‘Legacies’ Likely Wouldn’t Have Happened Without Candice King’s Pregnancy

Legacies, the second spinoff to the beloved TV drama The Vampire Diaries, first aired in October 2018 and ran for four seasons before its cancellation. The show details the lives of younger supernaturals, vampires, werewolves, witches, and others in their fight against evil monsters from the Malivore pit, while pursuing a high school education in the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted.

Some of the students at the school are offsprings of The Vampire Diaries cast, with a few of the original cast members featured in the spinoff. The stars include Hope Mikaelson, daughter of the infamous Klaus Mikaelson played by Joseph Morgan, the Saltzman twins, Lizzie and Josie, Alaric Saltzman, and Caroline Forbes’ kids. Let’s examine the connection between the show’s birth and Candice King’s pregnancy.

Candice King’s pregnancy during ‘The Vampire Diaries’

While filming The Vampire Diaries, Candice King was pregnant with her eldest daughter, Florence. Rather than take a leave of absence, the show’s producer, Julie Plec, wove King’s pregnancy into the show, making her character the surrogate mother to Alaric and Josette Saltzman’s Gemini twins. 

When Josette was stabbed to death by her evil twin Kai on her wedding day while pregnant, the Gemini coven saved the unborn children by hiding them in Caroline’s body. Caroline then carried the pregnancy to term and raised the children as her own with their father, even though the relationship never worked out. Alaric continued as a cast in the show’s spinoff, but Caroline doesn’t appear in Legacies until the show’s end.

Speaking at a panel featured by StageRightSecrets, King was asked if Caroline’s pregnancy in Season 7 of TVD had anything to do with King’s pregnancy or vice versa, and she replied, “Yes, that’s right. A hoot is when you call your bosses after they’ve been writing a TV series and go, hey, you know all that work you’ve just done for the last couple of months? Surprise, I’m pregnant! You have to redo all of it, which is exactly what I did.” 

‘Legacies’ likely wouldn’t have happened without Candice King’s pregnancy

Legacies centers around the lives of the kids at Salvatore School, which Alaric and Caroline founded to create a safe space for their witch daughters and other supernatural kids to learn to control their powers.

Given that the only reason the twins’ storyline was ever developed is that Candice King was pregnant while filming The Vampire Diaries, it is likely that the spinoff may never have happened without her pregnancy. 

In the TVD panel, King detailed the events that took place after she broke the news of her pregnancy to the producers, saying, “The baby came before. Pregnancy in real life came before the storyline of the pregnancy, so would there have been the whole Gemini Twins and at all? No.” The initial storyline would have had a random woman show up at Alaric’s door telling him she’s pregnant with his kids, but instead, they were written into Caroline’s story.

Speaking in an Entertainment Weekly podcast, King said she was so nervous about breaking the news of her pregnancy to the producers and waited to do so after her first trimester.

The Saltzman Twins’ role in ‘Legacies’

While the Gemini twins don’t feature much in The Vampire Diaries, they’re part of the main cast in Legacies. Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) and Josie Saltzman (Kaylee Bryant) are siphon witches and daughters of the school’s headmaster, giving them an elite status in their school. 

Lizzie is an unstable teenager and the school mean girl prone to emotional outbursts, much like Caroline was before she became a vampire. On the other hand, Josie is the level-headed half of the twin set with a people-pleasing attitude, although she struggles with an internal darkness of her own. Together they balance each other out and are known to be among the most powerful witches of their time.

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