It seems like Damon has met his match on ‘The Vampire Diaries’.
The charming yet maniacal Kai Malachai (Chris Wood), whom viewers were first introduced to a few episodes back in Welcome to Paradise. One day, he killed all of his siblings (with the exception of one sister, for whom he claimed to have a “soft spot”) in various gruesome ways. Gemini Coven harnessed the power of a solar eclipse to trap him in a purgatory dimension for his crimes, which has kept him trapped in a snapshot of the day that he was imprisoned– May 10, 1994. Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Bonnie (Kat Graham) are trapped with him. It wasn’t exactly what they were hoping for. For one thing, he’s a carbon copy of early-‘Vampire Diaries’ Damon, with his heated zingers and unaffected nonchalance. And, as it turns out, Kai is a full-blown killer, massacring his entire family — a fact that hampers Damon and Bonnie’s decision to go through with his proposal to bring him along to their world.
Wood talks to The Hollywood Reporter about transforming into Kai, being part of a three-person play and whether Kai is ultimately redeemable.
In last week’s episode, viewers discovered a lot about Kai’s back story and how he ended up in his personal hell. What was your initial reaction to learning that he was a crazy serial killer?
During the audition process, one of the scenes wasn’t actually from the episode. It was sort of the story that he told about killing his family, but I think the reason that they did that is because in our first reaction to him we don’t get to know all of that. The important part of that character is he has an extreme apathy to the violent past that he has and he’s justified in his actions in his own mind and he’s unaffected by it. He’s entirely sociopathic toward what he did to his family. From the get go, that’s what attracted me to the character, the way he processes things is so different from you and I, and hopefully from everyone who watches the show. (Laughs.) He’s not a normal guy.
He’s also forced them to at least think about whether they’d be willing to bring along a self-proclaimed killer to their world, even though he’s the only one who knows how to bring them back to Mystic Falls. Is that moral quandary something that they’ll ponder?
From Kai’s standpoint, he says, “Look guys, I have the answers, I know how to get out, you don’t. You actually need me to get out, so piece of cake. Let’s do this.” He’s not even privy to the fact that what he’s done to his family is so horrible that they’re going to have a hard time justifying allowing him to escape because while they want to get back so badly — Damon doesn’t seem to care at the moment but Bonnie is really struggling. She doesn’t feel like she can do it. Her life isn’t worth letting this psychopath go slaughter people. She can’t do it at the moment, but he has the answers and the only way they can get out is if they work with him.
If you want to read the whole article click here.
