The television landscape of the late 2000s could have looked remarkably different had Oscar nominee Sebastian Stan made a different career decision early in his career.
Appearing on a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the 44-year-old Marvel star revealed that he was formally offered the co-leading role of Stefan Salvatore on The CW’s smash teen drama The Vampire Diaries—a role that ultimately catapulted Paul Wesley to international fame alongside Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev.
Stan explained that the offer arrived directly after the abrupt cancellation of his 2009 NBC drama Kings, an ambitious series loosely inspired by the biblical story of King David that was pulled after just one season.
“They offered me Paul Wesley’s role. I’d just come off Kings,” Stan recalled on the podcast. “I felt really burnt out from that not working out.”
Exhausted by the network development cycle and hesitant about committing to another pilot, Stan admitted he doubted whether The Vampire Diaries had the stamina to survive past its initial order.
“The idea of thinking, ‘Oh, I’m just going to sign up again for something that probably isn’t going to get to the second season,’” he remembered thinking at the time.
“I didn’t do it,” Stan added, “and then the show went on to be super, super successful.”
The Vampire Diaries went on to become one of the signature genre franchises for The CW, running for eight seasons from 2009 to 2017 and spawning a lucrative television universe that included spin-offs The Originals and Legacies.
Despite passing on the supernatural drama, Stan was already a familiar face to The CW executives and viewers alike, having played the recurring role of bad-boy socialite Carter Baizen on Gossip Girl throughout its run. Passing on the vampire hit ultimately cleared Stan’s schedule for his big-screen breakthrough as Bucky Barnes in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger—a decision that permanently reshaped his career trajectory.
