‘The Vampire Diaries’ Q&A: Annie Wersching On Julian, Lily Trying To Start Over With Damon

It’s time to take on the Julian problem on “The Vampire Diaries.”

That little trip down tormented memory lane in last week’s “Mommie Dearest” episode was eye-opening for all of the Salvatores, as Lily finally came to realize that the man in her heart, and the one she brought back from the Phoenix stone hell, is a monster.

Annie Wersching, who plays Mama Salvatore, told Access Hollywood about Lily’s new goal: to try and take down Julian on Thursday’s episode of The CW vampire drama.

AccessHollywood.com: Lily found out in the last episode that the love of her life… is a monster. Is that forcing her to question everything now going into this episode?
Annie Wersching: Yeah, 100 percent. Her entire existence was basically rocked to the core last episode. Julian is seemingly responsible for almost everything bad that’s happened in her life, and they truly had a huge, epic, beautiful romance and so it is a lot to sort of take in. And just deciding that he’s gotta go is huge deal, but she’s finally seeing him for what he is and of course, he’s so similar to Giuseppe [Salvatore] and all of that. It’s just shell shocking to her.

Access: Is she worried about being linked to him? Because of that, when she found out that Julian’s this monster, [she had] to be like, ‘Oh [crap]!’
Annie: Yeah, whoops. Whoops. Wish I wouldn’t have done this. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it was always a risky little thing, and she never thought in a million years that they wouldn’t be on each other’s sides, so that’s obviously her No. 1 priority, her and Damon and Stefan — they have to unlink Lily from Julian and in order to do that they have to get one of the heretics to help them with the spell. And again, Julian is so charming and he’s really bonding with the heretics, and especially Nora and Mary-Louise, and he’s throwing them this huge party [this episode for their, I think it’s 133rd anniversary, so he’s making it difficult for her to sort of have the heretics completely on her side because she needs all of them to agree to it in order to unlink.

WATCH: Paul Wesley Talks Stefan/Damon/Lily Flashbacks On ‘The Vampire Diaries’

Access: How is the relationship with Damon and Stefan going into this episode? She was always trying to make some sort of peace between her heretics family and her real life children…
Annie: The relationships with Stefan and Damon are so different for her and she’d really like for Damon to be able to get to the next level, kind of where Stefan is, where he can kind of see — Stefan really has empathy for her now, especially knowing what life was like with Giuseppe and that she did try to save them, but it’s so hard for Damon and he’s showing absolutely no signs of forgiveness. I feel like in this episode she’s trying to bond with Damon in a different way. I mean, she’s just genuinely sorry, which I think is something he wants her to be, but it’s almost like he’s a little bit too far gone to finally accept it. Even just her saying, ‘You were right,’ is a huge deal and she’s just trying to be like, ‘I know I’ve been awful, let’s start over from here.’ There’s this one scene between the two of them where she can just see it in his eyes that he’s kind of just gone.

Access: So, Valerie — are we going to get a warm and cuddly moment between Lily and Valerie because now she’s realized what happened to her surrogate daughter?
Annie: Yeah. Valerie’s for sure the one’s that most like a daughter to her and there’s been a lot of recent hurt back and forth between these two and there’s definitely a scene [on Thursday] night where she basically is finally giving over and saying, ‘I believe every word you’ve ever told me,’ which is a huge deal. I wouldn’t say there are cuddles necessarily (laughs), but there’s a lot of owning up to things for Lily in this episode. It feels very sort of cathartic and stuff that she’s needed to do for a long time.

“The Vampire Diaries” airs Thursday at 8/7c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash