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" Dracula is still an insanely popular story, so we&amp;#039;re very excited to see what Sky Living and NBC have done with the age-old tale of the vampire! Jonathan Rhys Meyers is playing the famous blood-sucker (and also his human form Vlad and the American he&amp;#039;s pretending to be, Alexander Grayson) while Arrow&amp;#039;s Jessica De Gouw is Mina, who just so happens to look like Vlad&amp;#039;s late wife. Yikes! Also in the mix are Merlin&amp;#039;s Katie McGrath as Mina&amp;#039;s bestie Lucy Westenra, Oliver Jackson-Cohen as her boyfriend Jonathan Harker and Victoria Smurfit as badass vampire-hunter Lady Jayne. We caught up with them all at the show&amp;#039;s launch and they told us everything we need to know about the show, so read on for news about fangs, gore, sex, blood, and much, much more...  Vlad aka Dracula aka Grayson has a plan for revenge... and it&amp;#039;s spoilt by a woman. Thanks a lot, Mina. &amp;quot;He knows exactly what he wants - he knows exactly what he&amp;#039;s going to do,&amp;quot; Jonathan told us. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s once he sees Mina Murray&amp;#039;s face and it&amp;#039;s the face of [his former wife] Ilona, that&amp;#039;s the trauma... There&amp;#039;s a conflict. The plan has been disrupted somewhat. Because that one little tiny little bit of human that&amp;#039;s left in him has suddenly been awakened, something that hasn&amp;#039;t been awakened in a long time.&amp;quot; Honestly, girls. That&amp;#039;ll cause conflict with Van Helsing, too - he and Dracula are actually supposed to be working together to bring down the shady Order of the Dragon, but whether that works... Well, as Jonathan says: &amp;quot;Van Helsing is like, &amp;#039;We have to stick to the plan&amp;#039; but the plan has changed. Because my heart, something dead, has suddenly been slightly awoken.&amp;quot; Watch out Jonathan, too - Vlad/Dracula/Grayson could well be using him. &amp;quot;I can help him climb the ladder, I can give him a home, I can give him a job, I can give him good clothes, I can keep her close,&amp;quot; Jonathan teases. There&amp;#039;s a bit of boyfriend/best friend jealousy going on with Lucy and Jonathan. We&amp;#039;ll be straight with you - Lucy isn&amp;#039;t too happy that her BFF Mina is dating Jonathan. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s getting my girl now, isn&amp;#039;t he?&amp;quot; Katie pouted. &amp;quot;I think what you&amp;#039;ve got to remember about Lucy is her whole life is Mina. She&amp;#039;s her best friend, and this is the person she feels closest to, and I think Jonathan has always gotten in the way of that. I think if Lucy could have Mina all to herself she would, but obviously she can&amp;#039;t... And while I&amp;#039;m sure she doesn&amp;#039;t hate Jonathan, she&amp;#039;s just continuously annoyed by him.&amp;quot; Oliver had a few things to say about what Katie called a &amp;quot;snippy, antagonistic relationship&amp;quot;, too: &amp;quot;Lucy points out the obvious to Jonathan - that he is from quite a tricky background, he has no money. He actually doesn&amp;#039;t really fit in and he&amp;#039;s pretending to fit in. Harker is incredibly irritated by Lucy because she has got everything and she&amp;#039;s sorted and she&amp;#039;s fine and there he is in the trenches trying to make his life work and trying to keep the woman he loves with him.&amp;quot; Jonathan and Dracula may well meet. Oliver teased us with the whole &amp;quot;can&amp;#039;t say too much&amp;quot; line, but he did reveal that Harker goes through a &amp;quot;massive transformation&amp;quot; throughout the series. &amp;quot;The other thing is that in the original story, it&amp;#039;s Harker versus Dracula with Mina in the middle and the two of them fighting it out, so that&amp;#039;s eventually what happens,&amp;quot; he hinted. &amp;quot;But I won&amp;#039;t spoil how it&amp;#039;s been rewritten.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s no clear hero or villain in the show. Normally, Harker is written as a bit of a heroic figure, but Oliver told us that he wanted him to be &amp;quot;flawed&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;There needs to be something dangerous about him that keeps Mina in this sort of limbo,&amp;quot; he explained. And Katie explained that you can root for any of the characters. &amp;quot;Everyone is a hero and a villain at the same time,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Even Mina has got darker elements.&amp;quot; Sometimes, the heroes and villains even swap in a single scene, as Oliver told us: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a scene about a minute long, and you&amp;#039;re on one person&amp;#039;s side and then you flip to the other person&amp;#039;s side... It definitely keeps you on your toes.&amp;quot;  Fangs are not sexy. You might think that Dracula&amp;#039;s fangs would make him sexy and dangerous, but actually, Katie told us that Jonathan just &amp;quot;sounded like Donald Duck&amp;quot; when he was wearing them. In fact, Jonathan - who called them &amp;quot;a f**king nightmare&amp;quot; - explained that he had to re-record all his vocals wearing them because they gave him a lisp. &amp;quot;It would be, &amp;#039;Yeth, I&amp;#039;m Dracula, I&amp;#039;m the printh of darkneth&amp;#039;,&amp;quot; he admitted. &amp;quot;It all got very camp.&amp;quot; Mind you, Jessica - who got the giggles when they had a fangy scene together - called the lisp &amp;quot;cute&amp;quot; and Jonathan did have an idea for taking lisping Dracula to the world. &amp;quot;It would work in another production, maybe,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Maybe in a musical. Maybe if I took this on the road: &amp;#039;Dracula! He&amp;#039;s spectacular!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Mind you, the fangs are sexy enough that Dracula decides to reserve them for the ladies... meaning he&amp;#039;s also a bit of an ass-kicker (Jonathan was even trained by the sensei who taught Robert Downey Jr and - at one point - throws an unlucky assailant through a train window!). &amp;quot;I kill someone on a rooftop and it&amp;#039;s as a soldier - I slit his throat,&amp;quot; Jonathan teased. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to bite his neck. That&amp;#039;s sexual... I&amp;#039;m getting rid of someone that I want to get rid of, so I wanted to hold on to that soldier as much as possible. Someone who&amp;#039;d been on a battlefield, someone who&amp;#039;d been in pain.&amp;quot; Get ready for a risqu\u00E9 watch... One sexy scene involving Lady Jayne and Grayson at the opera in episode one is a bit of an eye-opener (&amp;quot;That was not for the faint-hearted to play,&amp;quot; Victoria joked) and there&amp;#039;s only more to come. &amp;quot;At one point we&amp;#039;re just thrown in a carriage and told, &amp;#039;Go for it&amp;#039;,&amp;quot; she teased. &amp;quot;We were very bruised coming out of that.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s not just Grayson that is the subject of Lady Jayne&amp;#039;s advances, either: &amp;quot;I get to do some things with Katie McGrath that every man on the planet would like to do.&amp;quot; Um, we might need a minute. Lady Jayne and Grayson have, um, a love-hate relationship. It&amp;#039;s always going to be the way when a vampire and a vampire-hunter become lovers, isn&amp;#039;t it? Lady Jayne&amp;#039;s certainly taken with Grayson (&amp;quot;I think he&amp;#039;s the first man that&amp;#039;s challenged her and yet she&amp;#039;s found deeply sexy and passionate&amp;quot;), but expect some serious violence between them too. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a great scene where Lady Jayne and myself are standing and we&amp;#039;re just punching each other - whack, whack, whack, whack, whack,&amp;quot; Jonathan revealed. &amp;quot;The blood is just spurting out - you see teeth and everything popping out of her mouth.&amp;quot; As for Victoria, she described the scene as &amp;quot;such fun&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;We wanted it to be lovers but warriors... If he&amp;#039;s going to hit me, I&amp;#039;m going to hit him back!&amp;quot;  This ain&amp;#039;t your standard vampire story... This might be Dracula, but Katie told us that it&amp;#039;s not about vampires. Wait, what? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about the relationships between all the people, and the fact that one of them is this semi-supernatural being is actually such a small part of the story,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;The story&amp;#039;s about revenge and it&amp;#039;s about love and it&amp;#039;s about conflict and it&amp;#039;s about all these people finding each other through everything.&amp;quot; In fact, she thinks that&amp;#039;s what makes it different from Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries et al: &amp;quot;You never really get the idea of Grayson&amp;#039;s thirst for blood. You get his need for revenge and his love of Mina.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, Jonathan acknowledged that people are &amp;quot;a little bit drained&amp;quot; (!) from vampire stories, but while he thinks True Blood and Twilight are &amp;quot;wonderful&amp;quot;, Dracula is after a different audience. &amp;quot;We looked at vampires and said, &amp;#039;Suffering&amp;#039;,&amp;quot; he revealed. &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t for kids. This isn&amp;#039;t for 14 and 15-year-olds. We don&amp;#039;t want that audience... We&amp;#039;re looking for an adult audience. An audience that knows what it&amp;#039;s like to be divorced, to lose a child, to lose love, to lose a job. We&amp;#039;re looking for people who actually can understand what loss is really about because this is what my Dracula is really about.&amp;quot; Plus - no stakes. But don&amp;#039;t worry - lots and lots of blood. This is an unusual Dracula in more than one way, actually - there are no stakes, for one thing. &amp;quot;We decided that in order to kill a vampire the heads have to come off,&amp;quot; Victoria explained. &amp;quot;If a vampire&amp;#039;s a young vampire in the sense that it&amp;#039;s only been turned recently, they die with blood and guts. But it it&amp;#039;s an old vampire, if it&amp;#039;s 400-years-old, then they&amp;#039;re dust.&amp;quot; That means vampire-hunting Lady Jayne is fiddling around with kukuri and broadswords (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m an old hand at decapitations,&amp;quot; she told us.) And expect plenty of gore: &amp;quot;This show with the violence and the sex, it really hits the roof with what network TV can do,&amp;quot; Jessica teased. In fact, Jonathan even used more blood than the producers originally wanted. &amp;quot;[My makeup artist] would turn his back and I would take the bottle and put it in the back of my throat, so that when I bit people the blood started to spurt out, and I allowed myself to spray myself in it,&amp;quot; he explained. Oo-er! Don&amp;#039;t worry too much though - we also found out from Victoria that the blood (which was genuinely called Bloody Marvellous) tasted of liquorice: &amp;quot;By the end of the day you&amp;#039;d be so jagged because it&amp;#039;s so sugary.&amp;quot; ... And it ain&amp;#039;t your standard period drama, either. Don&amp;#039;t expect drawn-out scenes in drawing rooms and po-faced prattling - Jonathan, who produced the show, made sure it was snappy. &amp;quot;I just don&amp;#039;t believe you can do a period piece and everybody is stiff and walking around stiff,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s bulls**t&amp;#039;. If you were here in London 100 years ago and you walked one mile down the road to Whitehall, it was Sodom and Gomorrah, people f**king in the streets. So I wanted to give that element of fast pace.&amp;quot; He explained that he wanted something &amp;quot;visceral and feral&amp;quot;, or, in other words &amp;quot;not something that was just boring and just another f**king period piece where everybody&amp;#039;s sitting in a drawing room and it&amp;#039;s very stiff&amp;quot;. So there.  Katie&amp;#039;s gone blonde! Yep, if you&amp;#039;re used to seeing Katie as &amp;quot;raven-haired evil people&amp;quot; like Merlin&amp;#039;s Morgana (her words, not ours), you might not even recognise her at first in her blonde wig. But she explained that it actually made her act in a new way. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d put the blonde wig on and not only did I put the blonde wig on and people treated me differently, I act differently,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;Lucy has an entirely different walk from me.&amp;quot; As for Oliver, he noticed the difference: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s this really long corridor with all of our dressing rooms in it, and you would hear Katie walk in and half an hour later you&amp;#039;d then hear Lucy walk out. It&amp;#039;s hilarious.&amp;quot; But whether you&amp;#039;ll actually like Lucy - a &amp;quot;slightly saucier version&amp;quot; of Katie&amp;#039;s previous roles - is another matter. &amp;quot;Lucy&amp;#039;s one of those characters that you will either detest or adore,&amp;quot; she teased. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll either understand what she&amp;#039;s doing or you&amp;#039;ll want her dead.&amp;quot; Lady Jayne takes her vampire-hunting very seriously. To the extent that she keeps a vampire in a cage in her basement &amp;quot;for practice&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s sort of the flipside of Dracula in a way, because she&amp;#039;s got the dark and she&amp;#039;s got the brutality and she&amp;#039;s got the passion - she just isn&amp;#039;t superhuman,&amp;quot; Victoria explained. &amp;quot;What was really important was that you knew that when I&amp;#039;m fighting vampires, if a vampire gets me I bleed and I get got and it hurts, because I&amp;#039;m a woman, but I&amp;#039;m going to train. She&amp;#039;s got to work at this... I love the fact that she&amp;#039;s constantly having to work at it to make sure that she doesn&amp;#039;t lose her edge.&amp;quot; But Lady Jayne isn&amp;#039;t all hard and cold - after all, she&amp;#039;s going to fall in love (and get hurt, obviously). &amp;quot;The softness comes out as what she really wants she can&amp;#039;t have,&amp;quot; Victoria said. &amp;quot;You start seeing this more broken woman. Only briefly, because she has to maintain [her image] at all times, but you do get a sense of that heartbreak and vulnerability. You don&amp;#039;t mess with a badass scorned!&amp;quot; SPOILER: Dracula is going to lose. Deal with it. Jonathan tells us Dracula (and his love for Mina) is always going to be &amp;quot;doomed&amp;quot; (and he says that &amp;quot;heroes must die otherwise they&amp;#039;re not going to be heroes&amp;quot;). &amp;quot;Being dead inside but still living is the ultimate suffering, and then having to feed on blood is the ultimate addiction,&amp;quot; Jonathan says. &amp;quot;Something he can never suffer from - there&amp;#039;s no meeting he can go to in the world where he can solve this problem because this is a problem that has been with him for centuries and will be with him for centuries. He must lose. Morality demands it. But of course he moves the chess pieces where he can gain ground, lose ground, gain ground, lose ground.&amp;quot; But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean you&amp;#039;re not going to feel sad about that. &amp;quot;As an audience member, even though Jonathan&amp;#039;s said he has to lose, I think you want anything but that,&amp;quot; Jessica admitted. &amp;quot;You see moments of fragility and vulnerability and humanity and that&amp;#039;s the bit that as an audience you go, &amp;#039;Ugh!&amp;#039; You just want Dracula to win.&amp;quot; Dracula premieres tonight (October 25) on NBC in the US and on October 31 on Sky Living in the UK. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/feature/a524462/dracula-jonathan-rhys-meyers-and-the-stars-on-what-you-need-to-know/>