‘Vampire Diaries’ Stars Nina Dobrev And Candice Accola Open Up About Elena’s Last Episode

The season finale of “The Vampire Diaries” Season 6 was a sad one. In Nina Dobrev’s last episode, the Mystic Falls gang had to say goodbye to her character, Elena. While that involved a lot of tears onscreen, Dobrev and Candice Accola revealed that the tone was a bit lighter behind-the-scenes.

In several scenes, Elena’s sleeping body was in a casket that the group planned to store her in until Kai’s spell can be broken. It seems Dobrev got a little too comfortable in her coffin. “I’m pretty sure at one point during this scene in the finale, I had fallen into such a deep sleep that I started snoring,” Dobrev told TV Insider. “That was awkward. But everyone laughed—as family would.”

Not all of her scenes were so easy. Dobrev couldn’t just sleep through her goodbye scene with Accola, who plays Caroline. The two had some trouble staying focused though. “At first, we were giggling like slumber-party schoolgirls,” Accola revealed. “We kept trading funny stories about the six years we worked together. Then we’d get sentimental and start crying!”

It isn’t surprising that the cast and crew were kept things light on Dobrev’s last day on the “TVD” set. Dobrev previously revealed that they pulled a major prank after her last scene was filmed. “It was 2 o'clock in the morning on my last shot of my last scene – with Ian [Somerhalder] – and they asked for one more take,” the Canadian actress told People in May. “The camera operator came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you have something in your hair, let me get this out.’ And then he grabbed me, held down my arms so I couldn't move and the entire crew came up and dumped a kiddie pool of whipped cream and cake onto my head! They had decorations and Nerf guns and water guns, and I just got demolished.”

It was a fitting end for Dobrev, who played plenty of pranks throughout her six seasons of “The Vampire Diaries.” However, it might not be the end yet. Accola recently pointed out that Elena was written off with a spell rather than death to leave the door open for Dobrev to return.

“I think that’s what’s fun about this series. You never know when characters are going to leave, you never know when they’re going to come back,” Accola explained to MTV last month. “That’s been a constant for six seasons, now. So the fact that, for such a big departure, that it is left open-ended is really true to the show.”

“The Vampire Diaries” Season 7 returns to the CW on Thursday, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. EDT.