Vampire Diaries blog: Annie Wersching shares tales, photos from set

Due to Caroline’s absence in last night’s episode, Candice Accola taking the week off from blogging for EW. But her fellow vampire Annie Wersching, who plays the delicious Lily Salvatore, was happy to step in and provide us with some behind-the-scenes insight. And she brought photos! See what Wersching had to say about “I’d Leave My Happy Home for You.”

I’ve been asked by EW.com to fill in for Candice Accola for her weekly TVD behind-the-scenes blog. Yikes! Big shoes to fill. Candice’s entries have been so clever, charming, witty and insightful! You can tell she has a wealth of TVD knowledge, as she should after 6 seasons. Although I’m a newbie, I was a good little binge-watcher in my Atlanta hotel room during filming and can proudly say I caught up from the very first episode all the way through Season 4 Ep 14. 80 episodes! Not too shabby. And maybe even a little embarrassing… :)

Still, I will never come close to the familiarity with the show that Candice has, so I will try to make up for it with my behind-the-scenes pictures. I’ve posted quite a few for episodes in the past on my twitter (@Wersching) and Instagram (@anniewersching). I always try to provide an interesting look at the “making of” for a scene without spoiling too much or ruining the magic… or getting fired, for that matter! Hopefully, I can do the same for you.

Lily wasn’t invited to the cheeseburgers and shakes party, so she had to settle for tea at the Mystic Grill. At least it came with a cute waiter. Tidbit: “Cute waiter” was played by Tyler, who is one of our stand-ins. It was strange to see him on set after this episode because I always felt like, “Ah, the one that got away.” I almost had him!

We block shot these two big Lily/Stefan scenes, which means we started with cameras on Paul and did both scenes all the way through in every shot size. Then we finally turn the cameras around and shoot from the other direction. With this way of shooting, the actor has to have their dialogue prepped and ready to go, and be prepared to jump from scene to scene, back and forth. But it saves time in terms of lighting. And time is everything!

I’ve loved learning all of the little tricks for how they film the cool vampire stuff. For instance: How do you film stabbing your son with a fork, you ask? Movie magic, of course! :)

This was actually the one and only time I wore the fake fangs. I was super excited, until I had to take them off. Turns out dental adhesive takes a really long time to fully go away…YUCK! Here’s something else: Have you ever seen a happy, smiling vampire?! Although it’s frightening in a different way, I felt it needed to be documented.

Guess what’s the best way to remove blood from your skin?! Yep, shaving cream! Who woulda thunk it?

About once an episode, TVD has a double-up day, which means there are two different crews shooting totally different scenes, a lot of times even from different episodes. So I had actually first been shooting scenes from Ep 21 this day. Then I popped over to rehearse all of these last scenes from 20. Then I went back to 21, finished those scenes, and finally came back, snapped my son’s neck, and tried to eat Elena. All in a day’s work.

We tried many, many takes to try to get the blood to fall just perfectly from my eye. I’m not sure it ever did exactly what they wanted. I think they might have ended up using VFX—a nice option to have!

Tidbit: The first time we rehearsed Elena running into the back door of Mystic Grill, I chased after her. When I opened the door, Nina was standing there, yelled, and scared the bejeezus out of me. She’s a rascal, that one.

Lily is clearly not only a danger to others now, but also to herself. Poor thing; she is just such a mess.

We started with the cameras facing Paul on that big emotional scene, and everyone kept saying “save it, save it” to me—meaning don’t go 100 percent with the emotion and tears until the camera is actually ON you. Makes sense. That’s usually the way most people approach a scene like that. But for me, if I fake it and do “less” for multiple takes, when it comes to actually needing to do it full out again, I kind of get used to the marking way and I find it harder to tap into the big guns again. I’m not sure if that makes sense—but my point is, I was crying like that for all of Paul’s takes. He must have thought I was nuts!

But my boys always have a plan, and for now they’ve locked me up. Hey, at least Mama Salvatore has them working together for a moment. Maybe someday we’ll be a happy family like this…

Until then… Mama is pissed.