It didn’t take long for Nina Dobrev to land the lead role of Elena Gilbert on “The Vampire Diaries,” but the show’s producers kept her in the dark about it for one reason. Dobrev starred on the CW drama from 2009 to 2015, departing at the end of Season 6 and only returning for the series finale in 2017.
However, Dobrev’s career-defining role began with an unconventional audition process. According to Entertainment Weekly‘s “The Vampire Diaries” oral history feature, producers knew Dobrev was the right choice to play Elena upon seeing her self-tape, but still had her come in for multiple in-person auditions — even while she was sick.
Dobrev told the outlet that no one informed her of her casting because those involved wanted to test her chemistry with potential male leads first. “They wanted to keep me on my toes and they made me keep auditioning over and over again with multiple guys,” she said. “I think it was 15 guys I had to read with under the pretense that I still hadn’t gotten the role.”
It took a while, but Nina Dobrev’s chemistry with Paul Wesley was undeniable
Nina Dobrev’s lengthy stretch of chemistry reads finally ended with the casting of Paul Wesley as Stefan Salvatore — a vampire with whom Elena has a passionate romance amid her love triangle with him and his brother, Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Wesley didn’t immediately stand out, but his chemistry with Dobrev slowly built Elena and Stefan into one of the most beloved pairings in “The Vampire Diaries.”
“We didn’t want Paul until we met Nina,” series co-creator Kevin Williamson told EW in the same oral history feature. “Paul came in like 100 times and every time he came in we’d be like, ‘Alright, here’s Paul Wesley again.’ I liked him; I just didn’t love him. And only once we found Nina and put them together did I go, ‘Oh he’s really good, who is that? It’s the guy we passed on 15 times.'”
Although initially feeling that she had the least chemistry with Wesley since he didn’t speak to her out of character, Dobrev eventually found that he perfectly embodied Stefan alongside her performance as Elena. “It’s the kind of thing where you can see it on screen and you get an energy from the room that I maybe didn’t have a barometer on, but he was absolutely the right choice and the best person for the role,” she said. Now, 17 years since “The Vampire Diaries” aired its pilot episode, fans can look back on the whirlwind series of events that resulted in casting of the show’s lead characters.
