Vampires
‘The Vampire Diaries’: Ian Somerhalder Reveals Why He Stopped Being a Damon & Elena Fan
It’s widely known that teen dramas — especially ones that involve love triangles — can attract passionate fanbases. It’s a reality that The Vampire Diaries‘ Ian Somerhalder is well acquainted with.
Somerhalder played one of the two vampire brothers vying for Elena’s (Nina Dobrev) heart. Many fans were (and still are) vocal about their chosen side: Damon’s (Somerhalder) or Stefan’s (Paul Wesley). In the actor’s case, he was partial to Damon’s romance with Elena at the start, but things changed as he experienced the brunt of fandom during the show’s eight-season run.
“I was the biggest Delena fan ever until I realized that the fandom had the ability to turn on people and become really mean,” the actor explained to author Samantha Highfill, whose book, I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries, came out on September 9.
Somerhalder’s outlook on fandom changed during his time on the show, which aired from 2009 to 2017. “I don’t like people being mean to one another,” he said. “It’s a toxic cancer to society.”
He acknowledged that it was great to feel strongly about a show, but the actor said hurting someone as a result of those feelings isn’t acceptable. He became “disgusted and frustrated” by how dark TVD‘s following could get. “We just wanted to tell a really deep, heartfelt story, so I learned a lot about a society,” Somerhalder added. “It’s one of the reasons that I left the television business and became an entrepreneur.”
Highfill prefaced Somerhalder’s statement with one from TVD boss Julie Plec. She mentioned that Dobrev and Somerhalder’s offscreen relationship — they dated from 2010 to 2013 — blurred the lines for some fans.
“It was really charming and sweet for a while because you were getting this energy of how much people cared and how passionate they were,” she said, “but when they were mixing up real life with the fake life is when you’re like, ‘Be careful with yourselves.'”
She continued, “The fandoms were bullying each other, so when a choice was made that didn’t go their way, it wasn’t just, ‘Oh, I’m sad,’ it’s like, ‘Now this other a**hole fandom gets to make me feel like sh*t.’ It became a very personal experience for people where they were fighting with each other and using the show as ammunition in that war.”
