Yes, Kevin Williamson who brought us Dawson’s Creek and The Scream Trilogy.
How faithful is the Vampire Diaries series to the books by L.J Smith?
?We?re going to try our best to honour the book and keep the spirit and the essence of the book, but we are making changes. We are a television series, we?re bringing in a few new characters, we?re changing up the mythology a little bit but what I loved about the book was the folklore it created. We?re going to do a modern day, sort of sexy soap opera. The town of Mystic Falls has a lot of things that go bump in the night, and it?s not just vampires. It?s got a little bit of ?Buffy? where there?s that mythology that goes beyond vampires, there?s all sorts of creatures of the night that will emerge.?
Fans of the books are obsessed with accuracy, are you going to try and keep them happy?
?We?re trying. The thing with fans of these books is that they?re big fans. They?re tearing us apart for casting a brunette instead of blonde. We would have liked to have found a blonde who would have had the essence of who we thought Elena was, but Nina walked into our lives and we couldn?t look any other way. Also, when we were doing the pilot, we were looking for the name of the Mystic Falls football team but we couldn?t find it in the books. There are six books, and we couldn?t find the name. We went with Timberwolves, so that?s a little nod to a future storyline if you?ve read the books.?
Did you do a lot of research on the mythology of vampires?
?My whole career has been this research, you know? Monster research. My thing is I love vampires. Julie (Plec, Exec Producer) and I have done so many movies together that, if it?s not a werewolf, it?s a vampire, or it?s a killer, or something, that we?ve researched it.?
How soon into the series will Elena find out Stefan is a vampire?
?We?re not going to drag it out. What?s great is that we?ve got six books of stories to tell and what I love about it is when she finds out, that?s when it really kicks in. That?s when all sorts of stuff starts to happen. So I?m actually excited to get ahead, the whole part of the discovery is the fun part.?
Are you going to try and keep the characters true to how they appear in the book?
?We?re trying to honour the book which was written in 1993 – it is very earnest. What I respond to is that every character in this book is dealing with loss, they?re dealing with death, they?re dealing with life. I mean there are some big issues for some really young characters, and that?s what I tried to do on Dawson?s Creek. Everything I write about is pretty much death and loss and hopelessness. Which is a really good thing because the only way to write a story about hope is to write about hopelessness. I?m hoping that I will be able to enrich the characters.?