Julie Plec Quotes

I remember, my freshman year of college, sitting in my TV room at the end of my dorm hallway with one other girl watching the premiere of 'Beverly Hills, 90210.' And then, a year later, walking into a room packed with college students watching '90210,' and I thought, 'I wonder what it must be like to be part of a phenomenon like that.'

- Julie Plec

Speaking only for myself, the ideal finale to me is 'Friday Night Lights,' where you have loved and worshipped a show for all these years, you get to come back, celebrate the characters, finish up their journeys, and send everyone out with a feeling of, 'My God, I'm so grateful that I got to know these people.'

- Julie Plec

Fans are always talking about endgame as though endgame has been chosen from minute 1. I don't know that you could talk to a single series creator that would say confidently 'Where I started is where I finished, and there was no way in hell I was going to stray from that path.' 'Dawson's' being the perfect example.

- Julie Plec

I remember just weeping my way through the 'Friday Night Lights' finale with my best friend and just being so happy all the way through because it was so beautiful.

- Julie Plec

I wanted people to talk about the finale of 'The Vampire Diaries' as one of their favorites, which is a lofty ambition, but it certainly drove me hard creatively to make sure that we had put as much thought and love into it as we possibly could.

- Julie Plec

I realized that I get pleasure when I'm told, 'Don't listen to the haters; they're losers in their moms' basements.' I imagine these 'losers' and feel better about myself. Their insults hurt less if I label them 'pathetic.' I diminish their value in order to protect mine. I noticed that I'm quick to make a joke at someone else's expense.

- Julie Plec

Happiness is not necessarily a drama magnet.

- Julie Plec

I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.

- Julie Plec

Cynicism doesn't have its way in series finales. My emotional desire when I watch a series come to an end is to be crying and laughing and cheering as the final credits roll, feeling like I just got delivered the happy ending, whether the plot ends happily or not.

- Julie Plec

To me, TV relationships work at their best when there is a deep longing and feelings and interest and sexual attraction that is unrequitable.

- Julie Plec

As you live your life and accumulate friends, both IRL and on social media, ask yourself, are you a bully too?

- Julie Plec

I think that when you're exploring themes of humanity and what defines a hero and what makes us our best self and what makes us our worst self, you're going to stumble into territories of societal issues and that kind of thing. Sometimes you have accidents where you're not trying, but then the opportunity just presents itself. and you lean into it.

- Julie Plec

I didn't get paid to write professionally until my first episode of 'Kyle XY,' which was the fourth episode of the first season.

- Julie Plec

Because I was such a student of pop culture growing up, I love that on the list of things that I got to work on in my first years out of college were 'Scream' and 'Dawson's Creek' and, ultimately now, 'The Vampire Diaries,' which generations below me grew up on and can quote. I love that. I think that is the coolest thing in the world.

- Julie Plec

If the day-to-day culture is saying it's OK to not be inclusive or tolerant, that it's OK to be bigoted, then it's your responsibility to double down and make it OK in storytelling to be inclusive and tolerant.

- Julie Plec

I love real women that don't have to be saints, who can be selfish and act out against their parents or like the wrong guy, because that's life. That's my life, at least.

- Julie Plec

There is no definitive end to anybody's story when you're dealing with the fluidity of chemistry, because when it gets stale, you want out.

- Julie Plec

Daily, I visualize the smart-ass troll who lives deep in my subconscious, and I pelt him with rainbows and unicorns. I fight a battle against my judgmental thoughts. And when an opportunity arises to gain acceptance or popularity at the expense of someone else, I zip it. It's not easy.

- Julie Plec

When you're the showrunner, you're the person that's in control of most of the details, and to be able to take all that and then to step right behind the camera and to have a direct line of communication with the crew and with the actors - to not be delivering that through another person - is pretty freeing and extremely stimulating.

- Julie Plec

I look at 'Friday Night Lights' as one of my all-time favorite series finales, and that is what you want. After all the roads you've traveled with these people, you just want to know that they're going to be happy. I'm a big believer in shows that make that choice.

- Julie Plec

God bless Hollywood and all that it stands for, but, you know, people tend to peak in their 40s, and then it's all downhill from there.

- Julie Plec

I'm not a morning person, and yet production is a morning person's game.

- Julie Plec

We have a rule: if you're killing off a series regular, you have to tell them first. If you're killing off a person temporarily, you have to warn them before the script comes out.

- Julie Plec

I wanted to work in Hollywood. I was captivated by it. I read 'Premiere Magazine' and 'Movieline Magazine' and 'Us' before it was a weekly magazine.

- Julie Plec

I learned more about who I am and how to be a great worker - and a great artistic worker - from doing student theater. I was a stage manager. I was an assistant stage manager. I was on the running crew. I did probably 25 shows at Northwestern - all musicals, of course.

- Julie Plec

When you're telling taut, tight storytelling that has any kind of built-in plot twist elements, you tend to want to stack everything up on top of itself as opposed to letting things breathe and be languid in terms of the passage of time.

- Julie Plec

The problem with ratings is that you can give yourself a million reasons why they are what they are.

- Julie Plec

We all have our own party fantasy that we've either lived or wanted to live in New Orleans.

- Julie Plec

I call it 'The Breakfast Club' philosophy. There's something about being trapped in a dire situation with a group of people that you would never normally be trapped with.

- Julie Plec

When you're dealing with long-distance relationships, it's a relationship played out over technology. When you're in high school, it's because you're not supposed to act on those impulses yet. So some of my favorite relationships in drama are based in people that can't really be together.

- Julie Plec

You're supposed to be writing from experience - experience with people, with reading, seeing some homeless guy on the street and making up some story of him in your head. If you never see any of that or have those conversations or even sleep enough to have vivid dreams, then what are you writing about?

- Julie Plec

I've learned that I've just barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the profession, and I have deep envy of and appreciation for filmmakers who really, truly understand the physics, the design of filmmaking. They can do story and color and composition and geometry and math and science all at once.

- Julie Plec

I thought, 'Oh, I'll be an independent producer. Oh, I'll be a manager.' I was going through all those things in my head, and one night, late at night, I was having what I would now describe as probably a panic attack because there were so many unknowns. An almost literal voice came into my head telling me, 'You need to write.'

- Julie Plec

I think the model of The CW Network is really built on the fan platform more than anything else. The success or longevity of a series has less to do with the number it's pulling and more to do with the social footprint... There is a lot about the fan support on a strictly business level that's really powerful for that network.

- Julie Plec

I've always been a super-fan of television storytelling. It took me a while to figure that out in a career capacity, but certainly in a life capacity, I've been an avid viewer of television for decades.

- Julie Plec

Actors have their own processes, and if you want to be respectful of their process, you've got to communicate with them in the language of their process, and keeping that all straight is a little bit of a head-scratcher.

- Julie Plec

The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.

- Julie Plec

When you have an ensemble where characters pair off so easily, it becomes extremely isolating in the story world. You can end up with two actors who have not seen each other face to face all season long.

- Julie Plec

Hollywood, Twitter, our friends - they all contribute to a community of snark. The more we engage in the way that everyone else engages, the more followers, likes, and RTs we get. But we can't rail against the cyberbullies without acknowledging what we also contribute to a culture of cruelty.

- Julie Plec

There's a lot of storylines over the years where you feel like it's maybe meant to be more important than it ends up being, and that's because we jump ship, and you gracefully extricate yourself from that as well as you can.

- Julie Plec

I grew up as an avid reader. I would go to the library and check out 40 books a week. Some of them were smarty books; most of them were 'Sweet Valley High' and young teen romance.

- Julie Plec

If I walk into the editing room, it's six hours lost. I'm massaging frames. I'm, like, 'Oh, take six frames off that shot. Hit the music cue right there.' I will drive everybody crazy if left to my own devices in that room. So I try to do everything I can by staying out of the way.

- Julie Plec

In junior high, when we got our first VCR, I used to tape four soaps a day. I was a diehard 'General Hospital' fan from when I was nine to 25.

- Julie Plec

Every night, I will write until I'm done. Until my eyes are burning and tearing, and I can't see the computer screen anymore, till I finish the script, till I get to the point where I'm happy stopping, till I get everything off my plate, because I hate going to bed with a full plate. It makes me very neurotic.

- Julie Plec

As a fan, I hated most of 'The Day After Tomorrow' movie except for the part where Emmy Rossum and Jake Gyllenhaal were stuck in the library, and I thought, 'Oh, I like this now.' There's something about bringing people together in odd circumstances and exploring the petri dish of what happens.

- Julie Plec

The intensity of the story breaking on 'Vampire' has never been easy. Every week, you're starting with a blank board and trying to make a new movie. There's no formula; there's no franchise to hang your hat on.

- Julie Plec

The funny thing about the entertainment business is that we all feel like kids playing in a candy store, but we are entrusted with millions and millions and millions of dollars and an entire industry that can thrive or die on whether or not we do our jobs well or not.

- Julie Plec

'Originals' is a show that is not about struggling as a vampire but reveling in it. It's about embracing vampirism.

- Julie Plec

A long-running show leaves behind a legacy of storytellers and their relationship with the audience.

- Julie Plec

I always talk about Meredith and Derrick from 'Grey's Anatomy,' and I loved them the most when they sort of opened and closed each episode with them in bed, happy with each other, and you didn't need to insert extra conflict into them, because there was plenty of conflict in the show. So they were this port in the storm of conflict.

- Julie Plec

I used to sneak 'General Hospital' when I was a kid. My cousin was my babysitter, and she watched it, so I got hooked on it. I wasn't supposed to be watching it, but I was so obsessed with it that I'd find ways, even as an 8-year-old, to get into that.

- Julie Plec

It was a high-class problem burden, but it was still a burden on 'The Vampire Diaries,' in which we had this group of characters that we loved writing for so much and who had so much available story to tell.

- Julie Plec

'The Vampire Diaries' is a serialized drama. It deserved its final chapter.

- Julie Plec

I think, make it as beautiful as you can, and then rip it away. That's my sadistic thought as a storyteller.

- Julie Plec

'The Reckoning' is one of my proudest hours. I love that episode so much.

- Julie Plec

What's funny is, I was always certain that I couldn't be a director because there are things about the physics of camera and lighting that I fundamentally cannot wrap my head around.

- Julie Plec

I would never say no to continuing to explore the - somebody coined the phrase for me the other day, which I love - 'TVDU,' 'The 'Vampire Diaries' Universe.' I have no desire to exploit it, but I also know that there are plenty of opportunities for stories left to be told.

- Julie Plec

When you have to spread heroism across too many players, you don't get to really dig deep into each of them as much as you'd want to.

- Julie Plec

Write something good that the people like.

- Julie Plec

I feel like Caroline Forbes is such a crucial element... on 'The Vampire Diaries.'

- Julie Plec

An actor's only perception is of their character, and they're looking at one piece. A writer is looking at the entire story. They're going to see things that the writer didn't see because they're only looking through their lens.

- Julie Plec

There's something about a supernatural universe that you would think would actually make it easier to create tension and build conflict and have big scares and big ideas and big sequences. And that's true in a lot of ways. You can pick the best idea out of a hat.

- Julie Plec

I've always loved the genre of virus movies or Armageddon movies - anything that involves being trapped with the cute boy in detention when the zombies are attacking.

- Julie Plec

I don't like villains who are just villains. People who are just there to be bad - ugh - so annoying.

- Julie Plec

Kevin Williamson and I wrote a show about loss and grief that just so happened to have vampires in it.

- Julie Plec

'Ghost World' was such an incredibly difficult episode to find the right tone for. I remember at the time it was very divisive because some people hated it - they thought it was cheesy and hokey - and I loved it. When I saw it, I cried my head off, and I was so happy.

- Julie Plec

The supernatural world, the sci-fi world - they give you scenarios that can truly be life or death.

- Julie Plec

The vampire is the new James Dean.

- Julie Plec

The people I worked for before I was doing 'Vampire Diaries' were very generous to me.

- Julie Plec

If people love 'TVD' in 20 years the way they still love 'Buffy' today - on its 20th anniversary - I will be happy.

- Julie Plec

The whole reason I like these virus movies is because I read 'The Stand' when I was in junior high and thought it was the greatest book I'd ever read.

- Julie Plec

It doesn't matter if these characters are supposed to be together forever: if their chemistry gets stale, you want somebody to die, you want to put somebody in a coma, you want to write them off the show - anything to save you.

- Julie Plec

You can love and hate your family with equal measure, but the power of the bond you have to have with them, you can't really ever walk away.

- Julie Plec

Of every movie that I've seen multiple times, of every TV show that I was obsessed with, I don't think I was ever obsessed with anything more than 'Flowers in the Attic,' which I read 13 times between fourth grade and senior year.

- Julie Plec

I learned that getting a movie made in Hollywood is a near impossibility, and the process can be a wild adventure. TV is a lot more consistently productive - no offense to the beautiful world of feature film.

- Julie Plec

Don't do another show just because someone thinks that there's a dollar to be earned there. Do it because you love the characters, and you love the world, and you really, truly feel both the fans and you as a storyteller can benefit from having the second show.

- Julie Plec

The joke of being a showrunner is that people ask how you get it all done, and you don't. The list of things I don't get done in a given day is longer than the list of things I do. And one of the things that's first to go is watching dailies.

- Julie Plec

'Scream' was the first thing he'd ever written that had gotten made, and I'd been in Hollywood for less than two years.

- Julie Plec

I do all these panels where people are always talking about the lack of female directors, and I have a lot of opinions on that.

- Julie Plec

It took me some time to realize television, for someone like me, was the perfect medium. I like to produce, I like to be detail-orientated, I like to be in charge of a lot of things, and I like to be a storyteller. It's kind of the perfect gig for someone like me.

- Julie Plec

Humanity has both its beautiful and its ugly sides.

- Julie Plec

Showrunning is an arrogant job. You have to be arrogant and hold yourself strong in order for people to hear you. Confidence partners with arrogance. The only person you have to trust is yourself. The only instinct you can trust is your own.

- Julie Plec

The one thing that always drove me crazy, especially on soaps, was when someone would have something they were hiding, and then six months later, they were still holding onto that secret, and the world has come to a complete, total end as a result of it. If they'd only just confessed!

- Julie Plec

In a non-supernatural universe, there's just character, and it's humanity and human beings and how they relate to each other.

- Julie Plec

TV writing - for me, at least - is half original voice and half an embodiment and a representation of the spirit of the actors you're writing for.

- Julie Plec

I suffer mightily at the 7 A.M. calls. I'm happy as a clam on the 7 P.M. calls.

- Julie Plec

I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.

- Julie Plec

I had a moment where I wrote a movie script, and it was my first movie job, and I was very excited to do it, and my only goal was really not to get fired off of it.

- Julie Plec

I can stay up until the sun's up, no problem, but I do not like getting up in the morning.

- Julie Plec

There's something about two people coming together in the rain that is the ultimate expression of love in the minds of most audiences, I guess.

- Julie Plec

I work very hard so that I can be present all the time for what I do and then carve out little pockets of time as I desire for my personal life.

- Julie Plec

I'm a night owl; I could work until 6 in the morning without even thinking about it.

- Julie Plec

Growing up, I remember watching 'Little House on the Prairie' and 'L.A. Law' and being so obsessed with it.

- Julie Plec

TV is really, really, really hard work. You sacrifice a lot of your personal life, a lot of your sanity, just to do one show.

- Julie Plec

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

- Julie Plec

If you write a good line, you write a good line, and the best line wins in television. It doesn't matter if you're the guy who gets the coffee or if you're the showrunner - best line wins. That's the beauty of television collaboration.

- Julie Plec

I read 'Tiger Beat' and 'Bop' from the time I was 9, 10, 11 years old. I loved movies. I saw 'E.T.' seven times. I used to yell at people who called me when 'L.A. Law' was on because they should know better. So I just have been so in love with the business of Hollywood since I can remember.

- Julie Plec

There are a lot of things you do in a supernatural universe that can toe the line and cross the line.

- Julie Plec

I don't pray. I'm not a deeply religious person.

- Julie Plec

I think Joss Whedon is a genius.

- Julie Plec