'Vampire Diaries' Co-Creator Julie Plec Responds To Kat Graham: "The Door Will Always Be Open For Bonnie Bennett"

The Vampire Diaries co-creator Julie Plec says “the door will always be open” for Kat Graham to return to her role of Bonnie Bennett in any new incarnation of the series after Graham recently said she was focused on her work as an activist, actress, and singer and had no plans to play the character again.

“We’ve reached out to Kat plenty of times through the years for different The Vampire Diaries-related things and she’s always been very gracious,” Plec tells Deadline of Graham who played Bonnie across the show’s 8 seasons. “She’s very kind as she kindly passes. She feels like she has completed her journey as Bonnie, taken the good parts of that journey with her, and put the less good parts behind her to step into the next phase of her career. She’s been growing and doing so well with her music, her appearances, and her acting.”

She continued, “The door will always be open for Bonnie Bennett, whether it’s for a spinoff or an appearance—whatever. But I know Kat has a really strong point of view about what she wants for her career to be and where Bonnie fits in that and I respect that completely.”

Graham opened up about her decision to close the door on that chapter of her life in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight.

“I feel like I gave that show, and hopefully the fans that watch it, eight years of my life and poured so much into it and sacrificed a lot of time with my family, even time doing work with the UN refugee agency, doing my activism— so much of that has to get put on hold when you’re on a twenty-two episode series for eight years,” she told the outlet. “So, as grateful, and I mean grateful because I grew from that show, I became who I really am in my twenties from that show, for me, yeah the door is closed.”

The Vampire Diaries completed its run in 2017 and was followed by two spinoffs: The Originals and Legacies, the latter of which will conclude tonight after four seasons. It’s the end of the franchise—for now—and there’s at least one original TVD actor returning for the finale: Joseph Morgan will reprise the role of Klaus Mikaelson.

Legacies airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET via the CW.