If you watched The Vampire Diaries, you'd know all about doppelgängers. The creators, Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec gave us so many we started seeing double. In season five of TVD, we found out that the Petrova doppelgängers weren't the only mystical look-alikes; there were the Salvatore doppelgängers too, which meant that Elena and Stefan were like star-crossed lovers (to the dismay of team Delena). But, honestly, we'll never forget when we first learned that Elena was a doppelgänger way back in season one. We finally understood why the Salvatore brothers were so intrigued with a girl from Mystic Falls.
While it was probably hard for Elena to come to terms with the fact that she had a three-hundred-year-old vampire look alike, it was just as much of a struggle for Nina Dobrev to bring Elena and Katherine to the screen... at the same time. Out of all the things Dobrev did on the show (Dobrev actually misses being attacked), playing both doppelgängers was probably the hardest thing, considering she had to talk to a body double to film scenes in which Elena and Katherine appeared in the same frame. There were definitely some times when we could've lived without Katherine (and a couple without Elena, too), but playing the doppelgängers spiced up Dobrev's time on TVD.
The Origins of Katherine Pierce
Before Katherine Pierce stormed into Mystic Falls at the end of season one (and the doppelgänger hijinx ensued) and before Elena even found out about her, Damon was the big bad. When Williamson and Plec decided that, that's pretty much all they knew.
While fans tried to figure out what his motives were for causing Stefan's life misery and wreaking havoc on Elena and those closest to her, the creators and writers were essentially laughing at us. Because there wasn't anything to figure out. It wasn't a deep question. During Entertainment Weekly's Binge: The Vampire Diaries, Plec explained he just wanted to be bad, that's all.
But at the start of season two, they had a bit of a situation where the fans started to love Damon. They tried really hard to keep him bad, but eventually, they just brought in another villain to replace him. "Every time one of the villains turned nice, we brought in a new one," Williamson said. After Katherine's initial "bad" period, we had no idea that Katherine would be the kind of villain that would torture us with a series of cameos, like a piece of gum stuck to our shoe.
When Katherine made her grand entrance at the end of season one, no one saw it coming. Katherine kisses Damon (unbeknownst to him), Jenna invites her in, she tricks John and cuts off his fingers. It set a standard.
"That set the standard for Vampire Diaries," Plec said. "That finale set the standard of: We always have to fight to get to as close to this amazing awesome twist and cliffhanger ending as we possibly can. We can never let our audience down with a finale. We put so much pressure on ourselves for eight years to make sure that we never failed a finale. There were some that were better than others, but we took our finales seriously."
By the time they wrote that twist, they hadn't even planned for Dobrev to play Katherine as well. "It didn't occur to us originally that Nina should play Elena and Katherine," Plec explained. "In the books, they called it a striking resemblance. I remember Italia Ricci, who had tested for Elena early on, comes up to us at Comic-Con after the show gets picked up she's like, 'I am putting myself in front of you to say I would like to play Katherine Pierce.'"
They realized they'd used Dobrev's picture for that old snap of Katherine earlier in the season, so all of a sudden, Dobrev was billed as both characters and had to pull a few tricks to pull it off.
Playing The Hero And The Villain
Playing Elena and Katherine presented a lot of interesting challenges for Dobrev. While the doppelgängers are just that, doppelgängers, alike in looks in every way, they were complete opposites in personality. Katherine was an old vampire who was strong, manipulative, clever and knew what she wanted. Elena was no less strong and clever, but she was an innocent girl with a tight moral code.
Portraying them both, especially during the same scene, was tricky. Dobrev would have to turn off each character to play the next. "It was crazy schedule-wise shooting both of the roles, having to do Elena and Katherine, and shooting scenes with myself at times. It was a wild learning experience but really fun too because I got to play two wildly different characters," Dobrev said during EW's Binge.
Even though it was hard, Dobrev said she learned a lot from tapping into Katherine after playing the goody-two-shoes Elena since day one. "I was a self-proclaimed good girl when I got the show, and then slowly became more evil as I embodied Katherine. I learned a lot from her," Dobrev laughed.
Technically, though, it was a bit harder. Dobrev had to do Elena/Katherine scenes twice and often recited her double scripts to stand-ins. "I remember carrying around two separate scripts — one for each character — because I had to break down what Elena was going through in that episode and what her intentions were, and then having a separate script for what Katherine wanted out of every scene and circumstance," said Dobrev. "It was really challenging but really fun. And like Julie mentioned, exhausting at times."
It also had to be a bit of a pain constantly going back to the make-up chair between takes to get her hair curled or straightened for each character's distinct look. Looking back, though, playing Katherine let Dobrev explore more of her depth as an actress. We love Elena, but she's a bit bland compared to her vampire doppelgänger. Dobrev probably loves Elena and Katherine equally, though.