Actress Nina Dobrev has revealed the reason she left the beloved TV series The Vampire Diaries as she shares her experience with the show makers.
She looked back on her experience
The 36-year-old actress looked back on her decision to leave the CW series in the new book, I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries by Entertainment Weekly’s editor Samantha Highfill.
Dobrev shared that she was getting paid less
The actress revealed that she was getting paid less than her male co-stars, Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder.
She told Highfill, “It was a bit of a tricky situation because my contract only said to play Elena, but I was playing multiple characters, which doubled my workload.”
She actually played more than one character
Although initially contracted to just play the lead role of Elena Gilbert, Dobrev ended up playing other characters on the show such as Elena’s doppelgänger, Katherine Pierce.
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“I had to be on set for double the amount of time, I had to memorize double the amount of lines,” the actress said.
Dobrev wanted to be paid fairly for her work
Dobrev added, “I wanted to play Katherine, but I wanted to be compensated fairly for that, and I wanted to be an equal to the boys.”
In her book, Highfill wrote that Dobrev ‘was successful in getting more money’, but was still getting paid less than Wesley and Somerhalder.
The studio apparently told writers to change the story
Highfill also claimed that the studio told writers to stop including Katherine in scenes so they wouldn’t have to pay Dobrev for both roles.
Co-creator Julie Plec recalled, “It got really heated, and so it basically got phone down back to us writers that we were not allowed to write Katherine in at all ever, which of course was not something that I felt was right or fair.”
Dobrev didn’t feel appreciated by the studio
The actress shared that she was hurt by the studio’s refusal to pay her fairly.
She said, “They just said out of principle they wouldn’t bump me up to being equal to the boys, and so that was probably the most hurtful because it felt like I was really working hard, and I was putting my absolute heart and soul, blood, sweat, and tears to it.”
The inequality hurt her feelings
Dobrev added, “I remember feeling like the studio didn’t appreciate what I was bringing to the show, and it felt like they were saying that all the hard work I was putting into it didn’t matter to them and that I wasn’t equal to my male counterparts, and so that was upsetting to me.”
She eventually left the show
Dobrev ultimately left The Vampire Diaries after Season 6 in May 2015. The show continued to run for two more seasons after that, eventually ending in March 2017.
“When it was time to make that decision, I didn’t want to go, but I definitely didn’t want to stay somewhere I hadn’t been appreciated,” Dobrev shared.
But Dobrev returned for the series finale
The actress only returned for the series finale in 2017, which she said the opening offer for was ‘five times less’ than what she was making when she left two years earlier.
“It was just really important to me that at the end of the show, as a woman, I wanted to make sure that I was compensated and that I was an equal to my male counterparts on the show,” she said.
