The Tween-Targeted Vampire Program Showcase: Paul Wesley and Phoebe Tonkin
Events
Sitting in the press room at SLC’s Fan X, I hear rumblings of the different celebrities that they’ve had the pleasure of interviewing (and it has been a pleasure as most of the people at the event have been fantastic). A media member dressed as Storm from X Men talks to a boom operator about Brandon Routh (Superman Returns, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), while another group of folks chat about meeting the people who voiced Animaniacs, it’s a strange world. The cross-section of people that come to these cons are always the most interesting thing to see. You have everything from hopeless uber-geeks to the folks who didn’t who the fuck Iron Man was until Robert Downey Jr. donned the suit. And then, there’s the group that flooded the Paul Wesley/Phoebe Tonkin panel. High pitched, overly-excited teenage girls.
I’m leaning heavily on my wife’s knowledge on this one – Ms. Tonkin, who is super fucking Australian, plays Hayley Marshall in Vampire Diaries and its spinoff The Originals. Apparently, Marshall is a werewolf who hooked up with a hybrid (half vampire, half werewolf) and is now pregnant with a hybrid of her own. And then there’s Mr. Wesley, who is hot but, apparently, not as hot as his on screen brother, Ian Somerhalder. Wesley plays Stefan Salvatore (the nice brother) on Vampire Diaries.
You see, The CW has created a perfect equation to make money-printing hits. Take hot, relatively unknown actors, mash their sexy asses together, create scandalous storylines, and add in a bunch of fucking vampires. I don’t watch the shows, probably never will, but I do applaud them for knowing what they are good at and doing it over and over and over again.
Anyway, fast forward to the panel. They were both actually pretty great and a bit odd. Most of it was, as expected, Wesley smiling and girls screaming but then saying “Why isn’t Ian here?” The highlight of the panel was an interesting exchange during the Q&A portion. A young woman named Joey approached the mic and said, “Hi, my little sister is a big fan of the show … and since you guys seem kind of weird, what are some weird things you do offscreen.” Wesley responded, “Like what weird shit do we do at home?” After a beat, Wesley said, “You’re weird Phoebe, what do you do?” To which, Tonkin adorably shared that she eats Nutella from a huge jar between takes on set. Fair enough … but then it got strange.
“I like to Google unlikely animal friendships,” said Wesley, “videos that are like ‘the deer and the coyote are running together and they are friends.’”
Tonkin chimed in, saying, “I once walked in on Daniel [Gillies] doing that once, it was weird—the door was closed and everything.”
Wesley went on to talk about some female tiger who raised piglets or something … I basically stopped being able to follow. “Google it, it’s I don’t know,” Wesley said, “It’s really surprising, and interesting.” If you say so, man.