Casting Kieron Moore as Dimitri Belikov was (almost) a no-brainer for Vampire Academy creators Marguerite MacIntyre and Julie Plec! The showrunners explain to J-14 exclusively why the discovery of this up-and-coming star was “pretty thrilling” for the Peacock series.
“All the women, loved Kieron from the day one, except me,” Julie admits. “Because he had his hair slicked back in his audition video, like a banker, and I was like, ‘Who is that guy? What is his hair doing? I can’t, I loved him. I can’t.’ Then, they kept cooing over him.”
Marguerite, for her part, knew right off the bat that he was “the one” to play the role. “I loved him,” she tells J-14.
Kieron eventually won Julie over when he returned for a second audition.
“I watched him act instead of looking at his hair, for the first time, and realized just how powerful he was and how much coiled energy he had, and how deeply, deeply sexy that coiled energy is,” she explains, joking. “So, I forgave him [for] the hair.”
In Vampire Academy — which is based on the book series of the same name by Richelle Mead — Kieron plays Dimitri Belikov, a Dhampir.
“I’m an elite level guardian, in the sense that I’ve passed my training. I protect the Royal Moroi of the Moroi classes,” Kieron tells J-14 of his role. “Dimitri is, I guess, a pinnacle level of guardian, right? The designer guardian … the best of the best. We find him at a point where he is being challenged by a young lady named Rose (Sisi Stringer), who will bring out the man underneath, hopefully.”
Before being cast in Vampire Academy, Marguerite and Julie explain that Kieron had “done a couple indie movies and had a boxing career.” So, for them, discovering him was “pretty thrilling” and they feel “pretty good” about it.
“We had really good candidates. We were lucky. We saw a lot of really great people,” Marguerite gushes. “Our casting was allowed to be, let’s find the best people and discover the best people across the globe.”
The first four episodes of Vampire Academy are now streaming via Peacock.
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