The Vampire Diaries: Leslie-Anne Huff Talks Rayna Cruz and Powerful Women [Exclusive Interview]

After centuries of slaying vampires, it might be time for Rayna Cruz to finally rest.

We caught up with Leslie-Anne Huff, who plays the vampire huntress that’s captivated the fandom of The Vampire Diaries, to talk about Rayna, slaying vamps, and what working with Julie Plec is REALLY like. (Spoiler Alert: She’s pretty amazing.)

While Huff won’t tell us whether or not Rayna is hanging up her hunter hat before the season’s end (“My lips are sealed!”) she does admit that her alter-ego is at her wit’s end.

“After hundreds of years of killing vampires and not trusting them — and believing that they’re evil, its kind of hard to believe that she’d just all of a sudden, you know, trust a vampire. That being said, she’s kind of out of sorts. She’s not really herself,” Huff said.

Fans of the long-running series will remember that Damon, in an attempt to save Bonnie, offered a trade with Rayna: her own life for Bonnie’s, and tempted the huntress with the luxury of finally being at rest, something that anyone would want after focusing on one thing for so long. But as always, there’s a catch. The Salvatores need to kill vampires. Like, a LOT of vampires.

“I do think that there’s a part of her that does want to rest. That can be the only reason why she would have agreed to this – to even consider the deal. This is a woman whose lived hundreds of years doing one thing and one thing only and never having a break, so I think a rest would probably be great for her.”

Huff went on to say that, “She’s considering the deal. She wanted [the Salvatores] to kind of like prove, to see if they could even pull any of this off, knowing in her mind that there’s hundreds, thousands, more vampires out there that need to be killed, need to be taken down.”

We’d have a hard time trusting vampires too, even ones as disarmingly handsome as Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley.

While she’s only recently caught up with the Mystic Falls crew in preparation for her role on the series, Huff DOES have an opinion when it comes to the show’s greatest debate: Stelena vs. Delena: “Oh my goodness…I have to go with the fans, and from the temperature I’ve taken from the fans, Delena is it!”

Speaking of the handsome leading men, Huff is the latest addition to join them and the rest of the tight-knit cast who’ve been working together for over seven years.

Huff described what it was like to be the new kid on the block, saying, “I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous about it, and like anybody, I just wanted to fit in. And so I came into it a little nervous but I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. They were so nice to me, and so welcoming.”

The Vampire Diaries family would be nothing without its creator, Julie Plec, and Huff was honored to have the opportunity to work with the woman who she described as “powerful.”

“Just being around [Plec] was a great privilege because she’s so powerful. I mean — I say that, but she’s so down to earth, and relaxed, and chill. And I think that that’s what’s so powerful about her. I think there was a sense, at least in my mind, like, ‘Ah! Julie’s coming! The boss is gonna be here!’ I wanted to be on my best behavior, and I wanted to impress her. And at the end of the day, it was just Julie, and she was so cool. Working with her and being directed by her was great… she knew exactly what she wanted, and she knew how to communicate it to me. There I was working with the creator of the show, who knows everything and just to be, hopefully, delivering what she wanted was so cool.”

Among other lessons that she’s learned from the Queen of The CW, Huff said that one of the biggest things she’s taken away from Plec is how to be powerful.

“To be powerful you don’t have to push it, you know? You don’t have to be aggressive and yell at people. [Julie] was so much fun to be around, and yet so powerful and so great at what she does,” Huff explained.

Huff is powerful in her own right, though admittedly not quite as tough as Rayna. “I’m definitely not as much of a bad-ass, or even as furious of a person, as Rayna is.”

Okay, so she’s not a bad-ass. But Huff shows her own powerful side by having a huge heart.

Six years ago, on a trip to the Philippines to learn more about her family heritage, Huff saw an opportunity to help others.

“I met this community that had been affected by toxic waste in their water, not too much dissimilar from what was going on in Flint, recently. And so a small group and I got together and formed this non-profit to help provide free medical care for some of the children who we met,” Huff explained.

While that non-profit, Hand and Heart, now functions solely out of the Philippines and is no longer international, Huff is proud of her work with them, and of the care they were able to help families receive.

Would she take part in something similar in the future? Of course! “I just have such a heart for that, and I would love to be a part of fund-raising and helping people in that way.”

So what’s next for Huff after this season of The Vampire Diaries wraps? A summer full of laughter!

“I’m going to be joining The Sunday Company at the Groundlings Theater, which is a pretty well-known theater here in L.A. Starting in May, I’ll be part of a weekly show. We write all new material every week, so we’re performing our own sketches which is really exciting and its a show every week for the next six months,” Huff said.

Wait, comedy? That’s a very different tone than the intense drama that Huff has been a part of on The Vampire Diaries!

So we have to ask, which does she prefer?

“There’s nothing like getting a laugh,” Huff explained. “But I have to say I like them both equally. I’m just somebody who loves to entertain people, I love to tell a good story, and sometimes that’s funny and sometimes it’s not. In terms of stretching myself, I like the challenge of both. Making people laugh is really, really hard. At the same time, bringing a character to life in a realistic way, in a dramatic, heightened way is also really challenging…so I love them both equally.”

With her great sense of humor, passion for her work, and her huge heart, we’re certain that we can expect great things from Leslie-Anne Huff in the future.

Be sure to tune in for The Vampire Diaries‘ latest episode, airing Friday, April 29^th 8/7c on The CW, and see Leslie-Anne Huff in action!