Nina Dobrev Left "The Vampire Diaries" After They Wouldn't Pay The Same As Her Male Co-Stars

Dan Lalonde
2 days ago
2 min read

The Vampire Diaries Nina Dobrev Elena Gilbert Paul Wesley Ian Somerhalder Salvatore Damon Stefan

Do you think the actor who plays the most important character in a television show should be paid the most?

Nina Dobrev has spilled the reason why she left 'The Vampire Diaries' at the end of season 6 in Samantha Highfill’s book 'I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries', and it has to do with her paycheck. Even though the show was based around her character of Elena Gilbert, Dobrev wasn't paid as much as Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder, who played the Salvatore brothers.

When the network refused to pay her close to what they were making, she left: “Candice King, Kat Graham, and I were the three lowest-paid series regulars in the first two seasons. It was a bit of a tricky situation because my contract only said to play Elena, but I was playing multiple characters, which doubled my workload. I had to be on set for double the amount of time. I had to memorize double the amount of lines. I wanted to play Katherine, but I wanted to be compensated fairly for that, and I wanted to be an equal to the boys. I remember feeling like the studio didn’t appreciate what I was bringing to the show, and it felt like they were saying that all the hard work I was putting into it didn’t matter to them and that I wasn’t an equal to my male counterparts, and so that was upsetting to me."

Showrunner Julie Plec fought the network for her to be paid more for playing the doppelganger vampire Katherine Pierce, but even then it was a losing struggle: “It got really heated, and so it basically got phoned down back to us writers that we were not allowed to write Katherine in at all ever, which of course was not something that I felt was right or fair.”

Creator Kevin Williamson revealed Dobrev was supposed to be back for all of season 8, which was the last for the series, but when they offered her five times less than what she had previously made, she only agreed to do the final episode. "I needed to be paid parity to the boys. I had to put my foot down and say if it didn’t happen I wouldn’t be able to come back. And it wasn’t about the money — I didn’t give a s— about the money at all — it was the principle.”

Do you think the show suffered when she left after season 6? Comment below with your thoughts.