TCA Winter Tour 2015: The Originals – What’s Next?

What We Learned From the TCA Winter Tour 2015

The CW day at the TCA Winter Tour 2015 featured a joint panel for The Vampire Diaries and The Originals. (Jan 11) Held at the Langham Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena in California, executive producer of both hit supernatural series, Jule Plec, was accompanied by showrunners, Caroline Dries of The Vampire Diaries and Michael Narducci of The Originals. Series stars, Ian Somerhalder (Damon) and Joseph Morgan (Klaus) also attended to represent their shows and offer a little eye candy of course. Below are some spoilers on what’s to come on The Originals and it was also announced The Originals has been renewed for a third season and TVD for a seventh.

RELATED | TCA Winter Tour 2015: The Vampire Diaries – What’s Next?

• On whether Klaus has become less evil Joseph shares “The last thing I shot was me walking in with a bag full of severed heads. We do really terrible things for good reasons now.” And Ian agrees with him adding “It’s ill-intent, but for righteous reasons.”
• Joseph says that being big and evil can be cathartic and reveals he and his wife are fostering a new dog. Says he has an overnight flight tonight and jokes “Phoebe is going to get all of my tired and angriness.”
• Julie agrees that being evil can be cathartic and says that it’s the same for the writers. She says the best revenge is taking out passive aggressive annoyances on the page.
• Ian and Joseph agree the audience is very involved with both shows on social media. Julie commends Ian and Joseph both use social media for good. Ian for environmental causes and Joseph for his book club. Both Ian and Joseph like the passion of the fans and Julie adds, “It’s kinda double-edged sword.”
• “Our jobs as writers and performers are to create the best stories that we can.” says Narducci says about not paying fan service. Julie recalls a time that Narducci almost missed a flight because he was in the middle of a Twitter fight with a super-fan. “Harvard brain, football body it’s a little bit menacing,” Ian jokes of Narducci.
• Narducci says that sometimes they find out that the storyline they’re wanting to do on “Originals” is already happening on TVD. Julie’s rule is “first one who comes up with it wins,” but she’ll break it if necessary.
• Joseph agrees with Ian that “from the actors standpoint as well, there is a lot of mythology, but in the heart… this is a story about people. It was a story about relationships. It was about this town” and reveals he used to get notes to “be less vampirific” on The Originals. He says he appreciates that TVD has “toned down the vampire” in favor of “human dynamics.”
• The midseason family we saw Esther getting neutralized. Finn and Mikael become bigger threats and then we’ll hear more about the origins of Esther as a witch and the deals she had to make to become a mother to this family. The big question is what will Klaus do to protect his child and what would happen if somebody else in his family has a different strategy for protecting her? Klaus won’t necessarily be ready to follow orders. “Will Dahlia come for Hope” is a big question for the back-half of this season.
• Joseph jokes that he likes to be the “inside track” and gather the cast around and tell them what’s going to happen. Julie says he spoils character developments for other actors on set after he gets scripts. They’re shooting episode 14 at the moment and he’s looked at 15, but that’s all he knows. Ian jokes to Joseph, “Thank God, you’re gone! Give me room to breathe!”

THE ORIGINALS RETURNS MONDAY, JAN. 19 8|7c on The CW