TVGuide.com: What is Katherine’s goal this season?
Plec: She sets her sights on basically making sure that the Stefan [Paul Wesley] and Elena love story hits a snag. It’s going to be fun seeing Stefan and Katherine come up against each other. Obviously it’s fun to see Damon [Ian Somerhalder] and Katherine because there’s a lot of history there, too, but the triangle becomes the square.

Villain vampire Katherine, who once turned the Salvatore brothers into sexy undead fangers, has returned to Mystic Falls — and boy, is she ready to cause some trouble. Vampire Diaries executive producer Julie Plec reveals that while the boys will discover her true identity quickly — since there was that little mix-up in the finale when Damon kissed Elena, but it was really Katherine! — the love triangle will get even more complicated in Season 2. Get the scoop on the new season below:

TVGuide.com: Nina Dobrev will be taking on two characters at the same time in the new season, playing both Elena and Katherine.
Plec: Nina is one of the nicest people in the world, and she makes the joke that Katherine is Nina on a Saturday night. Nina on a Saturday night is definitely feisty, but by no means an evil, manipulative, horrible troll. For her to be able to play both the moral center and soulful, compassionate character, and then the narcissistic, selfish, manipulative, naughty minx is big for her.

Vampire Diaries: Get ready for the rise of Katherine

TVGuide.com: What is Katherine’s goal this season?
Plec: She sets her sights on basically making sure that the Stefan [Paul Wesley] and Elena love story hits a snag. It’s going to be fun seeing Stefan and Katherine come up against each other. Obviously it’s fun to see Damon [Ian Somerhalder] and Katherine because there’s a lot of history there, too, but the triangle becomes the square.

TVGuide.com: How long will it take Stefan and Damon to figure out it’s not Elena?
Plec: They both know within the first 15 minutes of the first episode. Damon realizes he was duped, and Stefan comes face-to-face with Katherine. The fun of it is how Stefan responds to the moment, as opposed to how Damon responded to the moment.

TVGuide.com: You spent all of Season 1 leading up to Founders Day. What is the arc of Season 2?
Plec: What I loved about what Founders Day gave us is that we had this small town that was building up to its big anniversary, and the long arc of the show is that history repeats itself. We’re going to do something like that this year, but we haven’t landed on exactly what it is.

TVGuide.com: What came with the decision to kill off vampire Anna (Malese Jow) in the finale?
Plec: That is something, believe it or not, that Kevin [Williamson] and I never faltered on. We introduced the character knowing that her exit would [have] the most profound impact on Jeremy and Damon. For Damon, it was a glimpse of his humanity in that moment — he wanted to help her. We definitely knew she was there to make our heroes grow to a new level. We did it from a pure place and did it for a real reason.

Watch full episodes of The Vampire Diaries

TVGuide.com: Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) is now so immersed in the vampire world, so what will we see for him this season?
Plec: We refuse to say what happens to Jeremy other than the fact that he’s “alive.” Regardless of that, the most important thing for Jeremy is that he’s going to come out the other side of this with a much, much deeper and much stronger sense of himself. He’s going to be asking what his purpose is on this planet, so to speak. It’s all because of all the loss: parents, Vicki, Anna, and then his own desire to end his own human life.

TVGuide.com: How close will you stay to the novels as you carry on?
Plec: The deeper we get into the series, ironically, the more we’re going to be taking from the books. That’s cool because we strayed so far so quickly, just by definition of trying to shape a good story in the right way for television. To find ourselves naturally returning to the source material and the villains that you met, it’s kind of awesome.

They basically talk about the last sequence of the Season One finale and its corollary.

Ian confirmed to Hollywood Crush that Damon thought he was kissing Elena and when he learns it was actually Katherine (which he will!), it won’t be pretty.

In a two-part video interview with EW’s Michael Ausiello, the Vampire Diaries cast and crew chat up about the show and also give us some spoilers for the upcoming season

It features an exclusive two-part interview with the cast and producers of The CW’s second-year vampire phenom that is so insanely scoopy (particularly part 2 with EPs Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec) I almost feel a little guilty posting it. I said almost.

Check out the videos here.

During Comic-Con weekend in San Diego, I was treated to an exclusive sit-down interview with Vampire Diaries executive producers Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec to discuss some of the Season 2 secrets they’re plotting.

TV Guide Magazine: Your first season included so many great theme episodes — like the bloody Halloween party and the Miss Mystic Falls pageant. Can we expect more of these events?
Williamson: The CW is very event-oriented, but I was initially very resistant of it. Last season was all built around Founder’s Day. And this year we’re considering three events as our big lead-up to the season finale.
Plec: We do have a carnival in our second episode, and in the third episode, Elena and Damon and Alaric travel together to Duke University, where Isobel, Alaric’s wife and Elena’s birth mother, met and lived together. She studied the paranormal and was an expert in the anthropology department which is how she disguised her vampire research. She had become obsessed with Mystic Falls and dug deep into the history of the town. So on their trip, they dig into her dusty files to see what she may have known that they don’t know.

TV Guide Magazine: What about another Halloween episode?
Williamson: We’re not looking at the show as if a whole year has passed, but we will have an episode timed to Halloween, which will be a huge masquerade ball that we’re now thinking of as a possible two-parter. S–t will hit the fan.

TV Guide Magazine: There will be one big murder?
Plec: Yes. At least.
Williamson: It’s getting harder and harder to look at our wall of death where we have photos of people like Anna (Malese Jow) and Bonnie’s grandmother (Jasmine Guy).
Plec: And Lexi (Arielle Kebbel)…

TV Guide Magazine: I was quite upset about Bonnie losing her Gran. Will we meet Bonnie’s parents?
Plec: People ask, ‘Why doesn’t Bonnie have parents?’ Well, Bonnie does have parents. She lives with her father, who we have not met on camera, but she does not have a relationship with her mother. These are characters we may possibly explore this year. Bonnie comes from a long line of Bennett witches and mom is out there somewhere…
Williamson: True Blood actually did with LaFayette’s mother (revealing her in a mental institution) what we wanted to do with Bonnie’s mother, even though we came up with that idea a year ago.
Plec: That happens all the time.
Williamson: Sometimes we’ll write dialogue and Nina Dobrev (Elena) will say, ‘You do realize that’s exactly what was said in Twilight, right?’ And I’ll tell her, ‘No, I had no idea.’ Vampire stories have been told for centuries so stories are going to overlap. I just don’t want to do it in the same way or too close to when the others do it.

TV Guide Magazine: Speaking of which, both Twilight and True Blood have plunged heavily into werewolf territory, which you are about to do in your new season.
Plec: We actually talked about this a lot, because we didn’t want to be the third to bring something to the table. But it’s in the Vampire Diaries books and the character of Tyler Lockwood could not and should not exist without this werewolf arc. We started laying the groundwork for this story all last season, so to negate that genre element would have been to negate the entire Tyler character.
Williamson: Every vampire story has a werewolf nearby. It’s just the way it is.

TV Guide Magazine: What will your werewolves look like?
Williamson: Wolves, and we’ll show them transform. But not right away. And I think on True Blood their werewolves transform at will, whereas Tyler is bound by the full moon. Once a month he can’t control it.

TV Guide Magazine: And now it’s looking as though True Blood is about to introduce werepanthers.
Williamson: Really? Well we’ll introduce were-armadillos!

TV Guide Magazine: One thing Elena hasn’t considered yet is her potentially having to sacrifice motherhood if she lives forever with a Salvatore vampire, because your vampires can’t conceive, can they?
Plec: No they cannot.
Williamson: One of the things we’ll see Elena deal with this year are mortality issues. She’s dating a guy who’s never going to get old and she’s never going to be able to have children.

TV Guide Magazine: There’s lots of gayness going on over at True Blood. It surprises me that there’s no suggestion of homosexuality on a Kevin Williamson show.
Williamson: I’m happy to bring a gay character in when it fits the story. Caroline’s father is gay. He has a boyfriend. We’ve already set him up as a Founding Family member.
Plec: And it’s quite possible we’ll be meeting Caroline’s dad this year. This is going to be a big season for Caroline’s relationship with her mom, the sheriff.

Sounds like some good stuff is planned. And it seems we can at least breath a sigh of relief that Caroline — last seen bleeding internally — will survive her emergency surgery. As for the other cliffhangers, we’ll all have to stay tuned until the Sept. 9 season premiere to find out if Jeremy becomes a vampire, if Uncle John survives and if Elena exposes Katherine as her scheming impostor.

PW: You caused a little Twitter-storm when you wrote “Just got the new script for Vampire Diaries!!”
Kat: Oh yea! I love the fans, I love that it’s been months since it went off the air and they’re still chomping at the bit for the second season, which by the way is insane.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the freshest one of all” is the first line Kat Graham purrs on “Sassy,” the first official song off her upcoming debut CD and a track that promises great things from the “Vampire Diaries” actress.

Although by this time next year it’s entirely possible “TV star” will get bumped a few notches down her resume totem pole since Kat not only has that hotly fan-ticipated album due out in the first quarter of 2011, but the lead role in “Honey 2″ — a movie that has garnered more interest, pre-release, than the Jessica Alba-led original has in the seven years since its debut.

Since “Sassy” has become an iPod staple since it dropped last month, I figured it time to ring up the divine Kat. Especially since she was finally free to talk about her dance-tastic sequel and had just read the first script from “Vampire Diaries” second season!

PW: I’m addicted to “Sassy,” how far along are you in the recording process?
Kat Graham: Thank you, I’m so happy people like it! We’re not quite done yet, but we wanted to put stuff out so you could get a taste so when I drop an album, you’re not like, “wait where did all this pop fabulousness come from?” I’ve been constantly recording – when I wasn’t shooting “Vampire Diaries,” I’d fly home for 16 hours and record as much as I possibly could. Then I’d come back to Atlanta & record out here. The process never really stopped for me.

PW: What made you pick “Sassy” as your official debut?
Kat: I like to see what the fans like and what they’re gravitating towards – “Sassy” was on the blogs and I was pushing it independently — I noticed it getting all this traction, so the fans decided – at least in my mind – “Sassy” would be the first single, or the first official song from me as an artist.

PW: Is that what we can expect from the full CD?
Kat: Yea, that’s really the sound of the album – old school Janet with a modern production behind it. Taking it back to the early 90’s with a melodic, playful sound. And “Sassy” has always been my sound — the way I sing, the way I rap, the way I live. Anyone who knows me knows what I’m about – how much I’m into empowerment, equal rights and everyone just loving themselves.

PW: Rocking a backwards suit on the single cover is a bold move in this post-Celine Dion world.
Kat: [laughs] I know, but you know what – I am so out there with my clothes. That’s actually my jacket. That shoot was such a rush. I just went into my closet, grabbed the jacket and just thought, “let’s’ put it on backwards.” It worked! But that is definitely a taste of what’s to come, fashion-wise.

PW: So we can expect some seriously eye-catching tour couture?
Kat: Oh yea, always. I am more vintage than I a high fashion. I love Lady GaGa, but I would never try and go into her lane. She’s brilliant. But what I do love is the image of Grace Jones, David Bowie and Janet. The sound of my music is 90’s dance pop meets future, so I want to incorporate that in my fashion.

PW: Any thoughts on the album title?
Kat: Maybe a self-titled CD. I always loved those growing up. Maybe something about a New Era, or the birth of something. I know we’re going to drop as a fun little viral thing that remake I did of “Cold Hearted Snake” by Paula Abdul. And we’ll do a cool dance video too, something like her video.

PW: So you’ll storm a dance audition and have a clothed orgy?
Kat: Absolutely [laughs]! I’m obsessed with that song & video – I’m dying to remake it. Eventually you’ll see it.

PW: What’s the song you’re most excited to get out into the public?
Kat: There’s a song called “I Want It All” – it’s a mix of Cher and Gwen Stefani. It’s an anthem song, which I’m all about, and similar to “Sassy” in that it’s really empowering. Belting the hook, very sexy and I definitely think that’ll be out before the end of the year, or as the first single towards March-ish of next year.

PW: Any chance some of your tunes will end up in “Honey 2?”
Kat: Yea, we’re discussing that right now – it would be incredible. I wasn’t expecting this movie to turn out as good as it did. When I started seeing all the stages being built and the character arcs – it just turned out so incredible, I’m so excited to see it.

PW: How does it differ from “Honey” with Jessica Alba?
Kat: I loved “Honey” – it was the first time you saw a movie follow a young woman on her dance journey. It wasn’t about one guy or a crew. But what I love about this script is it’s grimier, it’s grittier. It’s about this Puerto Rican chick from Brooklyn that is just getting out of juvie. Her dancing is tougher, her life is tougher — she has more to lose and everything to win. This girl’s fight was what drew me to the movie. I had to get that story out, I had to do that character. Our “Honey” is very different. The first one set an incredible bar, but I believe we raise it.

PW: You caused a little Twitter-storm when you wrote “Just got the new script for Vampire Diaries!!”
Kat: Oh yea! I love the fans, I love that it’s been months since it went off the air and they’re still chomping at the bit for the second season, which by the way is insane.

PW: Does the first episode pick up right where we left off with Elena walking into the kitchen?
Kat: Yep [laughs], it’s pretty insane. And I will say that Bonnie is really, really tough in the first episode back. She is not playing around. Bonnie will eff you up if you mess with her! She is also going to have to deal with Katherine. And that’s a whole new beast. Literally.

PW: In the finale she made a very ominous threat to Stefan — will season two see her sticking to that?
Kat: Yea. She really means that – she’s not going to help them any more.

PW: And I would imagine her powers will only continue to grow?
Kat: Oh yea, she’s going to become even stronger. But it’s important she stay vulnerable too. You don’t want someone to raise hell with no motivation behind it. You can never forget the loss of a loved one and I don’t think she’ll ever get over losing her grams. That was her rock to this world. She wouldn’t do anything simply out of a hate for vampires. I don’t think she could ever justify that.