since all this grahamwood supporting bonkai is back on our dashes, can i say how ridiculous i think it is that kat and chris couldn’t talk about their characters or their ship at length for fear of getting in trouble or retribution? like. they didn’t write the show or have any influence over what happened to their characters, but the fact that they couldn’t even entertain the possibility even in a hypothetical sense? what kind of workplace environment bullshit is that?
i remember all of this happening in realtime, and how we watched as there seemed to be a clear ban put on these two, specifically, talking about bonkai. like, the beginning of the convention season they were gungho and giddy having panels together and then towards the end they spoke less and less freely, but in a way where it was like tptb had gagged them. longwinded answers became “you know why”. and then once kai was off the show, chris still did tvd cons but never shared any more panels with kat. like, nate had panels with kat years after they snuffed kennett…
clearly, i’m still bitter, but i feel like that instance is indicative of the kind of show plec was running and i would’ve hated to have a boss like her.
It took years for Ian and Paul to be able to talk candidly about the show and that’s only after it became clear that they couldnt be fired, so yeah…Chris, the new guy and Kat, the black girl, were never really going to be given such luxury. Chris might have if his character was romantically linked to anyone other than Bonnie (note Nate’s character being paired with Davina opening s whole lot more opportunities for him), but he wasn’t and even when he was off the show Plec was still his boss so he still couldn’t really talk since she was who provided him with the most regular work he had at this point (Carrie Diaries, TVD, Containment).
Plec made it very known just how little power their actors had, almost reveled in it. It was so bad that Ian of all people, because we know how much that show was up his and Damon’s ass, had to bribe Plec at a dinner to get scenes with Kat. I know I keep asking this question but how does she still have a job? She’s not good at, clearly unprofessional, and is literally the worst person to work with, no one’s dying to work with her again.
Good god all of this. If there’s any justice in the world, some day grahamwood will act opposite each other again and give us back what Julie stole. We’ll all be vindicated
i think that’s the bee on my bonnet. on most (american) shows that go on for longer than two, three seasons, we generally see principal actors move to add producer credits or writer credits. yeah, paul and ian both got to direct a few times, but plec kept them all on such short leashes. like. as long as they’d all been on the show (since the mains did have those 6 season contracts), how diminishing must it been to feel like you couldn’t grow creatively? they filmed 9 months out of the year, so focusing on other projects wasn’t the easiest of distractions and then they filmed in atlanta, so they were far removed from los angeles where they could more readily find extra work.
the fact that so many of the main cast did stay after 6 seasons is very surprising to me. yeah, nina and steven (and michael) all left, and it’s debatable if they found better creative work, but they definitely got more personal freedom it seems like. from my perspective, i think kat, paul, and ian carried a lot more of the emotional weight of the series (until paul went on autopilot), so i’m wondering what kept them because i just can’t imagine a paycheck being that big to keep putting up with that level of ineptitude. (and i’ve seen the arguments that being a black actress in hollywood is harder and the work is more scarce, which i 1000% agree with…but the s6-s7 gap was when black-ish and empire and a number of diverse projects were getting a lot of groundswell, so i really think it’s a little bit more nuanced than “a steady paycheck”.)
POC of TVD 