Nina Dobrev is calling out The Vampire Diaries for ruining her relationship!
As you may recall, Nina left the hallways of Degrassi: The Next Generation in 2009 to pursue a role on a little show called The Vampire Diaries. The then-20-year-old broke out as Elena Gilbert, a 17-year-old with a very complicated relationship with two vampire brothers. But over a decade later she’s revealing that it actually caused a bit of trouble in her IRL love life!
In a new episode of Jessica Szohr’s XOXO podcast, the 33-year-old revealed when she was auditioning for her role in TVD she was dating an actor who also auditioned for the show — and things got messy when only one of them landed the part!
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While she didn’t name the boyfriend, she was rumored to be romantically linked to Code Black and Virgin River star Ben Hollingsworth from 2006 to 2009. Gurl had a type we guess…
Her boyfriend was auditioning for the role of Damon Salvatore — a character that would later become one of Elena’s love interests. Nina recalled that her beau almost landed the part, but as fans know the show went another way — with the sexy ass Ian Somerhalder — and the rest is TV history:
“They were gonna choose him [for the role of Damon Salvatore]. They ended up not choosing him, but I got cast and then it got awkward.”
Yikes! The Love Hard actress said the relationship “didn’t last much longer.” She didn’t get into the dirty laundry, but suffice to say:
“We broke up.”
Smells like career jealousy to us… if so, perhaps the breakup was for the best? Just sayin’.
Or maybe it was plain-old jealousy! After “chemistry reads” with over a dozen guys, showrunners saw how steamy things were with Ian Somerhalder, and he scored the gig. Then he scored Nina! The two dated for THREE YEARS!
(Innerestingly, they broke up the same year their TVD characters broke up on the show — something tells us that was more than coincidence…)
After going their separate ways, Ian started dating fellow vampire Nikki Reed from the Twilight series, whom he eventually married and had a child with. In 2020, Nina found love with Olympic snowboarder Shaun White — and they’ve been super happy together ever since!
Shaun confessed last month that he binged the whole series of TVD because he missed Nina while she was filming a movie abroad for 3 months:
“I liked it. It was good … I’ll start the show. I’ll see her without seeing her.”
Aw! He went on to say that the show was “cool” and “a little dark”. He even said he was rooting for his girlfriend and her onscreen love interest to be together!
“I found myself really rooting for them. I don’t know if that was healthy or not. But I did watch the show and it was really funny.”
Sounds healthy that he wasn’t super jealous at least!
He ended his review of the show by joking and saying that he “can’t wait for season 9”. Ha! If there’s ever a Vampire Diaries reboot, we know Shaun is on team #Delena! Just like the rest of the world, we guess. Well, except for Nina’s ex…
Oh, don’t worry about Ben btw — he found love shortly afterward. He’s been married to lingerie designer Nila Myers since 2012, and the couple have three kids together! All’s well that ends well, right?
[Image via Ben Hollingsworth/Instagram/The CW/YouTube]