Julie Plec

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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