We love Vampire Diaries executive producer Julie Plec not only because she has the coolest job on the planet, but also because she’s a Twitter-loving superfan just like us. We caught up with the plucky producer to get deets on next week’s episode, “Plan B,” and ask a few fan questions. Because she’s super generous with her time, Julie also offered up even more info on all things Mystic Falls. Here are the juiciest bits from our convo!

First of all, in response to your tweet from the other day: No, if you ask Taylor Kinney to marry you, we won’t think you’re desperate. But HR might have a problem with it.
Julie: I know, right. I might get myself into trouble. It’s a tough job. But a girl’s got to do it — be surrounded by all these hot men.

So you are single for real?
Julie: Oh, yes. For real.

We bet you get tons of headshots from [ahem] hopefuls.
Julie: Oh, yes. But that [dating an actor] is just the one road you never want to walk down.

Well, let’s talk Vampire Diaries then. When did you all as producers start plotting that Katherine would have such a long convoluted game?
Julie: We kind of knew Katherine was our villain for the season. The challenge is how to use her appropriately — in moments here and there and not wear out her welcome. Because I think she’s such a juicy wonderful character that we just love it. But we don’t want to overuse her. So that’s been part of the fun, trying to figure out how to make her come and go.

When did you plot it out?
Julie: The minute we started this series. [laughs] Which was probably in Episode 1 of Season 1. That’s when we started thinking about what she’d be here for and how she’d play out.

What are Nina Dobrev’s days like when she’s playing both Elena and Katherine?
Julie: They are brutal. Truth be told. And Nina and her workload is one of the things that we always have to look out for. When she’s playing double duty in an episode that’s very Katherine and Elena heavy then she’s in every scene and it’s hard for her. She loves it. But it can take its toll. So we try to schedule it so that she can be Elena one day and Katherina another day just so that she gets to be in the same character headspace and not have to swap around. But sometimes the schedule doesn’t accommodate that and she’ll be Elena in the morning and Katherina after lunch.

What are the hours like?
Julie: Well, it’s the same schedule. It’s just sometimes, unfortunately, we shoot less because we need more time to change our actress over. Change her look over. Fortunately both characters comes to Nina very naturally. So she’s able to roll with the punches very well. She’s doing a phenomenal job.

True that. We’ve been plotting the differences between Katherine and Elena — her hair, walk, makeup, voice, etc. What will be a new difference that we will notice soon?
Julie: Let me think about that. [pause] Well, the fun of the next two episodes is actually seeing Katherine making more of an effort to embrace and adopt Elena’s wardrobe and hair and having some fun with that. She’s been studying Elena. And she’s very focused on trying to get her look right. In “Masquerade” [which airs October 28] we get to see Katherine trying to pass as Elena again.

So she’ll be walking in flats…
Julie: As Nina likes to say: Katherine’s a skinny jeans girl. So it’s jeans and boots versus Elena’s flared leg and chucks. But I think in the next episode the difference really shows when Katherine’s just kicking it as Katherine. She’s got the big luscious curls and her smoky-smoky eyes and black catsuits and her slinky walk and all the fun she gets to have with that. But then when we see Katherine as Elena, there’s also little things: an extra layer of hairpieces in there to fill out her hair a bit, a tiny bit of extra eyeliner. Subtle, smoky changes. And Katherine’s slightly more careful in her carriage when she’s pretending to be Elena. So there’s little differences. And then of course there’s the necklace. Katherine wears her lapis lazuli necklace and Elena wears the Vervain necklace that Stefan gave her.

How do you respond to people who say we’d love to see Elena and Damon together. Go Delena!?
Julie: [Laughs] We’ve got Elena and Stefan, which some people want to see together. We’ve got Elena and Damon that quite a lot of people want to see together. And we’ve got Stefan and Damon that people want their relationship to be strong and loving and not antagonistic. And the entire series lives and breathes under those three wants. So our job is to please everybody and nobody at the same time.

Are you going to reveal where Jeremy was for two weeks?
Julie: You know what? Those questions bum me out. [In order to] carry such a large ensemble not every actor can be in every episode. So when there’s an opportunity to take an actor out we just don’t have them in the story. They’re not “in detention.” They’re not “traveling” or “on vacation.” They’re just off living their lives. That’s true with all the characters except for Stefan, Damon, and Elena.

When you answered our fan questions you said Tyler’s going to make the change around Christmas. That means someone’s going to have to pass away. So who will it be? Anna? Sarah? We figure it has to be someone to whom we’re not too emotionally attached.
Julie: For that you’ll have to see.

Ah, you tease! Speaking of people passing away, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being they’ll for sure live, what is the likelihood of each of the following cast members surviving until the end of Season 2? Let’s start with—
Julie: [Laughs] Everybody gets a five! No one is ever safe. That is all I will ever say on the matter.

But you can’t give Alaric a five and Elena a five. Or Damon a five and Sarah a five.
Julie: Sure I can. On The Vampire Diaries anything can change at any given moment. So to rate somebody’s chance of survival would be premature and inaccurate. So we’ll just go right down the

Will Caroline go fully evil?
Julie: There’s always a danger of that happening with our vampire characters. As we saw with Stefan last season. Sometimes maybe their urges and their true nature will get the best of them. But right now we’re having a lot of fun exploring Caroline as a badass girl power hero.

Will Bonnie get a love interest who doesn’t get killed? Emphasis on the not dying part.
Julie: That’s an interesting question. Bonnie is going to find herself the object of someone’s affection. And it’s someone that we have already met. That’s all I’m going to say on that.

Last year it was almost all Damon. But this year it seems like you’ve been passing the snark around from Damon to Stefan, Katherine, and Caroline. Does snark come with the vampire gene?
Julie: Confidence comes with the vampire gene. And with confidence comes sass.

Last week Elena pointed out the nice thing that Damon did by not killing Sheriff Forbes. Are you all trying to soften him up to her again?
Julie: I think that’s the big thing about Damon’s character. He’s struggling so much with the part of him inside that feels like the hero. It’ s what he said to Katherine as we learned on the porch at the end of the season. He said I didn’t come here to be the hero and yet here I am and it doesn’t feel right but I can’t help it and here you are and you and you thought I was worth it. You think I’m worth saving. This whole season is about Damon reconciling all the things that he thought he was and all the ways in which he thought he had turned off that part of himself that could care. And how Elena specifically keeps finding her way into his heart and how that really messes with his mojo. So with Damon, every time he does something really nice, there’s a significant chance that he’s going to follow it up by doing something incredibly not nice because he doesn’t know what to make of this duality within him. And watching Damon struggle with that is a big part of what we’re going through this season.

How do you explain Damon’s endless plasma-bag blood supply, which comes from the Mystic falls Blood Bank. Mystic Falls is a small town how much blood could it have?
Julie: Mystic Falls has a drive-through blood bank window. He just pulls in and hands over the case. No I joke. We’ve talked on camera about Damon and Stefan having pilfered from the blood bank and we have some fun with Soccer Mom in the fridge and all that. But right now their supply is pretty good. They’re not going to be running low anytime soon.

Kick Ass star Chloe Moretz has said she basically wants to go toe-to toe with Ian Somerhalder’s Damon Salvatore. Do you see her in the show’s future?
Julie: Nothing would make me happier. I’m a big fan.

Do you have any special guest stars planned?
Julie: Not anyone right now. We’re working really hard to keep our ensemble with deep rich stories and to use them as often as we can. And that’s hard enough without having to rely on big name guest stars. But we’re always open to it. Everyone’s got their fantasy list. I know the girls are all wishing that [Inception star] Joseph Gordon-Levitt would drop into Mystic Falls. I think that would make them very happy.

What’s the drama of the “Masquerade” episode that’s scheduled to air Halloween week?
Julie: Basically, Katherine has taken her game up to such an extreme notch that she takes it to the town’s big masquerade ball where she creates chaos and our characters decide that it is time once and for all to rid themselves of The Katherine Problem. But, just for the record it’s not set in the timeline of Halloween. It’s just a masquerade ball. It’s Halloween episode only in that it’s airing around Halloween but it is not Halloween on our show.

Speaking of time, are we still in the same year on the show. It’s hard to tell. Has Elena moved up a class in school?
Julie: No. We like to make the joke that anybody who tries to keep track of the true timeline of the show is going to drive themselves slowly insane because if we actually did the math probably only 24 days would have passed over the entire season. We like to say we’re just moving forward. We leave that [keeping track of time] leave that to the people who like to drive themselves nut but we figure everybody else is just along for the ride.

Thank goodness we haven’t counted out the days yet. Because if we had, and we’d concluded that only a month has passed, then things would look way more tragic for poor Jeremy.
Julie: [laughs] I joke about the month. It’s more than that. But I will say we’re letting our stories unfold, deliberately not tying ourselves down to a seasonal timeline.

Backing up a little bit, why turn Caroline and not someone else?
Julie: We love Candice Accola [the actress who plays her] so much. We love the bubbliness and the fun, the zest and the sass that she brings to the show as an actress and we thought it would be really fun to explore that kind of persona in vampire form which I think has been successful for us. She brings a levity and a sweetness and feistiness to our vampire story line which I enjoy seeing. It’s an extra source of humor and an extra source of heart that is really helping us.

Caroline kicking Mason’s butt was one of the funniest fight scenes. He should have listened to her. She said she could take him.
Julie: Oh my God, I loved that too! Also, you know, we want the women on our show to be strong. We want them to be able to take care of themselves and the ones they love so that it’s not just the men slipping in and saving the day. And getting to see control freak Caroline really thrive as a personality after the vampire transformation has been really fun to write.

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