I’ve been meaning to post this since it came out but forgot so here it is.
IAN IN ROLLING STONE
Category Archives: Interviews
IAN SOMERHALDER CONSIDERS HIMSELF AN ACTOR AND ACTIVIST
You might know Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore on CW’s hit, “Vampire Diaries” or as “Lost’s” first significant casualty, Boone Carlyle. However, you may not know that Somerhalder is also a passionate environmentalist. This past summer, the television star has been spreading himself thin, dividing his time between promoting “Vampire Diaries” as well as raising awareness in his home state of Louisiana following BP’s oil spill in the Gulf. After the spill occurred, he ventured down to an area on Grand Isle and was upset by what he found.
“To me and to the people that go down there, (it’s) one of the most beautiful places in the world. And I actually had to watch it destroyed. And it will be destroyed — forever. My great-grandchildren will not be able to enjoy the Gulf Coast of Louisiana the way I have.”
Along with being passionate about the environment, Somerhalder is also an animal rights advocate. Although the CW star is an activist, he doesn’t want that aspect of his personality to overshadow his acting abilities saying, “I think it’s a fine line. I don’t ever want anything to come in the way of me truthfully telling a story.”
IAN SOMERHALDER TALKS BROMANCE, ROMANCE & SEASON 2 OF ‘THE VAMPIRE DIARIES’
Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what ya gonna do when they come for you? The interviews with Bad Boy, Ian Somerhalder aka Damon Salvatore, keep pouring in. After-all, today marks the premiere of The Vampire Diaries Season 2. Kicking off with the most anticipated premiere episode The Return.
And, you can never have too many interviews with the ever so sexy, Ian. He’s engaging, his eyes are the best thing since sliced bread and right now he’s Compelling us to write this post. Don’t turn away or look into the light, just scroll down and read another Vamplicious interview by way of TV Squad.
It was quite a finale for Damon last season … we’ve never seen him like that!
[Laughs] Yeah, he is being humbled. It’s interesting, the ups and downs, art imitating life, which is kind of fun to watch, but there are a couple dynamics that are going to start to change. At the beginning of Season 1, Damon’s sort of this almighty, powerful, sadistic, kind of funny individual … and then he just gets leveled. [Laughs] Over and over and over again.
Well on one hand it was nice to see Damon vulnerable, because it proved he still has a hint of humanity, but on the other hand, he can’t stay like that for long, can he?
No, I hope not. You know, Season 2, you start to understand that there are certain elements that’ve come to town that sort of force Damon to shift his focus quite a bit and actually ask himself what’s important to him. I think throughout this first year, he’s forged these relationships. He initially came to town … like Damon said in the finale, “I came here wanting to destroy it, now I find myself wanting to protect it. How the hell has that happened?” And I think that it has happened. Any time you forge relationships with people and you have a vested interest in their safety and well-being, you essentially raise the stakes. You pretty much do anything to protect that. I think he’s found himself, for the first time in 150 years, actually caring about something.
But Damon and Stefan will still be bickering, right?
The end all be all is he loves his brother, and his brother loves him. No matter how many times they’ve literally had the opportunity to kill one another, they’re still walking around. There are obviously major differences, but I think Damon and Stefan are gonna have to set those aside and actually focus on what’s the give and the take of letting that age-old vendetta go away. They actually have to focus and protect what they love, which is gonna be interesting, by virtue of the fact that Katherine is back.
Oh Katherine … is it bad that I just love to hate her?
Katherine is just one of those individuals you don’t want to f*** with … excuse my language, that you don’t want to mess with. I thought Damon was badass and just wrong in so many ways. Katherine is a sadistic, selfish bitch, and she is gonna play them like a fiddle. And she crushes Damon … she does, she crushes him … over and over and over again. [Laughs] Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. At this point, it’s like 10 — shame on me! [Laughs] Shame on Damon! He feels like such an idiot. And when we feel that stupid, what do we do? We lash out like a petulant child, you know?
Which is what he does best! Drinking, dancing in the rafters …
[Laughs] Exactly.
How soon after last season’s finale do we pick up in the Season 2 premiere?
Minutes, seconds … we start off in the finale. Literally. Which is great because to be honest with you, even just being away from the show for a couple of months, I sort of lost my footing on what was going on. It’s really helpful starting where we left off, and even going back a moment, back into the season finale. What’s starting to happen this season as well is someone we know very well … there are other vampires around now that were very unlikely candidates, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s fun to see dynamics change and to watch someone sort of figure out being a vampire when they’re so new at it. I’ve been doing it for a year and a half, and Damon’s been doing it for 150 years like Stefan, so you start to understand what it’s really kind of about. To watch someone go through the process of that is a lot of fun actually. [Laughs]
Lots of hazing, I’m sure. Damon doesn’t seem like the best teacher though …
Aw, Damon’s a good teacher! He just might teach you what he wants to teach you. [Laughs] Whatever’s most beneficial for him.
‘VAMPIRE DIARIES’ CREW DROP SEASON TWO HINTS
Exec producers Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec offered few spoilers when moderator Marcos Siega rattled off a list of questions he had about The CW’s genre soap “The Vampire Diaries.”
Responses ranged from “I’m not going to say” to “possibly,” but to quell the crowd’s disappointment in the lack of new information from the gatekeepers, a never-before-seen teaser of the Season 2 premiere — which wrapped shooting the day before — was shown, ending the lighthearted panel on an anticipatory note.
The highlight was Katherine (or Elena) admitting to Damon: “The truth is, I never loved you.” Then you see an unhappy Damon violently throw down a glass. A natural reaction if you were caught in his situation, wouldn’t you think?
Some plot points did surface, including one that could prove problematic.
When Siega asked about the possibility of seeing Stefan speaking to Katherine but believing she was Elena, Williamson revealed that “Katherine and Stefan [do] come face to face [in the first episode back].” Speaking of Katherine, according to Williamson, there’s more to her backstory: “There’s another part of the story we haven’t shown you.”
Plec shared some info on Jeremy’s fate. “He’s either going to wake up alive or he’s going to wake up dead. But he is going to wake up,” she said. Read into that what you will.
Williamson also made mention that Stefan would be accepting his identity. “One of the things that Stefan will come to terms with is the fact that he’s a vampire, and that includes drinking blood,” he said.
And like “Twilight” and “True Blood,” “Diaries” has a werewolf element crucial to the series. Now that things are progressing for Tyler, whose family (the Lockwoods) has a curse he isn’t yet aware of, the first werewolf image may be seen sooner than you think.
“It’ll happen [some time] in the first order,” Williamson said.
Much of the session catered to the fans and also showcased the cast and crew’s good rapport. When Siega asked about Stefan being “stuck in the closet,” the panelists couldn’t take the question seriously. Wesley went along with it to the amusement of the crowd and finally said, “I’m going to come out of the closet.”
“[Kevin just] said, ‘Marcos, thanks for ruining the big twist,’ ” Somerhalder said, laughing.
Who was most unlike their character, who had the best hair (Paul Wesley) and who was the better kisser (“I guess I’m the lucky one, I get to make out with them both,” Dobrev answered diplomatically) only scratched the surface.
“Earlier today, I wrote on both their hands. Team Elena [on Wesley’s] and Team Katherine [on Somerhalder’s],” Dobrev said, holding up their wrists as proof.
A fun moment during the panel was when Somerhalder shared that he could wear the vampire fangs and speak normally.
“I can recite the Gettysburg address [while wearing] mine,” he declared.
The panelists urged him to prove his statement (and intelligence) and Somerhalder obliged, “Four score and seven years …,” proving he wasn’t just a pretty face.
‘THE VAMPIRE DIARIES’ IAN SOMERHALDER ON THE GULF OIL DISASTER: ‘LET’S LEARN FROM THIS ONE’
“I feel relieved,” he said. “I’ve felt physically sick about this for months now, literally, so even just a small amount of relief is a powerful feeling.”
He’s only cautiously hopeful, though, as he explains that there’s still a serious risk that the build-up of pressure under the oil cap will render it useless and cause another gush of oil into the ocean. Though initial tests have been successful, we won’t know whether the cap is a solution for quite a while.
Somerhalder is so dedicated to his personal B.P. boycott that when he ran out of gas on his way to the filming location that morning, he “cruised on fumes,” passing several B.P. stations, until he finally found a Chevron.
He notes that the cap may be holding at the moment, but this development raises a host of new questions.
“All right, it’s capped for now. There’s no oil coming out. What do we do?” he asks. “Well, first we have to make sure B.P. makes good not only on the promises they’ve made, but on the responsibility that they now have. And I hope the U.S. government doesn’t bow down like they did when the oil was leaking. I hope the government makes B.P. compensate.”
IAN SOMERHALDER HAPPY WITH ‘LOST’ FINALE
Ian Somerhalder has admitted that he was thrilled he could return to Lost for the series finale.
The actor, who played Boone, explained that he was proud to work with the rest of the cast.
“We were all there,” he told GQ. “And I was there with the entire cast of Lost. And I remember sitting and watching – all of our chairs were in a circle – just looking at all those names.”
He added: “It was the coolest human experience, man. All these actors, everybody, the core group of that show, everybody in that one place, one last time. That was amazing.”
Somerhalder also claimed that the show’s finale could never have satisfied all the fans.
“People keep telling me how disappointed they may have been, and you really can’t please everyone,” he said. “The show is what it is, it ended the way it ended, and I just applaud all of my friends for spending six years of their lives telling amazing stories.”
SOMERHALDER REVEALS NEW ‘DIARIES’ HOPES
Ian Somerhalder has revealed his hopes for the new season of The Vampire Diaries.
Speaking to GQ, the actor joked that he would like to explore the relationship between Katherine (Nina Dobrev) and his character Damon.
“Hopefully I’ll get to make out with Katherine a little more,” he said. “Paul [Wesley] will get to make out with Elena a little more, if that makes him feel a little better.”
However, Somerhalder admitted that he hasn’t been told what will happen to Damon yet.
“We’ve asked a million times but here’s the deal,” he explained. “We get the scripts two days, a day before we have to start shooting them. So it’s like Christmas. And generally what they write is really, really good, so we don’t hound them to find out what it is and what it’s really going to be about.”
He added: “There’s so many ways it can go, but we’re stoked to see what it’s going to be. It’s going to be fun.
“I just don’t want to be sensitive Damon anymore. I just want to get back to biting high school girls and stuff.”
IAN SOMERHALDER AS DAMON SALVATORE IN ‘THE VAMPIRE DIARIES’ – EXCLUSIVE Q&A!
Despite his fanged bad-boy dramatics and nonchalant disregard for human life as Damon Salvatore in the new TV show ‘THE VAMPIRE DIARIES’ – in reality – actor IAN SOMERHALDER is a heart-warming champion for animal rights and environmental issues.
Somerhalder wants: you to question how much mercury is in your sushi, an end to the slaughter of Calderon Dolphins in Denmark (specifically the Faroe Islands), some-one to invent a replacement for plastic so that marine wildlife cease mistaking it for food floating on the surface of oceans, a stop to primates being threatened by tropical forest destruction, you to be aware that 320,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity is wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage, a boycott of all BP petrol stations, and a resignation from the head of the American Environmental Protection Agency in light of the horrific aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling disaster.
The thirty-one-year old has devoted his Summer break from ‘The Vampire Diaries’ production, to rolling up his sleeves and going all-in to aid efforts to clean up the Gulf region. Even en route, stopping to visit a dog adoption drive in Atlanta – crestfallen that no-one had turned up – retooling his personal Twitter profile as an animal adoption agency. When Vampire Diaries-press duty diverted Somerhalder away from Grand Isle to New York, he declared that he was: “pretending everything is okay – everything is NOT okay. Oil everywhere! Anyone have a plan? BP? Feds? Nope! This is a joke and we as a country should be sick to our stomachs. Thank you Government for allowing huge industries to regulate themselves.”
60,000 barrels of oil are still leaking into the Gulf every day, and Somerhalder is devastated: “I’m so sorry that our insatiable thirst for oil has spawned the worst disaster ever in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the water which will hit the shores of and destroy my favourite place on the planet, the Gulf coast of Louisiana.” He summarised his anguish in the following: “We can send people to the moon, wage giant wars, and transplant human hearts, but we can’t stop a leaking oil well…”
…and when he’s not busy trying to save the world, he’s otherwise engaged interacting with his fans via Twitter, constantly thanking them for their support and adoring messages. “I sincerely thank you for them and smile to myself when [ I ] see them, so thanks for taking time out of your day to send a thought. I would be here 12 hours per day if I tried to answer them – who in the hell would play Damon Salvatore then???” But it seems like Somerhalder is a dab hand at multi-tasking, following up his rhetorical question with a promise “to make it a point to respond no less than once a day! Whether while having a coffee in the morning or hitting the sack at night.”
As if Somerhalder wasn’t already perfect enough, he likes to listen to Fleet Foxes, Neon Indian, Black Lips – and despite having formerly modelled for the likes of Calvin Klein, Dolce & Gabanna, Gucci, Versace, and Guess – Somerhalder is indeed a real boy. The son of a building contractor and massage therapist, his childhood was spent in small-town Covington in Louisiana: training horses, fishing, swimming, and boating. Despite a modelling career at age ten that flew him to New York each Summer, Somerhalder decided to focus more on school and sports by the time he reached Junior High.
Fast forwarding to the present, TV aficionados will recognise Somerhalder from thirty episodes as Boone Carlyle in ‘Lost’, as well as from small story-lines as Adam Knight in ‘Smallville’ and Hamilton Fleming in the ‘Dawson’s Creek’ spin-off show ‘Young Americans’.