We just got back from a screening of The Originals season premiere, which airs next Monday, October 6 on The CW. Following the screening, the show’s Executive Producer Michael Narducci answered many questions, including some talk about the upcoming guest appearance by The Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev in the fifth episode of The Originals Season 2.
Be aware some spoilers are being discussed!
“Julie has always encouraged us in the writers’ room to talk about characters crossing over from Vampire Diaries in an organic way,” he says when asked about crossovers. “And you might think ‘Organic? What does that mean?’ But I think that clearly what she means is that we want to have these crossovers take place from a point of story. What makes the most sense for our story? We have a storyline in episode 5 that will involve a flashback to the time of the Vikings, and Nina Dobrev [is] playing Tatia. What I can say about it is there’s no possible way to tell the story if we didn’t get Nina Dobrev.”
“So we basically got on our knees and begged her,” he recalls. “She was, to her credit, wonderful. She had to work double-time, driving back and forth between sets, and she got to be in scenes with both of our leads, both Daniel and Joseph, and we tell a story that will make you understand her fate, what happened to her, her relationship with both brothers, and why what happened between her and the two brothers is so beautiful and also tragic,” he teases. The story of Tatia never was shown on The Vampire Diaries, but her story was first referenced in the episode “Bringing Out The Dead.” In that episode, Elijah said this:
When our family first settled here, there was a girl named Tatia, she was an exquisite beauty. Every boy of age desired to be her suitor, even though she’d had a child by another man. And none loved her more than Niklaus.
Beyond Tatia, there is no news yet about any other Vampire Diaries crossovers coming up.
“As to other crossovers, that’s a question that’s a little bit above my pay grade,” he admits. “I only get to play in the world of The Originals. I know that right down the hall from where our writers’ room is, is the Vampire Diaries writers’ room, and those people are burning away, churning through story, and they’ve got great stuff planned. I talk to them all of the time, and I’m amazed by Season 6 and they’re still rolling along,” he shares.
“It doesn’t feel like there’s an easy way to make people drop what they’re doing in Mystic Falls and come to New Orleans, and certainly once our storylines get rolling, it’s going to be very obvious that it’ll be very impossible for our characters to take a vacation and go to Mystic Falls. But we are always looking — if it makes sense for our story, to honor the fact that this is a shared universe,” he continues.
“I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I really liked Tyler (Michael Trevino) coming on to our show,” he says. “He had a lot of unfinished business with regard to the fact that Klaus killed his mother, and he knew what was going on with the baby and everything, and his coming and his interaction with the werewolves in the bayou… that really opened up a whole new side to our show, in terms of the bayou and the werewolves and Hayley’s baby’s blood making hybrids, and all of these different things. It felt right, and I guess ‘organic.’ So if we can do that again, we absolutely want to. But in terms of the question of the Caroline-Klaus romance, once things get going on this show, you’ll see pretty quickly that Klaus is going to have his hands full, and if anything, the last thing he would want is to involve someone else in that. There’s a lot of dirty family business to deal with first.”
The Originals Season 2 premiere airs Monday, October 6 on The CW.
20 Comments
Oh so now the To and Tvd are in the same universe thats a far cry from the attitude they displayed last year when they treated Tvd like the ugly stepchild pretending to better than tvd
Anyone else feel like this “Klaus and Caroline both have so much going on in their lives” excuse is getting a little stale? They’ve only been using it for… 18 months now?
The way these writers talk about the show as if it magically writes itself – rather than all of them sitting around a table to break story and figure out where the plot and characters are heading – is just ridiculous. “Organic” is a lovely way to describe how crossovers should be (and I totally agree that Tatia is a perfect example of an organic story) but every actual crossover has been the opposite of organic. It’s been a cheap ratings grab that was dropped in out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the plot of the actual show.
If Klaus “doesn’t want to involve anyone else in his mess” why is he romancing anything in skirt?
Gen, Hayley, and Cami are all getting an astounding amount of longing looks if romance is the last thing on Klaus’ mind.
How can they even consider Tatia a crossover? She’s never been a character on TVD. Just because Nina Dobrev plays her, doesn’t make it a crossover. I swear I can’t with these writers anymore.
Really? The Tyler crossover was orgaic? It was only to prop up Hayley and to show that the stupid plothole baby can perform tricks. How did it help Tyler? They made one of the most moral guys into a potential baby killer. Thats NOT who Tyler is. Please, Narducci just be quiet and serve Julie Plec her diet coke, I bet you can’t do anything wrong there.
If you’ve ever been a writer, especially a full-time writer, you’d know that stories surprise you in the writing of them. Rarely doesn’t every moment happen exactly how you originally intend, and if you try to force it there even though it doesn’t feel right – for the sake of sticking to an outline – it won’t work. Add several voices in the pot, and yeah, the creative process is quite fluid.
And that’s just the script. Things alter when translated onto film and there’s no way around that.
Maybe TO PTB should stop with the BS already. First, the Tatia crossover is not even a crossover. Second, Nina Dobrev is the main female lead in TVD and has time to do it, but someone from the supporting cast, like CA, cannot? All the excuses about how the characters have too much on their hands and that it needs to be organic are incredibly lame. Might as well be honest and come out and say it that they’ll only do more crossovers once their ratings tank. By the looks of things,that’s going to be pretty soon. Only, by then it might actually be too late to save their sub-par show.
I am truely disguested by these people. How can you lie to your fans like this? Anyone else remember how they promised a LOT of Klaroline crossovers and how Klaus will work his feeling for Caroline through the narrative? And what did we get? Nothing but a short name mention on The Originals and a 14 sec hook up on The Vampire Diaries. This is not how you treat your fans. Karma is a bitch and it will bite you in the ass soon
So Klaus can have his hands full when it comes to Hayley and Cami, but not Caroline? Give me a break dude. There are tons of fans who come up with how Caroline can crossover onto TO, yet these “professional” writers can’t do it. Caroline could crossover because of her fathers connections and she wants find out more about her family history. Or Caroline could go to NOLA to enlist the help of some witches (with help from Klaus because he has connections) to help bring back Damon and Bonnie. Why not send her down there and immerse herself in the supernatural world in NOLA so she can discover more about her vampire nature, because we all know the MF gang is holding her back. And that Tyler crossover made Tyler look bad, and that was because the writers wanted Hayley to look good , so Tyler was the scapegoat.
Klaus has his hands full with Mikael and Esther+ being back from the dead. The quarter is controlled by werewolves. Why would he want to involve or endanger Caroline in that? Vampires are in exile.
Did you ever think maybe Candice doesnt want to cross over? She said many times she never liked the klaroline storyline, she didn’t want it continued.
Amazing how you begged Nina Dobrev, the actress who is contractually obligated to be in every single TVD episode, and make her work double time. Yet you just ignore Candice Accola, who has stated multiple times that she would be willing to crossover, and whose character gets literally 5 minutes of screentime in the episodes that she appears and that’s only to play love interest to the males on TVD. So much for logistics issues and scheduling conflicts. You’ve been using that excuse for the past 18 months and yet Dobrev transcends all of those issues? All this just because you don’t want to follow up on a storyline that literally had the line “I intend to be your last” cause you’re salty that a subgroup of fans didn’t latch onto the baby plotline and start shipping klaus with other females? It must be so exhausting trying to work in a ratings grabbing crossover in the most difficult way possible.
This is BS. Virtually no one is here for Hayley and the baby drama. If the show is bombing so hard, it’s because people were/ are expecting more and better. They want compelling stories/ characters that they love.They want the writers to honor the TVD/ TO connection. And yes, Caroline fits. Unlike the characters that are tanking with the audience (Hayley/ Cami)
I guess when the ratings tank even more, the writers will maybe understand that it’s about what the viewer wants (to be thrilled). And the viewer is not, clearly, and seems very much over this lazy writing and the bad characterization of Klaus and Elijah.
This is BS. Virtually no one is here for Hayley and the baby drama. If the show is bombing so hard, it’s because people were/ are expecting more and better. They want compelling stories/ characters that they love.They want the writers to honor the TVD/ TO connection. And yes, Caroline fits. Unlike the characters that are tanking with the audience (Hayley/ Cami).
I guess when the ratings tank even more, the writers will maybe understand that it’s about what the viewer wants (to be thrilled). And the viewer is not, clearly, and seems very much over this lazy writing and the bad characterization of Klaus and Elijah.
Narducci!Have you realized that may be you’re not an ”ORGANIC” writer and ”the hayley diaries” isn’t a”ORGANIC” show!
So let me get this right. You have a pairing that happens without trying (cough-organically-cough) its massive and popular. You then try to shoe horn a character/actress from another failed show into your show, unsurprisingly this character fails, and is really unpopular, instead of cutting your losses you then put this failed character into a situation that forces another popular character OOC, making the whole thing very contrived and forced (cough-UNorganinic-cough). You promote the popular pairing and continue to develop it, even knowing that you plan to separate the two characters. You develop a very unpopular plot line to take to the spin off, one that contravenes your own established mythology, just to ensure that the actress (from the previous mentioned failed show) of the unpopular character has a place in the new show.
Once the new show starts it become obvious that the plot line carried from the old show is a disappointment to fans, as is the actress it was created to service. It all falls apart when the one popular character/actress leaves the show. Fans who have been systematically hated on and made to feel unwelcome as well as the disenchanted fans who envisioned a different sort of show stop watching. Ratings sharply fall. Instead of taking feedback on failed characters/plot lines and writing a show that fans want, show runners turn to the aforementioned failed character and make it a main character, they retcon the crap out of it, working through troupe after troupe trying frantically to make something anything work to make this character palatable to the masses. This combined with the scapegoating of the fans of the first successful popular pairing drives even more people away.
So after wrecking the characters that I loved, after pushing the character that I never liked onto to me, after insulting me, and blaming me for your failures in writing characters that people want to watch; you expect me to give you even more of your time and watch season two? Yeahhhhhhhh good luck with that. In future perhaps respect fans and perhaps your next project will be a success- unlike this one.
How stupid do you all think we are? Its all been lies from all of you since this SPIN-OFF started. Instead of what people were into (the Original family, the connections that were developed on TVD) we get a full season of rewriting characters, rewriting mythology and a complete lack of professional behavior from people who are supposed to be adults. You screwed up and instead of taking responsibility, you blame the fans. Get rid of this stupid baby, start writing Klaus and Elijah they way they were written on TVD, push Hayley and Cami to the back (I vote to kill them off, WE DONT CARE ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS!) and focus on the Original family. Contrary to Julie’s opinion, fans will NOT accept changes to characters and mythology, they’ll just change the damn channel. But I guess your brillant move to tell fans to stop watching if they don’t like it already convinced people to stop watching. This is television, if fans don’t like the crap you’re writing, then its obvious you have to write something better or you WONT have an audience to write for.
How does Julie Plec even still have a job? After ruining two shows and driving away the TVD fan base, she should not be a show runner. It is very clear she doesn’t know what she’s doing. A genure writer knows not to mess with their mythology and she can barely write storylines, let alone characters. She should have been gone a long time ago.
huh, whatever. Just please tell us when Klaroline begins. I’m pretty sure they can both make some time caz they’re immortal…
Klaroline all the way <3
btw, I knew it was gonna be the most boring cross over they can possibly think of. Excuse me, but, I thought the doppelganger thing was over? Another one? Sigh…You’re really out of ideas…JP I dislike you…