Interview Canada.com

Patriots You’ll Soon love: TV

Nina Dobrev

Oh, right, you’re thinking to yourself. Teenage mothers are so . . . 2007.

This is 2009, the year of the cult vampire.

If you’re one of the handful of TV viewers whose obsessions run to Degrassi: The Next Generation, you know Nina Dobrev as unapologetic party girl and teenage mom Mia Jones – the transfer student from Lakehurst who dropped out of school to become a model, only to return to her old haunts, and habits.

The Bulgaria-born, Toronto-raised Dobrev was a regular in Degrassi since that program’s sixth season.

Now, she’s about to be thrust into the bright, hot spotlight of U.S. network television in The Vampire Diaries, based on the popular series of young-adult novels by L.J. Smith.

Dobrev will play high school senior Elena Gilbert, the tragic heroine who is torn between two vampire brothers – one good, one evil, in the grand tradition of Gothic thrillers.

Dobrev is not just following in the shoes of Shenae Grimes, another Toronto Degrassi alum who seized the spotlight in 90210, the Beverly Hills 90210 spinoff which returns for a second season this fall.

Dobrev is also following the blood-trailed paths of such ingenues as Twilight’s Kristen Stewart, True Blood’s Anna Paquin and, in an earlier day, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Whether The Vampire Diaries will live semi-forever like Dark Shadows or Forever Knight or burn out in a flash like Kindred: The Embraced is hard to tell.

The early signs lean suggest longevity, though: The Vampire Diaries is being produced by Kevin Williamson, the creator of Dawson’s Creek – the series that made Vancouver’s Joshua Jackson a star – and Williamson’s fellow writer- producers include many of the writers and directors from Gossip Girl and Dexter.

Dobrev is poised for stardom, either way. At age 20, she’s about to be the focus of a pop-culture publicity campaign the likes of which haven’t been seen since, well, Twilight.

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