Nina Dobrev ’s romantic links to Damon Salvatore started long before her character Elena Gilbert fell for the vampire.

The Vampire Diaries star recently revealed that as she was auditioning for the CW show, she was dating an actor who read for the part of Damon, which ultimately went to her now-ex Ian Somerhalder .

“There was a bunch of drama around that [audition] because I was dating Rob Mayes at the time, but they didn’t know that,” Nina, 36, shared in the book I Was Feeling Epic: An Oral History of The Vampire Diaries by Samantha Highfill , out now. “We were trying to keep it really secret because we were afraid that if they found out, they wouldn’t cast one or both of us.”

However, Nina’s vision of working alongside her off-screen love interest ultimately acciden

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