Real reason Nina Dobrev left 'The Vampire Diaries' revealed

Nina Dobrev is opening up about the disappointing aspect of playing Elena Gilbert on The Vampire Diaries.

Nina left the show after season six, and the actress had good reason to.

In an interview for Samantha Highfill’s, I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries, Nina revealed that she was paid much less than her male counterparts Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder despite playing two roles of Elena and Katherine.

The actress revealed that she, Candice King and Kat Graham were the “lowest-paid series regulars” for the first two seasons of the show.

“It was a bit of a tricky situation because my contract only said to play Elena, but I was playing multiple characters, which doubled my work-load. I had to be on set for double the amount of time, I had to memorize double the amount of lines.”

While Nina was ultimately successful in getting her pay increased, it was still less than Paul and Ian’s.

According to the show’s creator Julie Plec, the studio even told the writers to stop writing scenes with Katherine as they would have to pay the Love Hard star for both roles.

The actress left the show in 2015 and returned for the finale in 2017, for which she demanded equal pay as Ian and Paul.

“I had to put my foot down and say if it didn’t happen I wouldn’t be able to come back. And it wasn’t about the money — I didn’t give a s*** about the money at all — it was all principal,” explained Nina Dobrev.