Paul Wesley’s a seasoned Comic-Con veteran having made the trek to San Diego for the annual sold-out fanfest for eight times (two with Fallen, six with The Vampire Diaries), but despite the craziness of the Con Wesley admits he’ll be sad when he’s no longer a part of the yearly event. “For me, I started off on this small show for two years where nobody really knew who the hell I was or any of us, and then I went with Vampire Diaries when it first popped and it was madness. Sorry, actually, the first Vampire Diaries panel, nobody knew who the hell we were because it hadn’t aired yet. And now, the show’s been on for six years,” explained Wesley during our roundtable interview at the SDCC. “This might be my last one or maybe next year, so it’s going to be sad. Eight years in a row, it’s crazy.”
It’s not over yet, so what can we expect from season six? Wesley chatted about where audiences will find Stefan when the series returns and what it was like to direct an episode of The Vampire Diaries.
Paul Wesley The Vampire Diaries Interview
What can we look forward to for Stefan this coming season?
Paul Wesley: “Him isolating himself from the rest of the gang, which is really cool. He sort of has his own storyline. He takes off. He leaves town and he decides to forge his own life, not look for Damon and Bonnie. It’s very uncharacteristic. He’s sort of grown incredibly apathetic about the whole thing.”
There were so many twists and turns, is it ever hard to keep track of what’s going on and remember the storylines?
Paul Wesley: “Yeah, yeah. It’s so damn difficult, dude. We have somebody on set who is much better at keeping track of everything that’s happened throughout the seasons. I’m constantly like, ‘Why, wait, hold on, what? Where was I? What happened and who’s that guy?’ I don’t know how the viewers keep up. I have no idea what the hell is going on half the time.”
How was directing?
Paul Wesley: “Awesome. It was unbelievable. It was an amazing experience. I’m going to do it again this year. Very excited about it. It was amazing.”
What did you learn from doing that?
Paul Wesley: “I mean, I have an enormous amount of respect for the whole crew. When you’re acting, it’s a very subjective experience. You’re sort of oblivious to every department and what they add to the production. It really opened my eyes. It’s a combination of art and commerce. You have to be aware of the schedule, you have to get your shots, you have to do it in a certain amount of time. There’s a budget and then you want to make it art filled and you want it to have your vision and your voice. It’s a really interesting line to navigate.”
Are Stefan and Elena not interacting this season?
Paul Wesley: “Not really. Not really. He kind of wants nothing to do with it.”
So having fans want you to bite them, has that waned?
Paul Wesley: “It has waned, it has waned. Vampires have been so on the forefront of pop culture, and I think people are like, ‘Eh, vampires.’ At first, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, bite me! This is hilarious!’ Now it’s like, ‘Oh great, that jerk.’ It’s different.”
How do you feel about the show’s social media presence? It’s incredible.
Paul Wesley: “It is, it really is. Social media has changed everything. The success of the show is due in part to social media. That’s the pocket that they’re going for. They’re looking for that core group that is whatever the 17 to whatever the heck it is. All this tweeting, we have these long hiatuses and it keeps it fresh for everybody.”
Do you ever feel you have to put out too much on social media?
Paul Wesley: “I try to keep everything…an actor’s job is to remain relatively mysterious so that when they play a different role in a film or whatever, people aren’t like, ‘Oh, it’s that guy.’ I think if you make yourself this huge social presence, it really plays very much against you and your career. I specifically go out of my way to not do a lot of press, because I think it’s important. If I knew everything about Paul Newman and James Dean and all those guys, they wouldn’t really be iconic. They have an air of ambiguity that I think is really pinnacle.”
