In 2014, a film adaptation of Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy bestselling books hit theaters. Now fans of Mead’s tales of vampires, dhampirs, Moroi, and Strigoi are about to be treated to a series featuring all the key players when Vampire Academy premieres on Peacock on September 15, 2022.
For those who aren’t familiar with the world Mead created, here’s the official synopsis courtesy of Peacock: “In a world of privilege and glamour, two young women’s friendship transcends their strikingly different classes as they prepare to complete their education and enter royal vampire society. This serialized and sexy drama combines the elegance of aristocratic romance and the supernatural thrills of the vampire genre.”
I would add a little something to that description: Come for the vampires and stay for the sizzling chemistry between Kieron Moore as Dimitri Belikov and Sisi Stringer as Rose Hathaway.
Moore and Stringer teamed up for roundtable interviews at the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con, chatting about their characters, the mythology, and what fans can expect from the first season.
Kieron Moore and Sisi Stringer Interview:
How familiar were you with the Vampire Academy books before booking the show?
Sisi Stringer: “Super familiar, I’m actually a big fan of the series. I read them when I was a teenager and loved them and loved the movie when it came out. I was really sad that more movies didn’t come out, but you know now we’re doing it and we get to tell the full story.
So yeah, huge fan and as soon as I got the audition I was like, ‘No way! I know this character; I love this character.’ And, yeah, I booked the job and was just ecstatic.”
Kieron Moore: “For me, I remember seeing the title come through, a random core memory, but I was like, ‘This looks so cool.’ I did some research and was like, ‘Oh my god I went and saw this film in the cinemas. I remember this.’ This was when I was in high school. I went and saw the movie.
Once I booked the job, I took the time to read the first few books. It felt like a reasonability to do that and I’m so glad I did that because the blueprint that it laid out is great. We kept that to achieve the essence of this character, I hope, the essences. So, yeah, I am now a huge fan of the Vampire Academy and I understand why this is so loved and I hope that new audiences come out to our show and fall in love with the books just as much as we have.”
Sisi Stringer: “Yeah. Great answer.”
What was it in the books about your characters that you loved so much that you had to make sure you captured when you were playing them?
Kieron Moore: “I kind of liked the cowboy duster.”
Sisi Stringer: “He’s obsessed. He’s obsessed with the duster. (Laughing) Let go of it!”
Kieron Moore: “I loved it! I think for me just Dimitri’s devotion to what he does, be it protecting the Moroi or be it his love for Rose which flourishes as the book goes on. Yeah, he’s a man that goes all the way.”
Sisi Stringer: “Sorry, what was the question? I forgot – I was just looking at him. Oh, right the character of Rose. The scary thing about us is that we are too similar and sometimes I don’t know where Rose finishes and where I begin. (Laughing) You know – fiery, passionate, sometimes inappropriate. She’s a fighter and she fights for what she loves and what she believes in. And sometimes it doesn’t always land, and I definitely identify with that myself.”
Kieron Moore: “Undeniably yourself.”
Sisi Stringer: “Undeniably myself – I’ll take that.”
Kieron Moore: “Unapologetically, in the best way. In the very best way.”
Sisi Stringer: “Thank you.”
How would you describe Rose’s history with Lissa?
Sisi Stringer: “So Rose and Lissa, basically they’ve been best friends since they were very, very small children. Rose never really had a family that was around, being a dhampir and training to be a guardian. Her parents are…well, her mother is a dhampir as well so she is a guardian – an acting guardian – and is off doing her duty protecting her Moroi. So Rose never really had a mother around. And her father – who even knows where he is at any given point. So Lissa’s family became Rose’s family. They really adopted her. They took her in and Lissa was not just her best friend but her sister and the closest person that she had – and her safety net, really. So that’s where we meet the girls in the story.
We meet them and they already have this amazing, beautiful love between them and this beautiful bond. And over the series, it just gets stronger and stronger. You see the girls develop and they find a lot of strength in their relationship. Apart and together, I think they are very strong women in their own ways.”
Can you talk about Rose and Dimitri’s powers?
Sisi Stringer: “Powers? What are your powers?”
Kieron Moore: “Sheer endearingness, that’s what it is.”
Sisi Stringer: (Laughing) “Okay Mr. Darcy!”
Kieron Moore: “Well, they’re obviously blessed – I always say the blessed part of their curse is the physical attributes. Their strength, their speed – all the cool stuff of a vampire minus the fangs. I kind of like the fangs.”
Sisi Stringer: “Yeah, I really wanted the fangs as well!”
Kieron Moore: “Yeah, a lot of their potential lies in their fighting abilities. Hence their job and their commitment to defending the Moroi.”
Sisi Stringer: “That’s why we make such good protectors and guardians because we have the heightened senses and the strength and the agility. Those are all the things you need to be a warrior, basically.”
Kieron Moore: “I think Dimitri, as the series goes on, finds that Rose will have different kinds of superpowers that are quite human which he falls in love with in different ways.”
Sisi Stringer: “Yeah. Dimitri can be…I don’t want to say unhuman.”
Kieron Moore: “He’s very stoic.”
Sisi Stringer: “Stoic, exactly. And he really finds his humanity and I think Rose is a big part of that for him.”
Kieron Moore: “And for me. Be a person, Kieron!”
Sisi Stringer: “Shut up, Kieron.”
What is it about this series that stands out from other vampire material?
Kieron Moore: “It’s its own world in its own right.”
Sisi Stringer: “Yeah, exactly. Richelle Mead in the books creates this amazing world that’s so different to other vampire stuff, because there are different kinds of vampires and there are ancient races. There’s an ancient race of good vampires and they’re proper and they live in a structured society. They’re called Moroi and some of them are royal and some of them are not. And then there’s a class divide even within that kind of faction.
But then there are the dhampirs like us who are the warriors and the protectors and the guardians. We are half-human half-vampire hybrids and so we can go out into the sun. We don’t have to live by drinking blood or anything like that, but then we do have the heightened senses.”
Kieron Moore: “I think in the world’s complexity we’re able to use the vampire fantasy world as like a metaphor, really, for a bit of our own society. There’s a real allegory that’s happening. People that are familiar with and watch the show and will expect all the funky fantasy vampire stuff could be challenged in a cool way. Like, ‘Oh, this feels a bit close to home.’
That’s what this world does in such a striking way.”
Sisi Stringer: “Yes, absolutely. Like you said you get all the sexy stuff and you get all the fangs and the blood and all that kind of stuff. But also you definitely get something that reflects our society in the sense of like a class structure and revolutionary kind of ideas and things being disrupted in a way that makes you question is this society fair the way they run it.”
Kieron Moore: “Even your own beliefs. It’s quite exciting, really. It makes you forge on and then get lost in this idea. It makes you challenge your own beliefs and question different things.”
Sisi Stringer: “And the bad vampires are very scary. They’re called Strigoi and they’ve got the full bad vampire get-up and the red eyes. I can’t say too much, obviously.”
Kieron Moore: “I can promise this. If the audience is 30% as scared as I was the first time I had to fight one on set, we are on to a good show because [I was] heart in my mouth terrified.”
Sisi Stringer: “I was the same. The first time I ever fought someone in the full Strigoi bad vampire get-up and they just run at you, and they are just ferocious. You just forget your fight choreography and [try and get away]. That was your first instinct.”
Kieron Moore: “Hey, what was that?!”
Sisi Stringer: “He literally just ducked. And on my first day I was like, ‘Can we cut?’”
Kieron Moore: “He swings at me and my brain just goes [blank]. I just blocked the punch and I was like, ‘That was close, right? Can we just use that?’”
How difficult was the training? They show you doing training so how was it to train for training?
Kieron Moore: “That was a massive part for me because you obviously have a lot of stuff around Lissa but a lot of Dimitri’s scenes… A lot of that relationship with Rose in the books is the training. For me, the training for the training actually helped me find Dimitri. It helped me find the connection with Rose because that was an experience we had to share.”
Sisi Stringer: “Physically getting into a character is something important to me in terms of the process of making a character. It’s like putting on the clothes, you know? You step into the clothes and you step into the role. I think training and figuring out our own fighting styles within the training and the martial arts they were teaching us and stuff like that was really cool character-building.
A lot of scenes in the beginning are training together so we would train in the gym to bring that together. It was lots of different martial arts styles.”
Kieron Moore: “And an incorporation of our own histories as well. Sisi has been in films that are quite action-packed, and she obviously comes from a dance background. I’m from a boxing background. We’ve introduced these to each of our characters. I think that’s what’s so beautiful about our fight styles, specifically is that, yes, it’s a whole and you can see that it’s very similar when everyone fights. But each individual’s personality comes through in their fighting style.
Sisi Stringer: “Different characters, the way they fight is very, very interesting to watch.”
Kieron Moore: “And Rose and Dimitri complement each other on a whole new level.”
Sisi Stringer: “They find a flow.”
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