Female friendship at heart of ‘Vampire Academy’ adaptation
At the heart of “Vampire Academy” are two teenage girls, best friends since they were 6 years old, who would die for each other. Unfortunately, that sometimes means literally.
“The female friendship at the center is really amazing to see because so often, women are pitted against each other, and we don’t get a lot of representation of beautiful, genuine female friendship,” said
Sisi Stringer, the Australian actor who stars as Dhampir Rose Hathaway.
“But also our friendship is at the very center of the story in terms of the dominion and the conflicts that come up inside of the class structure and the politics and all of that.”
Based on the young adult novels of the same name by Richelle Mead, “Vampire Academy” — now streaming on Peacock — sets its world at St. Vladimir’s Academy, a boarding school where both pure blood Moroi vampires and the half-breed Dhampirs, who serve as their protectors, are trained. At its center are Rose, the Dhampir guardian, and Lissa Dragomir (Daniela
Nieves), a Moroi princess.
Where co-showrunners Julie Plec and Marguerite McIntyre diverged from the book series, as well as the 2014 movie starring Zoey Deutch and Lucy Fry, was in putting the castle right next door to St. Vladimir’s.
“In the books, the school is on one side of the country, and the palace and the royal court is in the other, and those two worlds only cross over occasionally. We really wanted to make it all part of one little pocket society so that while you’re attending school, Lissa is also attending these society events and preparing for this life of importance in the royal court,” said Plec.
“The queen is literally five doors down with her eye on this unlikely friendship between this princess and this Dhampir guardian. Everyone is looking at you all the time. The scrutiny on that friendship is so much more intense, which makes the stakes that much higher for the girls to fight for their ability to remain friends.”
Like any good YA series, there are boys and crushes and romance. There are family issues, particularly after tragedy strikes
Lissa’s family.
“I feel like, nowadays, the center of it is the love story or the love triangle is really what drives the story forward, and the friendship is the B story or the side story. I love that our show has friendship, and it’s women as the main driving force of the story,” said Nieves.
“I 100% felt more like ‘I would die for you’ for a woman than for a romantic partner in my life.”
And yet “Vampire Academy” also faces brutal realities of a world divided into a caste system: royal Moroi, the guardian Dhampir and the wild Strigoi, craven bloodthirsty monsters more familiar to most vampire stories. Within those castes are more classes and so on and so forth, with everyone given a place in this world. Most have accepted their roles. Rose and Lissa, strengthened by their friendship that has torn apart those lines, want more and better.
“It mirrors some issues in society: class mobility, royalism,” said Stringer.
“It’s not just gorgeous to look at and friendship and romance. It can also be a little confronting in the politics of it.”