The Originals' Newest Vampire Reveals Her Biggest On-Set Changes: Fangs, Fighting and More Eyeliner

Leah Pipes reveals how different it is to play a vampire on the CW hit series (Spoiler alert: "She is not going to put up with assholes.")

By Jean Bentley Feb 05, 2016 4:00 PMTags
The Originals, Leah PipesCW

RIP, Cami O'Connell, the last human remaining on The Originals.

Last week, we learned that the psychology student and object of Klaus' (Joseph Morgan) affection was definitely dead. (She looked pretty dead, considering she had bled out after her throat was slashed.) But there's good news when you're on a show that follows the political movements of the witches, werewolves and vampires of New Orleans: You can always become undead.

And that's exactly what happened to Cami (Leah Pipes) when she finally decided at the end of the midseason premiere to finish what the vampire blood in her system had started and fully turn.

Yes, The Vampire Diaries' token human, Zach Roerig, was not happy that his cohort was turning. "Zach was, I think, genuinely disappointed when he heard I was turning into a vampire," Pipes tells E! News after the big reveal. "I think he felt betrayed, and I had to explain to him that I had nothing to do with it."

But she's definitely enjoying it. There's an old adage about blondes having more fun, but for Pipes, it's actually vampires.

CW

"It's pretty sweet," she says of her character's new life as a badass vampire. There's cool fangs, fighting, a flattering black wardrobe, and "you get to wear more eyeliner. I love eyeliner!"

Of course, all the fighting means a lot more work. "Granted, you have to do certain things, the stunts are more, which is a bummer, and you're a lot more active on set. Humans just sit around and talk. I'm realizing that vampires are much more active. They have stuff to do, physically. And you have to drink blood."

What she'll get to do in Friday's episode, "Wild at Heart," is get in touch with Cami's dark side. "She had these dark impulses that she's been repressing, and being a vampire everything's heightened so those impulses definitely come out more and we'll see that more in her," Pipes explains. "But she's still fighting for her beliefs. She's still fighting for the little man. You see her continuing to have very strong morals; she's just more aggressive with her morals now."

To put it simply: "She is not going to put up with assholes."

The Originals airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on The CW.