8Joseph Morgan Beat Hundreds Of Actors To The Part Of Klaus
After 40 episodes of The Vampire Diaries, Joseph Morgan finally appeared on the screen as Klaus for the first time in April 2011. The news of his casting in the role had been reported a few months earlier, with the revelation that he had beaten hundreds of good actors to the punch for the part.
"We've been getting great tapes out of England and Australia," executive producer Julie Plec told Entertainment Weekly.
Between The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, Joseph Morgan has portrayed the character Klaus in a total of 143 episodes. The London-born star started acting in the early 2000s and has dozens of movie and TV credits under his belt.
However, the longevity of his time as Klaus – as well as the profile boost that it brought his career — undoubtedly makes the role the biggest of his professional life so far.
Before the advent of TVD, vampire stories had started to come back in fashion, with productions such as Interview with the Vampire, as well as The Twilight Saga movie series. One of the main reasons that Joseph Morgan never hesitated to accept the role of Klaus is because he was a huge fan of the sub-genre.
"When this part came along, [I accepted it] not only because it was on American television, but also because it was of a genre that I'm very much a fan of," he said in an interview with Collider about his work on the show.
The legend of Klaus Mikaelson was really built up on The Vampire Diaries for those 40 episodes before he arrived. Understandably, this put a lot of pressure on Joseph Morgan to step into those shoes and live up to the hype.
"It's nerve-wracking and daunting, for sure," he said at the time. "[But I also] feel like this is a tremendous platform for me to launch off."
Every good actor will tell you that to deliver a character flawlessly, one needs to have at least a level of empathy towards the person they are playing – regardless of how good or evil they might be. This logic also applied to Morgan and Klaus, in whom he saw some "human elements."
"The motives for [his] acts could be deemed evil, but I really think there needs to be something behind all of that," he told Collider. An example of this humanity in Klaus can be seen in his love story with Caroline Forbes, which fans continue to swoon over to date.
Joseph Morgan will reprise the role of Klaus one more time, in the upcoming final episode of Legacies. With this, TVD fans will get the opportunity to bid goodbye to their most popular anti-hero.
Legacies has been on The CW for four seasons, with a very close-knit cast led by Danielle Rose Russell, who portrays the main protagonist: Klaus' daughter, Hope Mikaelson.
This is not the first time that Joseph Morgan has been asked to make a cameo as Klaus on Legacies, but he has always resisted the calls. In an older interview with Cinemablend, he had explained his reasoning on this matter.
"Having pulled so much of my own emotion and energy into the character, I felt like the end [in The Originals] was really the end," Morgan said.
Despite the looming end of the road for Niklaus Mikaelson, Joseph Morgan doesn't have to wait much longer for his next gig. He has already been announced as part of the cast for the upcoming Season 4 of DC's Titans on HBO Max.
He is also joined on the newbies list for the new season by Franka Potente and Lisa Ambalavanar.
