Supanova Guest On How 'Vampire Diaries' Spin-off Let Fans Down

6 November 2018 | 2:27 pm | Cyclone Wehner

Ahead of his appearance at the Brisbane leg of the Supanova Comic-Con & Gaming Expo this weekend, Cyclone chats with Daniel Gillies from The CW's cult show 'The Originals' about that devastating finale and fresh challenges.

*SPOILER ALERT*

A spin-off from The Vampire Diaries, The Originals has always been more like a modern-day Game Of Thrones with bloodsuckers than teen horror. In August, after five seasons, The CW's cult show ended with the year's most devastating finale – involving the deaths of two beloved immortals. And Daniel Gillies, who portrayed that "gentleman monster" Elijah Mikaelson, is still reeling himself.

The Originals follows the mythic Mikaelson vampire family – rulers of supernatural New Orleans. However, it pivots on the toxic co-dependency of the urbane, noble Elijah and his volatile younger half-brother, Niklaus, or "Klaus" (Joseph Morgan), a vampire/werewolf hybrid. Long egocentric, Klaus resolves that he must sacrifice himself to save his teen daughter Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) from dark magic – and Elijah, recognising that his sibling is redeemed, joins him in a suicide pact. But, while the writers heavily foreshadowed an afterlife for Elijah – dancing with his lost love, Hayley Marshall (Phoebe Tonkin), also, complicatedly, Klaus' old fling and Hope's mother – he and Klaus turned to dust on staking each other. The ambiguity unsettled those viewers anticipating sentimentality, if not a 'Happy Ever After'.

Today, Gillies is at home in Los Angeles, fulfilling media duties ahead of guest appearances at Supanova Comic-Con & Gaming Expo, together with Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries' Damon Salvatore). The unpretentious actor, married to Rachael Leigh Cook, chats from his kids' play room where he suspects their cat has peed.

Gillies was born to Kiwi parents in Canada, transplanting to New Zealand in childhood. He pursued acting in theatre and TV, eventually moving to the US. His Hollywood breakthrough was playing Kirsten Dunst's astronaut fiance in 2004's Spider-Man 2. Gillies had a minor role in True Blood before securing the part of the suited Elijah in The Vampire Diaries, Season 2 – his rendering so iconic that co-creators Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson changed their minds about disposing of him.

A gracious Gillies expects that, at Supanova, fans will probe him about Elijah's polarising death and the fact that he isn't depicted either reuniting with Hayley or 'at peace' with Klaus. Indeed, other characters are seen in a paranormal Elysian Fields. "I think fans could feel a little cheated in that they don't get to see what it might look like for Elijah and Klaus," Gillies admits. "I mean, certainly, the show teased, in a way, an afterlife that we might show – a glimpse. I thought we would see a glimpse of an afterlife of Elijah and Hayley. That's the one I get confronted with the most by fans: 'They promised us this dance.' And, 'They said, I'll see you on the other side for that dance or whatever.' I think that fans, being as ardent and as feverishly committed as they are, even just to give them those moments is such a salute to them. The fact that they didn't receive it, I think they felt there was a negligence on the part of the show. I'm not sure that I agree with them (laughs). But there's an indignance – 'How dare you tease us that you might show us something like that and not deliver it', you know?"

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter

Ironically, Gillies prophesied The Originals' endgame when in 2017 he spoke to The Music at Oz Comic-Con Melbourne: "The way for this to end poetically is the extinction of Klaus and Elijah. You can't have one and not the other… I think they should both die." Now, he questions the narrative logic of both Elijah and Klaus dying. "The anger that I hear directed towards the shape that the ending took is usually in the form of like, 'Why? Why did he make this decision to die with his brother? He really didn't need to.' There was a sense of hypocrisy in that, because he'd been telling Klaus to stick around, because he needed to be there for his daughter – and, if he could stay, he ought to. And Elijah just sort of elected to die. It didn't make any sense."

The perception in The Originals fandom is that Gillies has gone rogue on Plec as showrunner, speaking candidly in con panels. Yet, no provocateur, he's simply passionate about storytelling and committed to his work – hence that occasional exasperation. "No one was more confounded, bewildered, dumbfounded than I at that ending. I just didn't understand it. It made absolutely no sense to me. But, then again, it's not my desire. My job is just to deliver what's written. That was what was written and they didn't want to explain that to me – like why [Elijah] was doing that, because there was absolutely no motive whatsoever to do it. They made the decision to not explain it to me. So I just had to find a way to act it."

It transpires that Gillies himself has experience as a screenwriter and director, producing 2012's trans-continental drama Broken Kingdom. He also directed episodes of The Originals. Still, Gillies demurs when asked if he contemplated an alternative resolution for the program. "I don't know," he says. "I never really gave that too much thought. I mean, I think that those are the kinds of thoughts I don't allow myself because they're just painful, labyrinthine torture devices. Like, what's the best possible outcome of entertaining these thoughts? The best possible outcome is that you come up with a superb ending to the show which can never be. The worst possible outcome – which is most of your thoughts that are directed towards this – are gonna result in the same frustrations that our writers met with. It wasn't my job. That might sound like a cop-out, but I didn't have an ideal ending." As he talks, Gillies visualises that "promised" 'Haylijah' dance from a distance: "Imagine a vast, expansive black space and just seeing those two dancing together in formal attire and the light just comes up on them and goes away…" But, he stresses, scripting that would only generate further dilemmas. "I would absolutely not add that as some sort of saccharine epilogue to the show because, the moment you do that, you're then obligated to show what happens with Klaus. What does Klaus' existence look like after this one? Then it's like, 'OK, well, who else are we obligated to…' We had a lot of deaths! It just becomes messy and like housekeeping. I actually think they did the right thing by not showing us after death."

Ultimately, conceivably like the writers, Gillies believes in the power of viewers' imaginations. "Human beings are so strange and almost a little dishonest with themselves," he notes drolly. "They say they want the answers. But the truth is, when you supply us with questions, that's the stuff we love. We love the mysterious and we love the unanswered. We love the ambiguity. The scenes that you see [in The Originals] where the violence is suggested, but you don't actually see the violence, are so much more powerful than scenes with actual violence in them. Audiences can claim that they are outraged when they're not supplied with every solution and answer but, in truth, I think it's what they secretly desire! I actually think they don't want all the answers. I think there's something magnificently moving about the unknown… Again, as outraged as some of the fans of the show might claim to be about not knowing precisely what happened to Elijah and Niklaus, leaving them to their own fantasies is a far better decision to make."

Leaving behind The Originals' gothic gangsters, Gillies is seeking fresh challenges – signing on to Occupation: Rainfall, a sequel to Luke Sparke's Australian sci-fi film Occupation. Lately, he's been writing a TV pilot. "I'm actually almost finished with the third draft," he reveals. "It's a black comedy and it's set in NZ and Hollywood. I hope to start shopping [it] around soon. Because this year's been a little frantic, I've been doing it in bits and pieces, but hopefully it blooms to fruition sometime; hopefully somebody buys it. Who knows? Maybe it'll be met with resounding boos and people will think it's just a pile of shit. If that's the case, so be it. But it's interesting. It's dark and it's very, very funny."