The first question asked of Kat Graham during our roundtable interview at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con was whether she believes her character, Bonnie, feels guilty about what happened to Elena (played by Nina Dobrev) in season six of The CW’s The Vampire Diaries. It was apparently a popular question and Graham joked that she probably should have prepared an answer prior to Comic-Con.
“I think the character feels everything. I think she feels relieved that she knows eventually that Elena will come back. I feel like she’s just a character that maybe if she did feel guilty how she behaves with others and her just kind of remembering what Elena said to her when they had the feather scene in the season finale – ‘This just had to happen. We both get what we want just not at the same time’ – just remembering that emotional impact that Elena had on Bonnie will, I think, take away some of the guilt. But this is also a character that lost her grandmother and that feels guilty about that. She feels guilty probably about Jeremy. This is a character who has a lot of emotions,” answered Graham. “I think right now she’s really kind of taking a bullsh*t attitude from anyone and she’s extremely strong and powerful without all the magic. And with the magic, she’s lethal.”
Asked what it is that will drive Bonnie in season seven, Graham replied, “I believe you’re going to see that in the first episode. I don’t want to say too much because then that will take off and go rolling, and then all of a sudden it’s, ‘Kat Graham gives spoilers.’ But you’ll see it in the first episode. This is a character that’s come back strong and obviously she’s going to want to do right by herself, by Elena, and whoever else that she’s lost in the process. She’s going to want to not sacrifice anymore. If she lost all of this, she’s going to make it count.”
The new season should find a shift in the relationship between Bonnie and Damon (played by Ian Somerhalder) as Damon is mourning the loss of Elena. “Well, I mean you’re dealing with how Damon was when he lost Katherine, the original Damon – the original badass. So it’s kind of the same thing in a weird way dealing with Elena, dealing with someone who has lost the love of his life,” offered Graham about the season seven Bonnie/Damon dynamic. “You’re going to see that they both have their issues with each other, but they’re actually dealing with it.”
Graham added, “The one thing that I love about Ian [Somerhalder] and I that is similar to our characters is that we’re both confrontational people in a very loving and great way, but so are Bonnie and Damon. So it really works out beautifully because we know how to play the scenes. We know how to work on them and we know how to bring humor to them, so you’re going to see them dealing with each other in a very direct way.”
Looking back on season six, The Vampire Diaries fans were able to learn even more about Bonnie and understand more about her personality. “I worked with Ivana Chubbuck, my coach who also coaches Ian and Nikki [Reed]. We wanted to show the vulnerability of being alone and what that means, and bring anything of my own life that might contribute to the scene,” explained Graham on her approach to last season’s Bonnie. “One of my favorite scenes was the suicide scene where she was going to kill herself. I wanted to put my own…it wasn’t suicide – it was something about the actual show that I’d been dealing with in my own life and I wanted to put that in the show because that is what I was dealing with at the moment. And, you know, I was really proud that the character was able to make that full turn.”
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