IAN/DAMON eternal stud 1.0: cant be tamed - Page 89

Dawn Olivieri (Chad Blockley photo)

It must be difficult to be the envy of thousands of "The Vampire Diaries" fans, but Dawn Olivieri seems to be handling it beautifully.

"Ian [Somerhalder] is a nice person and really cares about how you feel and makes sure that you're comfortable," Olivieri said. "And he's not such a bad looker, so it's not the worst situation that I've ever had to be in."

Olivieri is talking about the episode "Daddy Issues," in which Somerhalder's rakish vampire Damon Salvatore gets Olivieri's reporter Andie Star out of her clothes and into a bubble bath'without compelling her.

He does use the vampire hypnosis to keep her there, after confessing how much he likes to kill people, and then taking a healthy bite of her neck. The scene had fans squealing, but for Olivieri, who has been friends with Somerhalder for a long time, it was just in a day's work.

"If you have to be in a bath for six hours with anyone, you're pretty much ready to get out," she said, laughing. "We were so pruned. And he would try to touch me with his toes on the leg! You get that weird, creepy feeling when his 'pruney' hands are touching you. So we were having a prune battle in the tub.

"We had a good time; it was a lot of fun."

Olivieri is having a lot of fun with the men in her screen life lately.

The actress recently finished work on "House of Lies," a darkly comic pilot for Showtime. She plays Monica, the ex-wife of Don Cheadle's character, Marty. Monica runs the top management consultant firm in their city, while Marty works for the No. 2 agency.

Unlike Andie, Monica holds most of the power in the relationship with Marty. But despite her professional success, Monica pops pills, feels guilty that her son lives with her ex, and, according to Olivieri, does a lot of crazy things.

"She's funny. She's definitely going to be extremely watchable," Olivieri said, adding that the character is a lot like other anti-heroes on Showtime series such as "Nurse Jackie" who do incorrigible things. "But you still love her. You still care about her."

It's a plum part for Olivieri, a former model from Florida who has been acting for only about five years. She's done guest roles on "How I Met Your Mother," "Entourage," "Stargate Atlantis" and "Cold Case," among many others, before landing the part of the tattooed carnie Lydia on "Heroes." Since then, she's appeared on one episode of "True Blood" as werewolf Alcide's sister, and as a recurring guest on "The Vampire Diaries."

"House of Lies," if Showtime decides to pursue it as a series, would be her first leading role on TV. She credits Cheadle, with whom she screen tested for the role, with helping her land it. "That and the fact that I'm perfect for it," she joked.

"Don is a really great person, and it was really fun to have that test with him," she said. "I feel so blessed to be able to be a part of it at such an early time in my career. It's like a dream come true for an actress like me."

And as for "Vampire Diaries," Andie Star will be back in the last part of the season (it returns April 7), but Olivieri isn't sure what lies in store for the bevamped beauty. At the time of our interview, she was headed back to Atlanta to film, but hadn't seen any script.

Damon's former lover, the vindictive vamp Katherine, is back on the scene. I suggested the women might spar over Damon.

"I don't imagine a clash between those two," Olivieri said. "Oh, wouldn't that be a good episode? Maybe my time is coming. Or her time, I don't know."

Olivieri talked more about vampires, her excitement about "House of Lies," and the joy of guest-starring as the sister of your ex-boyfriend's character.

I'll tell you what, my favorite one is one of the sparrows, the birds that I had on my forearm. Those would've been the ones I would've considered, but alas.

But you weren't going to do it. Nothing's permanent on you?
No. I think it's better to be a blank canvas when this is your job.

That's probably a good idea. On Twitter, I said I was going to talk to you and the first three responses were, "How is it to take a bath with Ian?"
Wow, everyone loves that question.

Which is probably the most asked question you've had, huh?
Yeah, well, I'm sure there are a lot of girls that would've loved to have been on my side of the tub, right? Is that the consensus? Well, you know what? We had a great time. It was a six-hour long bath. I don't know how, it's only a matter of how much you like someone, if you have to be in a bath for six hours with anyone, you're pretty much ready to get out. But we had a really fun time. We'd joke a lot. He has a really great sense of humor, so we were having a really good time.

Is it difficult, not necessarily being in the bathtub, but coming on a show where you're guest-staring and having to fit in fast and getting to know everybody?
Yeah, it's always my running theory that as a guest star, and especially when you're only doing one episode, that's the hardest. When you're doing only one episode, the people who work on the show just really don't have time to get to know you and they're just like, "We don't have time to understand your sense of humor," and, "We don't have time to really care how you feel." So you're almost a ghost on a set with a family. These are people who know everything about each other and they've spent years working with each other now.

But being in this particular job, when you're the recurring guest, it's a little different, because people know that you're coming back, so they give you a little bit more credit. The way that "Vampire" works, they're very, very tightlipped about the script, so we don't'even the actors even if we're in the next episode'get to know the script until maybe a few days or a week at the most before the episode. And even then, we don't know what we're doing, how many days we're working, what our story is. Nothing.

So when I did the first episode here on "Vampire" and they didn't know I was coming back for another episode after that, I still got that one-week guest star treatment where everybody was like, "Hey, hi, we don't know you; we don't care." But then I came back the next week and they said, "Oh, oh, you didn't die! Wow." Yeah, because I think it's also pretty infamous that if you're a character and not a vampire, especially a girl that's making out with Ian, that you're meeting your demise sooner or later.

I don't even think the regular cast members feel too confident they're coming back.
Yeah, right.

Several have told me, "Well, I could be dead in a couple weeks. Who knows?"
You don't know. That's the thing, they don't tell you anything, so you really could be dead. You could be reading the script that you're working on next week starting Monday and at the end you read you get stabbed the eye. You know, and you're like, "Oh, God, why? That sucks, but OK."

"I was just starting to have a good time."
"Hey, nice getting to know everybody!" Yeah, well, that is the nature of our business, I guess.

It is cool that Andie was just kind of thrown in almost to the center of the action in just a couple episodes.
Yeah, I know, she's all of a sudden friends with everybody and it's like, where did she come from?

Katherine's back and trying to spend more time with Damon. What do you think is in store for Andie?
You know what? I don't imagine a clash between those two. But it just depends what they write, really. Right up to this point, I've been playing Andie as the hypnotized ' bystander to this group, to this clan, to these friends. And I imagine that once the writers give Andie a chance to get out of the fishbowl and see what's actually happening, so many things can happen. And that's what's exciting, I think, for me [and] for her.

That's when we'll be able to implement the wit and the instincts of the news reporter that she is. But who knows [if that will happen]? I don't know when the writers will allow that to come through. I'm flying back to work again, but of course, I have no idea what's going on.
But that's where the goal is, [to see] that struggle from her trying to come to the realization of what's been happening to her and how. I don't imagine it's going to be a good, a happy or cordial response finding out that someone's been hypnotizing you and kind of making you to act a certain way that's against your will.

Right. So you think she's been compelled by Damon pretty much since they met?
Oh, I know that she has, yeah. The only time you really saw Andie act the way that Andie acts is in the beginning half of the bubble bath scene; she was coherent then. And the second he tells her, "I like to kill people," and you see how she wanted to instinctively react, that's when he began the compulsion. And from that point on, she's just been high off of his compulsion.

It was funny when they killed Elijah right in front of her at the dinner party. She seemed awfully cheerful.
Yeah, well, the compulsion removes the fear. So even when she was in the bathtub scene and he was biting her neck, the way we discussed how that moment was going to happen is that it doesn't feel right to her, but when you're compelled by a vampire, you lose your sense of fear, your right and wrong differentiation ' I think that even when they stabbed Elijah, it's just more of a shock, "Whoa, someone just came out of nowhere and now he's dead." It's not like Andie's sad or afraid.

She has a great name, "Andie Star."
Isn't it? It's a fantastic name. I agree with you; I love it. I love, love, love it. I'm a big fan of guy names for girls. It wasn't originally Andie Star, it was originally Andie Campbell or Andie [something] with a C. It was very boring. They definitely spiced it up with Andie Star.

There's a comic strip character who's a reporter, Brenda Starr.
Oh, nice. Maybe that's where's that's from. Good job!

Maybe so. She has two Rs.
Oh, with two Rs? They had that spelled that way originally; so it could possibly be that.

You were saying how you don't really see scripts, so when they approached you to do the character, did they just sort of outline the part and where they saw the character headed? Or did they have a script?
Oh, nobody tells you anything! You have to make it all up yourself. I mean, you get a basic outline of what they want the character to be like. But really you have to then make it up as you go.

It's difficult. Even with "Heroes" I found it really difficult that you don't have an ending point, so you don't really know where they're going to go with the character. I think that's why sometimes TV can suffer a little bit, more so than films, because you're not able to create as strong of an arc for your character. Whereas in a film, you see already where this person is going to end up, so you know that if you start as far away as possible, it's going to be this amazing journey that the audience can take with you. But it's tough when it's TV, because you don't get that jewel of information.

You do the best with what you have, which is close to nothing, so you just do whatever you can come up with in the moment.

What made you agree to do "The Vampire Diaries"?
I have an uncanny ability to play newscasters. I don't know what it is, the last episode that I did, the director came up to me and he goes, "Wow, you're really good at the newscaster part, did you used to do that for a living?" I go, "No." But I think that was a big selling point in the room when I was going through the audition was my ability to get into that newscaster cadence.

It's a great show. Ian's a friend of mine, so I knew working with him would be very fun and effortless and easy and collaborative. So that was probably enough for me. I'm not really an actress at a point where I can pick and choose everything that I want to do, so when something comes along that has a huge fan base and people just really enjoy watching, it's fun to just say, "You know what? I'm going to do that! I'm just going to see what happens and I see what I can come up with." And you always learn something every time you work. Turning things down is not something I really love to do at this point in my career.

It's kind of cool you went from one popular vampire show'"True Blood"'to another one.
Yeah, I know. They don't seem to like to make me the vampire, which is really what I want to do.

Maybe they'll ask in this one.
Yeah. Maybe they'll be a new show years down the line where I will be the main vampire and then I'll get what I want.

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