‘The Vampire Diaries’ vs. ‘Twilight’: Paul Wesley, Nina Dobrev Compared Vampire Franchises
The Vampire Diaries premiered on The CW one year after the first Twilight movie opened in theaters. Twilight was already such a phenomenon, The Vampire Diaries stars Paul Wesley and Nina Dobrev already knew what they were up against. They played Stefan and Elena in the CW adaptation of the L.J. Smith books.
Wesley and Dobrev were on a Television Critics Association panel for The Vampire Diaries in 2009. He discussed his approach to Stefan and why he couldn’t let Twilight into his eyeballs. The Vampire Diaries is now streaming on Peacock and HBO Max.
Paul Wesley hadn’t seen Twilight when ‘The Vampire Diaries’ premiered
Perhaps once The Vampire Diaries ended in 2017, Wesley could enjoy Twilight. When he first began playing Stefan, Twilight was off the table.
“Prior to shooting the pilot, I had never seen Twilight,” Wesley said. “And I specifically went out of my way to not watch Twilight because I didn’t want it to in any way influence me because I knew that it was a similar subject matter.”
Stefan vs. Edward
Point of clarification, Wesley never watched Twilight in its entirety. He saw enough to compare Stefan to Edward, played by Robert Pattinson in the movie. Wesley said any similarities are entirely coincidental.
“And now, I’ve actually never watched the movie in its entirety, but I’ve seen parts of it. I don’t think that it would be wise for any actor to make any judgments on their character or decisions based on anyone else. I think if there are similarities to Robert Pattinson’s character in Twilight, so be it. I take the scripts that Kevin [Williamson] and Julie [Plec] write, and I do my honest, best portrayal. Any, like, similarities, that’s sort of an aftereffect.”
‘The Vampire Diaries’ vs. ‘Twilight’
Wesley’s costars, Nina Dobrev and Katerina Graham, had watched Twilight. Wesley and Dobrev got into a discussion about the differences between their show and the movie franchise.
“I was impressed because it has this super sort of youthful following,” Wesley said. “And I found it pretty engaging, so I was kind of relatively surprised. I thought it would be a lot campier. I actually liked it, what I saw.”
Dobrev also read the Stephenie Meyer books.
“It was before the actual whole vampire, Twilight craze, Rob Pattinson obsession with everyone in the world,” Dobrev said. “So I was unaffected in that sense. And I like them. I really like them. I mean, there’s similarities. There’s vampires in both shows. But they’re different, and as the series goes on, it’s going to get different.”
Executive producer Williamson said Smith’s first book had more similarities to Twilight, but as he read on he recognized the differences.
“The premise is the same: you know, girl meets vampire,” Williamson said. “When you read the first book, I was like, ‘No way. This is Twilight.’ But when I got to the second book, you start to realize, ‘Oh, my God, boy, this is a fork in the road. It really does separate.’ So we’re getting to that fork in the road really quick.”
Eight seasons and two spinoffs speak for themselves. There was room for both Twilight and The Vampire Diaries in the world, as well as many more vampire stories.
