Vampire Academy Showrunner Julie Plec Talks Evolution Of Vampires and We Were Liars Adaptation
From the Vampire Diaries Universe to Vampire Academy, showrunner and writer Julie Plec is well-versed in the world of vampires. I sat down with her at New York Comic Con to discuss the evolution of the supernatural beings, adapting books to television, and her next project We Were Liars.
After creating television adaptations of best-selling books like The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, Roswell High by Melinda Metz, and now Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, it’s no surprise that Plec is a big reader. “I read so much as a kid. So much,” she shared with me. “I prefer to work with stories that I know I like, as opposed to trying to come up with stories that are just born completely out of my own head.”
Plec broke down the process of finding the right book to adaptation. “I like being able to say, ‘I can see this world, I can see the characters in this world.’ In the case of Vampire Diaries, that's all it was: characters in the world. That's what we used and then everything else was fresh,” she said. “Vampire Academy is such a unique and interesting world — and so well told — that I get to have the fun of building around it, which as a writer it's a fun challenge because we've got so much great stuff to work with. Then it's just about, ‘Oh, how do I make this for television?’”
She dove deeper what makes Vampire Academy such an exciting project to adapt within the world of vampires. “[Mead] borrowed from Romanian culture and she borrowed from old vampire lore, and then she made a lot of it up. That was fun because it was nothing like anything I'd done before especially the ability to have the Strigoi who are just evil,” Plec said. “There's no like, ‘Oh, they’re just misunderstood.’ No, they're feral. I loved being able to create actual monsters and have the kind of threat and villain that will come at you on a primal level. Not the feeling like, ‘Oh where's the redemption arc for this character?’”
But with so many stories about vampires, how do you keep the material and lore fresh? “Vampires to me growing up were those like seductor, predatory creatures who always were luring in the young maiden. Then between Lestat and then Twilight and Vampire Diaries, it sort of evolved into the misunderstood brooding lonely boy, which of course I love,” she shared. “The further society moves along, the less alluring that sort of sensual predatory being is. It's kind of creepy through a lot of people's eyes and so what I loved about specifically Legacies was we got to blow the trope of the traditional vampire wide open. [We] have our feminist vampire in MG who didn't ever want to take advantage of a woman, uh, to his own virginity. It’s fun to reimagine the lore as society evolves and to be able to in this particular show to tell a story about classism felt really of the moment and right for for us to do that right now.”
When asked about what book she’s read recently that she sees getting the big screen treatment, she said to ask her in January. “The sad thing about being a busy TV writer is that you stop reading as much. I read now basically once a year on vacation and it’s heartbreaking, but I do. I take a pile of books, whether they’re an actual pile or a series of books on my Kindle and I set out to sit by the pool and read as much as I can. That’s January, so I’ll have to answer the question about what am I reading later.
She did, however, reveal a big book-related goal she has for the future. “One day I would like to write a young adult novel or a young adult series,” shared Plec. “That’s on my bucket list.”
Plec also opened up about getting the rights to adapt We Were Liars based on the book by E. Lockhart. “I cannot wait to bring that to the screen. That’s one of those books you don’t mess with!” she said. “Yet it needs more story in order to become a whole season of television. It needs more than what’s in there.”
The book series is comprised of We Were Liars and a prequel book Family of Liars that came out earlier this year. “What we’re going to do is keep the two stories separate, but we're going to use the first season — which is like the We Were Liars season — to really introduce and build out the aunts and the mom, Penny, Carrie, and Bess, those characters, so that they're fully realized women and fully realized characters in season one,” Plec revealed.. “That [way] when we go back and tell the story of their childhood in season two you really will be rooting for them and wanting to know more about them.”
Exploring a dark family mystery full of decaying privilege and unreliable narrators might seem like a departure from the supernatural stories we’re so used to from Plec, but she’s ready to take it head on. “It's having to tell those kind of stories I always want to tell, which is romance and family drama and friendship drama, [but] without being able to rely on the genre tricks. Like if this seems boring, drop a werewolf attack into it. If you want to up this conversation between two people have them do a magic spell. There's so many tricks that make writing easier when you're working in the genre space,” she said. “But that being said there is a mystery at the core of We Were Liars and that is sort of the substitute for a genre moment in that you're always going to feel that tension represented by the question of what happens and what is the solution to this mystery in that story. So it's not like I'm writing completely without a net. I still have some gimmicks in there that I can rely on, in a good way.”
Vampire Academy is currently streaming on Peacock, while We Were Liars is still in development.
