Lot’s of talk of shirtlessness in Mandi Bierly’s EW interview with The Vampire Diaries costume designer, Jennifer Bryan. She talks about how the guys react to it, and answers some readers questions!
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s just get right to it. The shirtlessness: Is that something that’s usually in the script, or something you negotiate with the actors?
JENNIFER BRYAN: There’s a couple of ways that it has evolved. I would say almost all the time, the writers put it in. But they dole it out in small measures. If the story calls for it, that’s what happens. But I don’t think they had expected such a strong positive reaction, like, “More! More!”
Do the actors embrace it? What’s their reaction?
It’s middle-of-the-road. Paul [Wesley] and Ian [Somerhalder] take what they do really seriously, so we really try to not be gratuitous.
There was that one episode when Stefan was putting on his shirt as he walked into his bedroom. I’m not complaining, but I was like, he had to do that right then? He couldn’t have done that in the hallway on the way to his room, off-camera?
It gave him something to do. It’s almost like we used it as a connector because we needed him to work into another scene where his shirt was on. So we had to make the shirt exist. I’m puttin’ it on, and I’m walking into the room, so the next time you see him, it wouldn’t seem like a continuity mistake.
