Julie Plec, TV’s Queen of Vampires, Reveals the Secrets to Making a Great Supernatural Teen Series

It’s a simple fact of television: No one does vampires better than Julie Plec. The Vampire Diaries introduced viewers to a swoon-worthy love triangle; The Originals dove into how stressful family drama can be when natural death is off the table; and Legacies taught us that a supernatural high school would actually be a ton to fun. Now Vampire Academy  on Peacock is here to question: how does blood sucking and immortality mesh with the collapse of society?

Why vampires? And during a time when teen dramas are routinely cast aside and cancelled, how has this one creator perfected this tricky formula? Decider spoke to series co-creators and longtime collaborators Julie Plec and Marguerite MacIntyre about all of this; as well as what makes Vampire Academy different.

Decider: How do you feel about Vampire Academy being on Peacock? It has an actual streaming home, as opposed to your other shows that have bounced from streaming platform to streaming platform.

Julie Plec: For me, it was fun to start my new deal at Universal and walk right next door over to Peacock and say “Hey, here’s this show I’ve always wanted to do.” Susan Rovner had just taken over as the boss over there, who of course used to be my boss at Warner Brothers Television and actually was the head of drama when we made The Vampire Diaries over there, so it felt like a really great karmic reunion. Also, producing a show for streaming, you have all the freedom in the world. You don’t have commercials. You don’t have broadcast standards. You can swear. You can cut to a glimpse of a naked butt every now and then. There’s a lot to offer.

Marguerite MacIntyre: We’ve talked about this too, in the past. There’s that terrible thing that happens in broadcast where you write something wonderful, you shoot something wonderful, and then you’ve got to get it done in 42 minutes. For me, I always get frustrated that you don’t have time to linger in those beautiful big romantic moments or those beautiful sad moments. You just don’t have that time, so it felt nice to be able to keep all the bits we wanted to keep, keep that story moving but keep those moments that are delicious that I, as a fan, want to delight in. That felt really kind of awesome for me.

Decider: Absolutely. What was it about Vampire Academy that seemed like a really good option for adaptation?

JP: It’s a book that both of us had read back when they started coming out, which is I think back in 2008 [Editor’s note: The first book was published in 2007]. Marguerite and I knew each other from a show called Kyle XY that we were both working on, and Vampire Diaries didn’t exist yet. We were just having a nice beach read and fell in love with these books, which was this really wonderful story about friendship and romance and society doing its thing and treating people poorly and people rising above… It just felt like Vampire Academy is a great story that deserves telling. It’s something that had been in my mind for almost 15 years. When I got the opportunity to take a stab at it, Marguerite was the first person I called.

MM: What, are you gonna say no to Julia Plec? You’re an idiot. Of course, I was like, “Yeah let’s do this. This is wonderful.”

And the other thing I’ve been thinking about, Julie, is, in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, certainly, there’s always friendship as such a big theme and brothers… This is female friendship that’s female-centric. The revolutionary power of a female friendship in all of our lives is so big. What is that like against that canvas of a genuine society that’s fraying? To me, that felt really fresh and fun. Also, because we’ve been friends forever, that’s a fun thing for us to dive into.

Decider: That is such a good point about female friendship. You’re both kind of the queens of vampire romance on TV. What is it about supernatural and romance that makes this pairing so delicious? Why do you think we’re so drawn to these stories?

JP: It’s funny because I certainly never set out to grab a strong foothold in the vampire oeuvre. But I think what vampires represent to me is this inherent sense of loneliness. All of the sensuous side of it, all of the primal side of it, [there is] a side that is just the idea of if you’re going to live in an immortal life. What is that worth if you walk this earth alone? I really have always looked at vampires as an allegory for love — finding love, finding your family, finding your core, your squad, your other half, your one true pairing, whatever you want to call it. This is a well that I keep dipping into because it speaks to me so deeply, and I know that working within a genre can allow you to tell those simple stories that TV doesn’t always let you tell: the coming-of-age story, the family drama, the simple romance. I kind of use vampires as my spoonful of sugar that can help the other medicine go down.

Decider: Yeah, because all of these shows become so much more than vampires. They’re never really about vampires.

MM: I always say to Julie, I’m writing in my second language because I don’t think of myself as a genre person. I love genre. I like watching genre, I think genre’s great, but I never thought of myself as somebody who was particularly a genre writer. But what it does is it gives you all this freedom. It allows you to tell a story in the metaphorical form, and it allows you to indulge in some stuff because you’re already in this slightly heightened style, so you can have these beautiful, simple, big romantic moments. Simple, but you allow yourself to go there a little more. It doesn’t feel as funny as if it was in an everyday setting in the real world.

Decider: What goes into creating a really good teen-focused show? How do you connect with these stories?

JP: The first step is to not approach it as if you’re writing for a generation outside your own inner self. I always say I have the emotional maturity of a 17-year old, and I just turned 50. I’m writing my own insecurities, my own longing, my own quest for family and friendship. I’m writing those moments in my head that maybe I always wanted to have or that I didn’t get to have when I was growing up. I mean, I still want to have [them]. There’s universality in longing and confusion and insecurity through your teenage years and all the way up until you’re old.

MM: That’s the secret: As you continue to get older and you go through different decades of your life, you’re like, “Wait a minute, we’re always coming of age.” We all have the same issues and problems we had when we were 15. They’re just refined, and they move in a different direction as we continue to get to know ourselves and know how we handle things and how we try to do better at our life and how we handle those things. But it’s all the same stuff, so I completely agree. I love that [Julie] said you just don’t approach it like you’re writing for someone who’s not like you, that maybe has less life experience than you. But we’re all sort of engaging those same issues: longing, love, belonging, standing up for each other, right and wrong, moving people — all of it It’s all the same stuff.

JP: Wanting to change the world and thinking that you can’t.

MM: All of it. So we’re all a lot closer than we think. That makes it a lot easier if you just don’t put a barrier between yourself and these characters. Or maybe Julie and I are both really just 17 in our hearts.

Decider: The shows have fanbases like yours, the commonality seems to be respect for the fans.

JP: Exactly. We’re all part of the same emotional-peer community, no matter what age. It’s just about writing with truth and making sure that you entertain along the way.

Decider: What are you most excited for people to see with Vampire Academy?

MM: I’m so deeply in love with and proud of the cast. I feel like when you meet these characters as embodied by these beautiful, really devoted actors who also have nothing but deep respect for the fans, they’re so excited, and they’re so respectful. They understand that they’re coming into a world where people have an idea in their head. Richelle Mead [the author of the Vampire Academy books] even said to us, “Look if I cast Dimitri, half of the fans would be like, ‘That’s not Dimitri’ because we all have this idea in our head.” I believe that they are so good and so wonderful and so ready to win us all over and make their inroads to all of us, make all those iconic characters live and breathe within them.

JP: Absolutely. And I would say, because this show looks and feels and plays like nothing I’ve ever done before — and I’ve done a lot of vampire shows. It doesn’t look and feel quite like any other vampire show I’ve ever seen. In this wonderful way, thanks to Richelle Mead’s material and then, of course, shooting in Spain and all the majesty attached to that. Let me give a little shout out to Shonda [Rhimes], for a little Bridgerton influence as well. But we created a show that I don’t think anyone’s ever seen before. I don’t think anyone will be like, “Well that’s derivative.” I think the people think it’s really odd how even though, yes I’m now on vampire show No. 4, it still feels new and fresh and like a whole new story.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

New episodes of Vampire Academy premiere on Peacock on Thursdays.