Great. Thank you.
Hi, guys. How you doing today? Hi, Sarah.
I was thinking if we could start by just extending a little bit of your characters
who you are on the show. start with Jonetta
Yeah, of course.
Sonya Karp is the sister of Mia Karp.
Daughter of Victor Karp.
She is a librarian at Saint Vladimir's Academy.
She spends a lot of time alone.
She does get a juicy love interest story, romance situation.
And I can't say much more than what. Her journey.
Yeah, she gets a journey, but I can't say more.
And I play her father, Victor Dashkov, who is a royal
Maria vampire, which means I'm the head of one of the 12 royal families.
And, you know, I have a family.
And because my children are adopted, they're not given royal status.
And because of that, I'm very passionate about bringing equality
to this underground vampire society.
Amazing.
And so what is it about this this series, the books
and the TV shows that made you want to sink your teeth into the project?
I like that.
Thank you very much.
I mean, I read the books as a kid.
So when I saw when I realized that
this is what it was, I was like, oh, absolutely.
And then Julie, I was, you know, Julie Plec,
huge Vampire Diaries fan. So.
Andrew Hmm.
And what I love about the vampire genre is that it really gives you an opportunity
to explore issues that are everyday issues, but it just ups
the scope and makes the issues more epic and dare I say, Shakespearean,
you know, so the issues of the characters are the issues of our time.
They're just explored and magnified in a, in a bigger way
that my next question was going to be about the class structure and the reality
and how it's kind of feels quite precedent right now.
Is there anything from real life people into this story?
Definitely.
Three months before I got this role, I met Julie
Plec via Instagram for a live chat
about representation and equality in the film and television business.
That's how we met.
Three months later, I'm reading for this role of Victor Dashkov
on Vampire Academy, and this character's very passionate about finding
a more justice in this underground vampire world.
And it was such a serendipitous thing
because these are issues that I'm very passionate about. So,
yeah, there was such a such a synergy there.
So that's one of the reasons
why I love the show and why I love my character.
Amazing.
And it feels a bit frivolous to go from that incredible answer to this one.
But I this is because I seem so set about playing vampires.
Like from the outfits to like how is it how fun with it playing these creatures.
It was so fun.
So we're vampires that have magic power, like we use elemental magic
so that that's very cool to like
do that and, you know, have to imagine it.
Obviously it's not really happening.
So cool it was but like that's that's the fun part and then doing,
you know, the the second blood and like all of that
like sucking blood
to fake blood.
But I too am obsessed with vampire genre.
And so I've seen everything bit in some things.
And these vampires are definitely unique.
As Jonetta just said, we dabble in elemental magic.
We are mauroy of vampires, which are different than the struggle
with vampires on our show.
Struggle with vampires are sort of like the more sinister and evil
undead vampire scary. Yes, very scary.
We have more we have more of a magical
and mystical quality about us than a royal quality.
So these vampires are very unique.
I don't think there are ever been vampires like this in television or film.
Amazing.
And this is it may seem like a silly question,
but I love asking this anyone who's got magical powers.
But how did you figure out what you want to do with your hands
when you're doing the casting?
So they actually taught us how to use it.
So like I know one of the fires is like something like this.
It's very cool.
So each symbol has like a certain, like, way to do it.
Oh, that's so good.
I'm going to be practicing that now.
I love it. That's good. Well,
thank you so much for talking with me today.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you.