Keck’s Exclusives: Q&A with Vampire Diaries Executive Producers Williamson and Plec
TV Guide Magazine: I was quite upset about Bonnie losing her Gran. Will we meet Bonnie’s parents?
Plec: People ask, ‘Why doesn’t Bonnie have parents?’ Well, Bonnie does have parents. She lives with her father, who we have not met on camera, but she does not have a relationship with her mother. These are characters we may possibly explore this year. Bonnie comes from a long line of Bennett witches and mom is out there somewhere…
Williamson: True Blood actually did with LaFayette’s mother (revealing her in a mental institution) what we wanted to do with Bonnie’s mother, even though we came up with that idea a year ago.
Plec: That happens all the time.
Williamson: Sometimes we’ll write dialogue and Nina Dobrev (Elena) will say, ‘You do realize that’s exactly what was said in Twilight, right?’ And I’ll tell her, ‘No, I had no idea.’ Vampire stories have been told for centuries so stories are going to overlap. I just don’t want to do it in the same way or too close to when the others do it.
TV Guide Magazine: Speaking of which, both Twilight and True Blood have plunged heavily into werewolf territory, which you are about to do in your new season.
Plec: We actually talked about this a lot, because we didn’t want to be the third to bring something to the table. But it’s in the Vampire Diaries books and the character of Tyler Lockwood could not and should not exist without this werewolf arc. We started laying the groundwork for this story all last season, so to negate that genre element would have been to negate the entire Tyler character.
Williamson: Every vampire story has a werewolf nearby. It’s just the way it is.
Joss Whedon Is Still Bitter About Firefly
Watching the panel at Comic Con 2010, it was clear that Joss Whedon still has as sore spot for how his scifi western show, Firefly, was treated by Fox. Dollhouse fared a bit better but Whedon was also sensitive about its cancellation. Compared with the cool confidence that J. J. Abrams exuded, Whedon’s nervous jokes were more entertaining, but also displayed a bitterness.
Whedon didn’t mention Firefly by name, but he did make one huge dig at how his show was handled. When asked whether he preferred film or TV he said, “What you can do in a movie, what you can accomplish is so extraordinary and so fulfilling. And you get to be done, which is a huge relief. Being able to tell a story over 7 years or even, you know, 15 episodes, 11 of which they air out of order is just so-”
1st zombie-licious trailer for Frank Darabont’s The Walking Dead
An enterprising fan in the room managed to capture the trailer below during AMC’s presentation, and though it’s not as crisp and clear as we’d like, when you’re talking about a TV project from the director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, we couldn’t wait for a pristine copy.
The Walking Dead looks freaky. What do you think of those zombies?
