You know that trailer moment when Damon appears in front of Elena stark naked, the scene we’ll see in full tonight when The Vampire Diaries premieres? Ian Somerhalder has let the viewers in on a little prank he played on Nina Dobrev during the shoot…

Somerhalder tells EW that when shooting the scene, he was in fact completely naked. And for one of the takes, he and an AD came up with a little joke:

[The idea] was that I should go to the prop master, another genius part of our show, and have them make some elephant ears. The first thing we see is Nina’s reaction, so what if I was completely naked and we had elephant ears and double-stick tape, and I put them on each of my thighs, and ultimately, she would be staring at a very small, young elephant. The reaction that we got was f—ing amazing. I hope and pray that that is what we used in the edit because it was such a natural ‘Ohmygod!’ reaction.

We hope that’s the take they use, too, because that sounds hilarious! Hopefully it’ll appear on the blooper reel, too.