kind of scary, because when you go to that place you have to reel yourself back in,” she said.
Dobrev learned about herself through this process.
“I feel like I’ve also grown into a woman, more confident in myself,” she said.
She’s grown and learned a lot since she started acting as a teenager. After attending a performing arts high school, she questioned the motives and mindset of the characters she was playing. Dobrev went to college for a year before deferring, taking classes in sociology and psychology.
“That just related a lot to my field because it’s about people and why they do the things they do,” she said.
With all of the striking personalities in the show, Dobrev chose the masochistic rebel to scrutinize.
“Everyone says ‘Damon is so bad,’ ‘Damon is such a villain,’” said Dobrev. “He doesn’t think he’s bad. He has a reason he does the things that he does. He thinks it’s good, he thinks he’s doing something that’s eventually going to lead to something better.”
Dobrev might have only completed one year in class studying, but it’s clear her experience in her career gave her some insight.
“Everyone thinks that they’re doing the right thing even if it’s not the right thing in someone else’s perspective,” she said.
Dobrev learned to see different positions and she tells new actors to take the same thing into consideration.
“Everyone has a completely different journey,” said Dobrev. “Johnny Depp started when he was thirty, because his girlfriend was a makeup artist. I started when I was sixteen, because I went to a performing arts high school. Everyone is so different. You know, you might take a different path but you’ll eventually arrive at your destination.”
