Nina Dobrev was already a big name in young-adult television before joining The Vampire Diaries after she played and the TV movie Degrassi Goes Hollywood. The Canadian series, where she co-starred with other well-known actors and, of course, Drake, ended in 2015, but after Dobrev left it for The CW series, the show rebranded to just Degrassi. Even though vampire romance dramas owned the early 2000s pop culture, The Vampire Diaries was an underdog, dismissed as a broadcast network True Blood or, more derisively, the show that tried to turn
Twilight into a TV series. However, over Dobrev's six seasons on the show, The Vampire Diaries not only grew in popularity, but it also became one of the more complex and involved mythologies of its kind.
The decision to depart the series shocked fans, but Dobrev maintained it was always her intention to leave the show after Season 6.
"That was the plan from the get-go," Dobrev told in 2017. "If anything, the fact that [leaving] terrified me drove me even more. I needed to feel that fear of 'Oh, my God, what if I never get a job again?' That just made me want to work five times as hard to make sure that didn't happen." She wanted to pursue other roles and, as she put it, stop "playing a teenager."
Dobrev informed fans of her Vampire Diaries departure in an April 2015 post.
Yet, this wasn't her only time saying "goodbye" to the show. Another heartfelt Instagram post followed her return to The Vampire Diaries for the series finale. "It feels like it was just yesterday that I was saying goodbye. And yet two years have passed and here we are again. This is my true final goodbye, as today I shot my last scene of the Vampire Diaries forever. Coming back for the series finale has been a whirlwind of emotion, nostalgia, love, tears of joy and bittersweet endings. It feels like the beautiful closure we all needed, myself included, and I couldn't have been happier to come home to be with my TVD set family and friends
," .
After her Vampire Diaries departure in 2015, Dobrev continued her acting career with roles in films such as Flatliners (2017), XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Dog Days (2018), Run This Town (2019) and The Out-Laws (2023). She also starred in and executive produced the comedy Sick Girl, which was written and directed by Jennifer Cram. She's staying busy with the comedy Reunion and the action-thriller The Bricklayer, both of which don't have release dates.
Dobrev's most notable post-Vampire Diaries television credit was her starring role in the short-lived CBS sitcom Fam, which was canceled after one season. She also appeared in Drake's 2018 video for “I'm Upset.”
The lives, loves, dangers and disasters in the town, Mystic Falls, Virginia. Creatures of unspeakable horror lurk beneath this town as a teenage girl is suddenly torn between two vampire brothers.
