Read more of the interview over @ Entertainment Weekly.

Gillies nearly wasn’t cast in the role. After his audition, he was told producers were looking for an older Elijah. But then a couple weeks later, his manager got the call that they might go younger after all, and if they did, he could be their guy. According to Plec, she and Kevin Williamson always knew the character would have a substantial run on the show, but they also had an escape hatch in case it didn’t work out. They didn’t need to use it. “That’s a character that presumably exists to die, and yet every time we start talking about that, we get very upset,” Plec says. “We knew that we were gonna give the surprise that he wasn’t dead at the end of his first episode, but the more we like him, the more complicated we make the rule about how an Original can be killed for good.” Here, Gillies takes us inside the character, revealing how he drew inspiration from Kelsey Grammer and who he’d like to play his nemesis (Ian McShane!). For more on what’s to come when The Vampire Diaries returns for the second half of season 2, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday.

Are you still in the dark about Elijah’s true motivations?
I’ll be honest, I don’t know. They keep us in the dark as well from episode to episode. But you can’t really play a character unless you at least take a guess. I was like, look, I’m gonna make some decisions, and if I’m wrong down the road, then I’ll be wrong. But if I don’t start making decisions, then it’s just gonna be this gelatinous entity. It’s not gonna have any spirit. I’d rather be wrong but owning my incorrect direction.