The Vampire Diaries' Michael Malarkey talks swapping prosthetic incisors for a music career

It’s a case of fangs for the memories for former Vampire Diaries star Michael Malarkey, who has swapped his days as an on-screen blood slurper for the life of a footloose troubadour.

“The whole thing is a real double edged sword,” he says of the fame garnered as bad boy vamp “Enzo” St. John in the CW channel hit. “There’s an immediate gain in the fanbase and the international interest makes it easy to tour. The hurdle is that there are a lot of bad connotations in terms of actors becoming musicians. Of course, in this case, I was a musician before I was an actor.”

The Vampire Diaries, for the benefit of those not au-fait with ratings-gobbling teen drama, was a hit supernatural series that cannily blended elements of Twilight, Buffy and Dawson’s Creek, and which generated stellar ratings until the conclusion of its eight-year run in 2016.

The Dawson’s Creek overtones were no coincidence, as Vampire Diaries was developed by that show’s creator, Kevin Williamson – who also penned the scripts to tongue-in-cheek slasher parodies Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

The goal with The Vampire Diaries, said Williamson, was a drama that sated horror aficionados yet also connected with viewers at a more nuanced level.

“I like emotional horror,” he said when the cadaverous caper launched in 2009. “I don’t like horror movies. I hate them. But if you can make emotional horror movies, I’m in. If I can care and root for the main character, then I’m in. I don’t like stupid stories about people I don’t know.

“There is a slew of low-budget horror films out there, where you just don’t give a crap. But, once in awhile, something will come along, like Halloween in 1978, and there’s this one person, Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s that young, sweet girl in the midst of all of this, and you just root for her and feel for her all the way through the chase scene. You have to figure out how to do that and care for the characters.”

The Vampire Diaries is set in the American Everyville of Mystic Falls, Virginia – a fictional town settled in the 19th century by New Englanders driven south for mysterious reasons. Actually the reasons aren’t all that mysterious. The original newcomers were vampires and Mystic Falls has, ever since, tried to conceal its supernatural secret from the wider world. Into this creepy hamlet is parachuted heroine Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a typically Williamson lady-nerd (see also Michelle Williams in Dawson’s Creek), who has lost her parents in a car crash. Nevermind – she quickly falls for vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley), whose catalogue-model cheekbones bely the fact he’s 162-years-old.

Malarkey is a relative latecomer to the saga. Enzo became a series regular in season six, and immediately cut a mercurial figure as a scheming vampire whose family history is intimately entwined with that of Stefan. The pair did not get along, their inability to see eye-to-eye culminating in Salvatore ripping Enzo’s heart out (awkward). But the character was so popular Williamson brought him back for the rest of the run.

In further good news, Malarkey’s debut album is unlikely to be filed next to flop records by Johnny Depp or Russell Crowe. Mongrels is a gothic country LP with overtones of the backwoods grotesque of Will Oldham and Bill Callahan. Certainly, Vampire Diaries devotees expecting disposable thrills are likely to be flummoxed.

“I worked in a record store,” he reflects. “I started off in the punk scene back in Ohio. I played in hardcore bands. My first connection at high school was with punk and skater kids.”

Malarkey’s music is intense but not, he says, self-consciously therapeutic. It sounds as if he’s getting a lot off his chest – but that wasn’t the intention.

“I don’t know any other way. I’ve always been very unapologetic. It’s kind of rare these days to be honest and sing the stuff you want to sing – instead of thinking about what it means or what the label wants or what people are interested in hearing.”

He is speaking to Hot Press from Puerto Rico where he is filming The Oath, a drama about prison gangs produced by rapper 50 Cent for Sony’s new streaming service Crackle.

“At the moment I’m pursing both music and acting and it’s fine,” he says. “When something comes up that makes it difficult for me to continue with one or the other I tend to deal with it on a case by case basis.”

The Vampire Diaries is on Netflix now.