Ian Somerhalder, 'Damon' for Vampire Diaries
What is Vampire Diaries all about?
Vampire Diaries is a story about two vampire brothers and a girl they were both in love with many, many years ago, way back in time. My character Damon feels like he was wronged by his brother over a century ago and is extraordinarily upset so my brother Stefan and myself have been feuding for about 145 years. So Stefan turns up in this town where we are from and where we were turned into vampires, and he gets settled, finds a girl, starts to feel something, finally, and then I inexorably as always show up to remind him that I want to make his life a living hell. And again we end up in a very interesting love triangle with a beautiful mortal girl, Elena.
Your character has more power than his, it looks like Damon can really kick Stefan's ass. Will it ever be a fair fight between these two?
There are a couple of factors that create the reason why there's an imbalance of power. One of them is the fact that you have to feed as a vampire and I deliberately decided to not stop feeding on people and the problem with that is it makes it invariably difficult for him to take him out because there's an imbalance of power. Stefan doesn't have the strength that I have so until he decides to start feeding on people I will have the ability to kick his ass. But when that changes it's going to be a problem because look how strong Paul is!
Why do girls like bad guys?
Girls like bad guys just as much as guys like bad guys because bad guys don't give a hoot. They don't care. They do what they want and they have fun doing it and so I think that there is an allure to a guy who says, "I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want and I'm gonna have a blast doing it and there is not a damn thing you can do about it."
So you are playing a bad guy vampire heartthrob?!
I don't know about the heartthrob part! He definitely has fun but the problem is he has fun as he hurts people. So Damon is a little mean sometimes.
Can you identify with him?
I can't identify with wanting to hurt people, but what I can identify with is that he does things out of loneliness. Imagine you are cast away as an immortal for an eternity and the one person you have is your brother and you can no longer be around him, you fight so much because you're not the same any more, he stopped feeding on people so he lost all of his powers, so it's kind of impossible to hang out with him and Damon does a lot of what he does out of pure loneliness. Being lonely drives you to do some really crazy stuff.
Will he ever show a good side to his character over the season?
Absolutely. He is fiercely loyal and I think that's the beauty of it. There's a lot of edge and heaviness but also a lot of levity. He may sounds like a negative character but there's so much comedy. I think Damon is going to be a lot of fun to play. I've just read the new episode last night. It's awesome, it's compelling, it's fast. And I am vicious, vicious, vicious! But yet you start to find...
There are a lot of theories of how you can kill a vampire...
Well, yeah, I mean but with these guys not very many of those traditional ways of killing a vampire work. We have these lapis stone rings that allow us to go in the sun. I mean, look at me, I'm tanned. Damon likes going to the Virgin Islands, you know what I mean? It's like, why not? I can't wait, I'm going to pitch that idea to Kevin. "God, we should do this episode where it cuts to Damon, but he's on a beach in the Caribbean for a couple of episodes." No, but errr... obviously there's garlic, a silver bullet - but I don't think any of those work on these guys. Except for if you take off your ring and you walk into the sun, you're toast. But a stake through the heart is always a big problem for a vampire. Always problematic - stakes in the heart. But not garlic, no.
How is Vampire Diaries different to Twilight?
I would say in the realm of there's a certain edge to this show and that by virtue of that edge it adds a whole other layer of intensity. It's obviously shot much differently but yes there are similarities and we're very happy Twilight exists. These books are a bit older than Twilight. Twilight's been happening once a year and this happens once a week that may prove to be helpful and successful.
There is going to be a lot of attention on you.
You know what? I live in Georgia.
You are a vampire now.
I am. I feel like a vampire.
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:D
