CW programming president Mark Pedowitz spoke today at the Television Critics Association tour about the Klaus-centric The Vampire Diaries spinoff.

Zap2It attended today’s TCA event and has reported comments made by Mark Pedowitz regarding The Originals – the spinoff of The Vampire Diaries which was announced yesterday.

Pedowitz revealed that it was in fact the network and Warner Bros.’ idea to create a spinoff of the popular CW series, and that they approached The Vampire Diaries showrunners Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec with the idea.

Williamson, who is busy working on his new serial killer drama The Following (to air on Fox starting January 21), handed the project over to Julie Plec, who will act as showrunner on The Originals if it is picked up for a full season.

Like the name suggests, the show will focus on the Original family, and the main character will be Klaus (Joseph Morgan). While no other Original characters have been confirmed as appearing, Pedowitz says, “Hopefully some of his siblings will come along […] the Original family has such great dysfunctional family dynamics, we felt that was a great way to take the show.”

The most obvious choices for co-starring roles would be Claire Holt (Rebekah) and Daniel Gillies (Elijah), although the latter is currently starring on Saving Hope and might therefore be unavailable for this project.

And then of course there is Nathaniel Buzolic (Kol), who has only appeared in a handful of The Vampire Diaries episodes and whose character we know very little about – but maybe this fact would make him a perfect candidate for starring in this new show, considering how much Kol could be fleshed out. Perhaps the fact that Kol is such a wild child could allow Klaus to calm down a little bit, if he was faced with having to temper in his younger brother?

The only other actor currently attached to The Originals is Phoebe Tonkin, who starred as Faye on The Secret Circle and has appeared on The Vampire Diaries as the werewolf Hayley. “We wanted to have her on The CW family,” Pedowitz says of the decision to include her in the spinoff line-up.

In the episode of The Vampire Diaries which will air on April 25, we’ll get a flavour of what this new drama would be like, as Klaus heads to New Orleans (the setting for the show) and we learn that he was in fact one of the city’s founding fathers. He’ll meet his old protege Marcel, who will likely appear in the spinoff series as well.

The hosts of Hypable’s Vampire Hype podcast recorded an episode reacting to the news of The Vampire Diaries giving Klaus his own spinoff show – hear what we had to say and share your own thoughts on this news in the comments!