In The Vampire Diaries‘ season 4 finale, Elena Gilbert finally came face-to-face with Katherine, a.k.a. her doppelganger, a.k.a. the woman she’s been waiting to throw down with since, like, forever. And thanks to the fact that Katherine killed Elena’s brother in the middle of season 4, Elena’s desire to get rid of Katherine was at an all-time high. Needless to say, by finale time, Elena wanted revenge.
However, it was the older vamp who started the fight, claiming that Elena was to blame for stealing her happiness. From there, things only escalated, even to the point where Katherine literally had Elena’s heart in her hand. Luckily, Elena had the cure for vampirism in her pocket and was able to shove it down Katherine’s throat before her heart was removed from her chest. The score might have ended Elena: 1, Katherine: 0, but the real winner was actress Nina Dobrev, who had somehow perfected the art of fighting herself.
So how did Dobrev do it? We spoke with stunt coordinator John Copeman and Dobrev separately to find out.
JOHN COPEMAN: The first thing I did was read the script and really block the fight, try to make some character beats. You don’t want to make it all big punches, big throws. At least if there’s a good line, accent that with a throw or a punch so it feels more character driven than just, “Hey let’s do a neat stunt.” And then I thought about what Nina can do, because Nina is stupidly flexible. So knowing that she could kick really high, we thought we would have Katherine, who’s wearing like spike boots, throw a side kick into her throat after she throws Elena against the lockers, pin her there, and then she’s delivering a line. And then Elena delivers a line back and kind of trips her, runs over and rips the locker off. So we were thinking about, “What can Nina do?”
NINA DOBREV: I like to push the envelope. They don’t like to let me do much at all. If it was up to them, they wouldn’t let me do any of it. If I was a stunt performer on our show, I would probably be a little frustrated because their whole job is to come to set and get to do the big cool crazy fun stuff, and I’ll usually ask John if I can do something. If they say no, I’ll kind of do it anyway, and then apologize later and be like, “Oops I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do that!” [Laughs] It’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. They didn’t let me hit the glass, I know that for sure. But I definitely hit the locker. I try to do as much as I can if they let me.