Colin Ferguson, Emily Chang, and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe are three of the main new cast members who will be introduced on The Vampire Diaries season 6, which is set to premiere on Thursday night.
Ferguson, who is best known for playing Sheriff Jack Carter on Eureka, will be Tripp, a father figure to Matt.
“He came about because we wanted to show Matt thriving in Mystic Falls, without supernaturals,”executive producer Caroline Dries told Access Hollywood.
“Every episode Matt is having his life in jeopardy or somebody’s threatening to kill him, or something, so it’s like, what’s Matt’s life like when he can just not have to have a death threat every five minutes, and we kind of wanted to give him like a father figure type, like coach kind of guy and so that’s where Tripp came out of. But, you know, it’s Mystic Falls/‘Vampire Diaries.’ Not everyone is who they say they want to be.”
Chang, who has recently appeared on Days of Our Lives, How I Met Your Mother, and Community, plays Ivy, a new love interest for Stefan Salvatore.
“Ivy’s a potential love interest, and she kind of opens the door into this world of Stefan’s that we’ve never seen before,” Dries said.
“We start to understand [Stefan’s] process as a vampire … of starting over and living a different identity, because we’ve only seen him as Stefan Salvatore, high school student-turned-Elena’s boyfriend,” she added to The Hollywood Reporter.
And O'Keefe, perhaps best known for playing Gretchen Morgan on Prison Break, plays Jo, a love interest for Alaric.
“One of the problems he’s going to be having is just how to like, go on a normal date and like be a normal guy again,” Dries said of Matthew Davis’ character who recently returned from the other side. “And she’s kind of gonna bring that side out of him. ... That’s what his struggle’s gonna be.”
Dries has added recently that the love stories--Damon and Elena, Stefan and Caroline, and others--will be kept alive.
“I can tease that we definitely keep the love stories alive,” she told HitFix.
“We might not play it out in a tradition way, but they will feel very satisfying. You‘ll have your moments of frustration where the fans hate us and then we’ll have moments where they’re freaking out and being thankful, so there’s kinda like that push-and-pull that we do, but I think it’s done in a way that feels fresh for a show that’s in Season 6 and has had the same characters and this love triangle for a long time.”
And she revealed a bit about the new bad guy.
“He is just like a crazy person and he’s super-fun to write and the actor’s name is Chris Wood,” Dries said.
“He’s very charismatic and charming and psychotic and likable and unlikable in all the right ways, you get to meet him in a few episodes and he’s gonna stick around for a while, hopefully.”
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