"The Vampire Diaries'' Candice Accola dishes on Caroline's feelings for Klaus and bond with Stefan

'The Vampire Diaries'' Candice Accola dishes on Caroline's feelings for Klaus and bond with Stefan

Sometimes it's tough to be a Caroline Forbes fan. "The Vampire Diaries" loves to toy with our emotions! One minute we find out Tyler cheated on our girl with some wolf floozy. The next minute we find out that Tyler did not cheat on Caroline, and the wolf is actually not a floozy but a life-saving master of sire-bond-breaking. One minute Caroline is semi-swooning over a pony drawing Klaus gave her, the next minute she's helping her friends plot his death. We don't know how to feel anymore.

Luckily, we've got our girl Candice Accola to set us straight and give us all the scoop on Caroline's current inner turmoil and where she stands in the middle of all the love triangle stuff.

Zap2it: Last week it became pretty clear that Caroline and Hayley aren't going to be besties any time soon. Will they join forces for Tyler's sake?
Candice: Well... Hayley has a goal that she wants to accomplish, and Caroline wants to support Tyler. So we'll see them interact, but there will definitely always be a little bit of tension in the room. They both want to support the cause, and for Caroline, the cause is to support Tyler. For Hayley, the cause is just to support the cause.

While Elena is having murder-guilt hallucinations this week, what is Caroline doing? Is she still in a hybrid bubble?
Yeah, Caroline's really preoccupied with Tyler. As much as she's listening to Tyler -- and I think that she wholeheartedly trusts Tyler -- but the bottom line is that she's going to be around him and stand by her man. I mean, if Hayley's going to be standing by her man, Caroline is going to be standing even closer. She'll be by Tyler's side this week.

I obviously really love what Tyler's doing, and I love the idea of him and Caroline taking a stand against a greater evil, but I'm a little concerned about what it will mean for their relationship with Hayley being around and Klaus moving in. Are these the first cracks in their foundation?
This is the first time where they're not just fighting for their relationship; they're fighting for something bigger than their relationship. A real relationship would be able to withstand the ups and downs of fighting for this cause, but they're young, and they've just worked so hard to get to a great place within their relationship already, so I think they're going to need to be a lot stronger within the relationship than they might have anticipated.

Should I prepare for heartbreak?
Oh, they're definitely going to have some hurdles to get over, but I mean, right now, they're still fine. They're definitely still very determined. Caroline loves Tyler, she wants Tyler, and she's worked so hard to be with him and be happy. Right now she feels strong within herself, and she's at a point where she just wants to support the people that she loves and to do what's right.

We've seen surprisingly little interaction between Klaus and Caroline so far this season, but there are pictures from upcoming episodes that show them getting a little closer.
We definitely have plenty of Klaus and Caroline scenes coming up in the future. It's going to let us see maybe the lighter side, the softer side of Klaus. What's so appealing to the viewer and so fun for us is that it's sexy, because every scene that they're in, there's really a push and pull. It feels like a big game, and as frustrating as games are, they're really fun to watch on TV. That's what the appeal is with these two characters. The games, though, can also lead to revealing different perspectives and higher truths, letting you see a little deeper into both of these people.

He's not easy to love, given the whole mass-murderer thing, but there's got to be something that appeals to Caroline about Klaus, other than his accent and his face. He has saved her life once or twice.
Klaus has saved her life. I also think she likes the control that she has over him. She likes that this is the first time in her life that she's felt that she's better.

Last week, Julie Plec said that while Klaus thinks Caroline and Tyler's relationship is weak, he'll take the opportunity and make a move. How does Caroline handle him being more forward?
The Caroline that we met in Season 1 would've slept with him last season, but Caroline now is just like, 'No. That's not what I want. I know all these bad things about you.' We're dealing with a mass murderer original vampire, so that's not necessarily relatable, but when you humanize the whole situation, it's really just a matter of -- Caroline used to be young and date bad boys. She dated Damon. And now this new smooth-talking bad boy comes into town and she's like 'You know what? I already know how this story ends. I already know exactly how you're going to be, and I don't want it anymore, and so you can chase me until the sun comes up, but I'm still going to know better.' It's a really fun evolution that we've seen within the character of Caroline.

I'm always so pleasantly surprised by the chemistry between you and Paul Wesley when you have scenes together. How is Caroline's friendship with Stefan going to progress now that things are rocky between him and Elena?
I think Caroline's biggest struggle is parallel to Stefan's biggest struggle. This is a season of Caroline just really wanting to do the right thing, and to do the right thing by the people that she cares about. She recognizes what the right thing is, and she can't ignore it. She wants to do the right thing. It coincides with Stefan, who just wants so hard to do the right thing and to have Elena grow and experience being a vampire in a perfect, safe, right way. He's almost re-doing the way that he became a vampire through Elena. He's getting another chance, and he wants things to go a certain way, even if it's not necessarily the best thing for her, he wants it to be right. Caroline wants to be strong and support Tyler, but she doesn't necessarily believe in supporting him. She's not sure that he's going about things the right way, so she's conflicted. He's potentially risking his life, and she doesn't like that, and Stefan is feeling the same way about Elena. I think that's where the bond of friendship comes from. They're both trying to support the people that they love, even if they don't agree with how they're going about their lives at the moment. There's a really beautiful friendship that is continuing to grow from Season 2 -- it took a vacation for a minute, but the roots are still there, and we're able to watch it grow now.