Nina Dobrev was a guest at Deadline’s Red Sea International Film Festival studio and talked about a raft of upcoming projects, her plans to direct a feature, and the fight for pay equality.
Having moved into producing and directed a short film, The One, Dobrev told Deadline she plans to make a female buddy action comedy, which she has penned with Sarah Adina: “I wrote it with Sarah, and I just think it’s great and funny. The world needs to laugh now more than ever, and we need more films with female action stars.”
Dobrev has spoken about her fight for equal pay on The Vampire Diaries, the series on which she was the female lead for six seasons. “It has been something that I’ve been pretty vocal about recently, but didn’t feel like a topic that was safe to speak about when I was going through it,” Dobrev said. “I felt very alone in that process. At that time, it was before the MeToo movement, it was before there was support from the world, but I’m very happy that things are changing in the right direction. There is forward movement, and if I can be a part of it in any way, as a producer and as an executive producer…I think it’s very important.
Dobrev was at the Red Sea Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, having wrapped filming in Australia on Bear Country, with Russell Crowe and a cast including Teresa Palmer, Aaron Paul and Luke Evans. Looking ahead, she has signed on for thriller series Night Float and romantic comedy It Happened One Summer with Tyler Hoechlin and Virginia Gardner.
She will exec produce Night Float, the thriller series that Lila Raicek has adapted from her own play, ‘Vertebrae’, with Fifth Season and Bruno Papandrea’s Made Up Stories on board. “Getting to team up with [Lila] and Bruno and the whole team…to combine all of our forces and create this new show that I’ll be executive producing and starring in and that’s shooting in New York City, it’s really great.” Breaking down what we can expect, she added: “Its’ the medical world meets biotech, meets New York City and the underbelly and the darkness behind insider trading.”