Nina Dobrev is getting real about her battle for equal pay on “The Vampire Diaries.”
In the new book “I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries,” the actress, 36, revealed she was paid less than her male costars on the hit CW show.
Dobrev, who played both the show’s lead character Elena Gilbert and Elena’s doppelganger Katherine, alleged in the book that she and her fellow actresses Candice King and Kat Graham “were the three lowest-paid series regulars” during the first two seasons, which aired from 2009 to 2011.
“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,” she said. “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.”
According to the book, Dobrev, who starred on the teen drama series alongside Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder, “was successful in getting more money” but “never achieved parity” with her male costars.
“They just said out of principle they wouldn’t bump me up to being equal to the boys, and so that was probably the most hurtful because it felt like I was really working hard and we shot eighteen-hour days sometimes, and nights, and I was putting my absolute heart and soul, blood, sweat, and tears into it,” she said.
Dobrev continued, “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.”
The book also revealed that the writers on “The Vampire Diaries” were told they couldn’t use Katherine anymore because the studio had to pay Dobrev whenever she played her.
“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,” cocreator Julie Plec said, going on to add, “I literally think we had to say, ‘We’ll kill Katherine,’ in order to get permission to use her.”
Dobrev ultimately left “The Vampire Diaries” at the end of the sixth season. The show continued on without her, starring Wesley and Somerhalder, though she came back in the final season.
According to the book, Dobrev “stood her ground” and pushed to be paid the same as Wesley and Somerhalder while negotiating her return for Season 8.
“It was just really important to me that at the end of the show, as a woman, I wanted to make sure that I was compensated and that I was an equal to my male counterparts on the show, and so it came down to that,” she said. “Their opening offer for me to come back in the series finale was five times less than what I made when I left in Season 6. That’s the only reason why at one point I almost didn’t come back. I needed to be paid parity to the boys.”
Though Dobrev did return for the series finale, the writers had hoped to have her in more episodes throughout the final season.
“The reason we couldn’t have her for more than the one episode is because they just wouldn’t pay,” Plec said. “It took a lot of work before they finally relented, but it came back that it was one episode only that they’d say yes for.”
Dobrev said it was “heartbreaking” that “the artistry had to suffer” because she couldn’t be in more episodes of Season 8. But she added, “I’m very happy that we were able to make it work and that I came back, because I wanted to be part of the final goodbye.”