As Ian Somerhalder revealed in the above Q&A, the cast endured “the most insane anxiety issues because there was so much caffeine” while working on Season 1 of “The Vampire Diaries,” due to downing entirely too many cups of tea during shoots. And the explanation for all that consumption has to do with keeping actors sober while doing repeated shots of scenes involving repeated shots of a certain alcoholic beverage. As anyone familiar with this series can tell you, the show features almost as many scenes of actors sucking down whiskey as it does actors sucking down blood. And so, in the name of sobriety, iced tea became the on-camera substitute of choice.
But as a result, Somerhalder said, “You’re drinking 20 to 30 cups of tea, so by the end of the day you’re, like, ‘Ahh!'” He added that all the tea-swilling even affected their off-set lives, saying, “We didn’t [sleep].” After that initial season, however, the cast and crew came up with a common-sense solution. As Wesley said, they “switched to decaf, so we felt a lot better.” Now, Somerhalder and Wesley get to drink the real brown stuff day to day, as the two recently launched their own whiskey: Brother’s Bond Bourbon.
