Caroline Dries Talks The Vampire Diaries Season 7 with THR

Caroline Dries Talks The Vampire Diaries Season 7 with THR

                                                                         

When the series returns this fall, life will move on for Elena’s loved ones.

“Obviously the big thing for us is we lost the main character of the show,” The Vampire Diaries executive producerCaroline Dries tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We had the privilege of Nina gifting us with the knowledge that we’d be losing her midway through season six. And so, once we knew we were losing a main character, we could build the main infrastructure for a show that could exist without her. Not just Elena Gilbert, but Katherine Pierce — who had already left. … We had been looking at this for a while, ever since Katherine left: how do we fill that voice of the very confident, sultry, sexy woman who is a villain? How do we keep the love and heart and soul that is Elena? And that’s what our task was as employed writers [was] to go, ‘Let’s pull this off.'”

The series will dive deeper into the characters it already established.

Though a whole group of new faces have joined the show in light of Dobrev’s exit, Dries shared the plan is to explore the characters fans already know and love in season seven.

“Our show has 500,000 cast members on it, so we have gotten to know them, watch them mature as characters for 130 episodes,” she says. “So to fill the void of a main character, it just means seeing people we already know very well a little bit more. This season, the guts of the show is really the Salvatore brothers. And it’s really Stefan’s relationship with Caroline. … The show feels like it’s stillVampire Diaries, but there’s this level of maturity to it now. Especially with the presence of Lily and Caroline’s character now. She just feels like she’s getting more mature and more self-assured of herself. Damon and Stefan are dealing with way more adult problems. The show feels the same, but feels new.”