‘Vampire Academy’ Showrunner Julie Plec Swears She Isn’t Deliberately Trying to ‘Conquer the Vampire Market’ (Video)

At this point, Julie Plec is pretty synonymous with vampires on television. From “The Vampire Diaries,” to now showrunning Peacock’s “Vampire Academy,” she’s got a bit of a lock on this particular sub-genre of fantasy — but that was never the intent.

“I just, I really believe in working for a living. And I really believe in, you know, earning my keep and I really believe in and maximizing my own potential,” Plec told TheWrap earlier this year. “And so it turned out to be quite a lot of television, without me even really meaning to. I just wanted to, you know, I wanted to say ‘Hey, listen, I appreciate those of you who keep hiring me to do this job. And I really want to prove myself to you and to the audience again and again.’ So it’s a strange birth of an ambition. I didn’t set out to like sort of conquer the vampire market.”

Of course, that’s kind of what she’s done anyway. But with “Vampire Academy,” which is now streaming on Peacock, Plec actually enjoyed getting to tell a story more rooted in the human elements, rather than the supernatural monsters of it all.

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“I really appreciated that when we dove in, because what I like is being able to live in a world, as a storyteller, where there are both good and bad vampires,” she said. “So you can lean heavily into the mythos of the monstrous, id-driven, feral, blood-sucking demon, without having to come up with new and interesting ways to make them relatable, or to put them in a redemptive arc, which, you know, is what I did for the last last three shows and, you know, 13 years, so.”

She continued, “For me, being able to like let the Moroi exist as a species of their own — they don’t live with a lot of outward shame. They have all kinds of self loathing on the inside, which is why they’re so uppity, but they’re not ruled by any sense of not being proud to be who they are. They’re not living that sort of pain of having been ostracized and having to live in the shadows, they instead sort of celebrate who they are and and what they are. So yeah, it’s like, you don’t have to always be telling a vampire story. Because you’re telling a story about love and class and friendship and royal intrigue and all those things. And then, you know, occasionally like a fang pops out.”

That said, “Vampire Academy” is a bit trickier, considering it’s an adaptation of a beloved book series. Plec admitted that she tends to be disappointed in book adaptations, just for how much gets left out. Meanwhile, her co-showrunner Marguerite MacIntyre could go either way when it comes to books vs. their on-screen adaptations.

“I think if there’s an adaptation out of something, I’ll probably see the movie and then read it if I like what that is, or I’ll read about what the adaptation did,” MacIntyre explained. “But I just love comparing, I love to see what people do with stories I’ve always been kind of fascinated with. I mean, all those Jane Austen books have been done a billion times, a billion ways, [and] are fascinating. I like to see how people shake it up and make you think about the core story again and again.”

You can watch TheWrap’s full interview with Plec and MacIntyre in the video above.

Vampire Academy is now streaming on Peacock. New episodes premiere on Thursdays.