You were just in LA for the Emmys, and you film The Vampire Diaries in Atlanta. Where in the world is Nina right now? I’m at my place in Atlanta. I had a rare day off, so I slept in and tried to rest up from all the Emmys craziness.

What do you do on your days off besides sleep? They’re so few and far between that I usually just sleep! I slept like, 12 hours last night, which I rarely do because my brain will rarely cut off. But I try to cook and I usually have to study lines.

Let’s talk about your amazing Donna Karan Emmys dress. How did you pick it out? Everything sort of fell together perfectly, which was awesome. I was working with a stylist who was amazing, but when I’m away in Atlanta, she has to send me photos of dresses in models and then I choose which ones I think will work. I always try to dress for the occasion. For Teen Choice Awards I do something a little more teen friendly, and for Emmys it’s a little more glam. It’s fun to dress up; award shows are like theme parties…or Halloween!

Who would you say is your style icon?
I’m a chameleon as a person and as an artist. The characters that I play and the events that I go to, you have to be a different person each time, so I have a different inspiration each time. One of them is Kate Beckinsale; she has great style because she’s always so classy and put together in a very clean way. Zoe Saldana takes a lot of risks, but is still very classy. I love Diana Agron, Emma Watson, Olivia Wilde, Emma Stone…they’re all so great. Continue Reading at Nylon

TV.com has a New Interview up with Nina thanks to vampire-diaries.net for the heads up, check out some of it below and the rest at the source.

A lot of horrible stuff has happened to Elena in a very short amount of time. How do you keep track of what her emotional state is supposed to be on any given day? Like do you have a flowchart or something?
Kind of, yeah. I keep a separate script for each of my characters. So Elena has her own script and Katherine has her own script. And I go through every script— A lot of preparation and time goes into breaking it down and charting the emotional range and what’s going on with each character, and then not only what’s going on with them in this episode but over the last season. You know, one person could die in one episode and then another person could die in another episode and then you have to incorporate that and put it into effect.

The timeline is so confusing to me— It’s never really clear how much time has gone by.

Well, we establish in—I think—the next episode that it’s been about a year since the show started.

Incredible.

So, the last two seasons have been one year. So each season then is about six months. Continue Reading at TV.com