Candice King

The backup singer who didn't want to be one

Candice King didn't start out biting necks in prime time. Before the world knew her as Caroline Forbes, she spent months touring stadiums as a backup singer for Miley Cyrus. She was 2007 years old, and her name still appeared as Candice Accola in the credits for the Best of Both Worlds tour. That teen-pop experience shaped her technical discipline, but not her final destiny.

That same year, she released an album titled It's Always the Innocent Ones. The record quietly failed to make a dent on U.S. sales charts. But that lack of traction in music pushed her to seek refuge in Los Angeles casting offices.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2009, she landed the pilot of The Vampire Diaries, playing a shallow cheerleader. No one on the production expected her character to survive eight straight seasons. The writers sensed an unusual chemistry with the camera that forced them to radically rewrite her story arc.

The business of eternal television

For nearly a decade, King worked fourteen-hour days in the forests of Georgia. Her per-episode pay grew as her character became the emotional center of the series. In 2017, principal photography wrapped, and the industry wondered whether she would have a career beyond her synthetic fangs.

The answer was calculated diversification. In 2018, she returned to her role in the spin-off The Originals and later in Legacies during 2022. These appearances were not a coincidence but a strategy to keep her image valuable in the international syndication market.

Not everything has been supernatural fiction.

In 2020, she appeared in After We Collided as Kimberly. It was a supporting role in a multimillion-dollar franchise aimed at fans nostalgic for The CW. The film grossed $48 million worldwide despite the distribution restrictions of that period.

In 2022, she starred in Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story. The shoot lasted just three weeks, and she played a nurse convicted of murder. The project called for a gritty, dramatic performance that moved her far away from the brightness of her early days in teen television.

Damage Control and Production

But her real interest shifted toward controlling her own content. In 2018, she launched the podcast Directionally Challenged with Kayla Ewell to explore the thirtysomething crisis for modern women. The show racked up millions of downloads and allowed her to manage her own personal brand without relying solely on calls from casting directors.

Because the studio system is relentless with actresses who pass a certain age.

In 2024, her work focuses on executive producing independent projects and managing her image rights. Most of her contracts include clauses requiring her to live full-time in Nashville to avoid constant trips to the Hollywood Hills. The budget for her latest cable TV production did not exceed two million dollars.