Nina Dobrev was home in Toronto over the weekend to celebrate the TIFF premiere of her horror satire, The Final Girls, at Midnight Madness. The movie (and movie within a movie) is a really fun romp, and after a day of press, she celebrated with her co-stars Malin Akerman and Taissa Farmiga at a party before the film. Nina’s dating Austin Stowell, who was there too. Inside, the two stayed pretty close and posed for selfies together, the type of cute couple photos that may never hit social media because they're private moments…if there’s such a thing anymore?
I asked Austin if he was happy to be back in Nina's hometown and he joked that "really, that would be Bulgaria" but that Toronto "loves to take credit." He schmoozed with Nina's friends, some dating back to her Degrassi days, and looked like he was having a blast. After all, Austin building momentum too. Austin might be best known for playing Ryan in Whiplash, but he's about to break out with roles in Ed Burns' TNT series Public Morals and Spielberg's upcoming Tom Hanks film, Bridge of Spies.
Maybe that premiere will be where he and Nina will make their red carpet debut? They're adorable together and she seems very happy.
Nina just took about six months off from acting post-The Vampire Diaries and you can tell she appears both relaxed and ready to work. It has to help, too, that her return to the spotlight comes with a Scream-esque comedy which earned raves at SXSW earlier this year. It also got a great reception in Toronto. In the movie, Nina plays a stuck-up bad girl who is a cross between Jessie Spano and Regina George. She, along with Max (Taissa), and a series of other friends (Alexander Ludwig, Thomas Middleditch, my girl Alia Shawkat) get sucked into Max's mom's (Malin) campy scream queen film Camp Bloodbath and have to adapt to survive, like Pleasantville on crack.
It’s a great departure for Nina, and is hopefully one in a series of many new, different roles.
