A little background: On Aug. 22, police responded to several phone calls about a group of women who were allegedly flashing motorists and hanging off a bridge in Forsyth, Ga. When police arrived at the scene, they found four actresses from Vampire Diaries — Candice Accola, Sara Canning, Nina Dobrev and Ewell — and a photographer, Tyler Shields. (Another actress who does not appear on the show, Krystal Vayda, was also on the scene.) Officers looking through the group’s pics found “numerous photographs of the females hanging, sitting, and straddling the bridge,” according to a report by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. As EW previously reported, the six were taken into police custody, paid a fine, and were released soon after.

But, according to Ewell, the incident was more innocent than it was made out to be. The actress says while on a road trip with her castmates (the show shoots nearby), the group decided to stop to take pictures on a bridge. That’s when they were rushed by Monroe County cops. “They were like, ‘We’re getting calls that people are flashing,’” Ewell says. “And we’re like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. The only thing that’s flashing is our camera.’” The actress says that after showing police their photos, the group was asked to follow officials to the police station, where they were ticketed for loitering on a public walkway.

So why did motorists allegedly think the actresses were exposing themselves? “I have no idea,” Ewell says. “We are not the type of girls who flash our breasts. In all honesty, the size of my breasts aren’t necessarily something people would be interested in. It’s so ridiculous. I would never do that.” (As for those rumors that the group was drinking? Not true, says Ewell: “I mean, this happened at 11 am in the morning.”)

But Ewell and the cast is still trying to focus on the positive, regardless of whatever bad press the situation created. “We’re trying to straighten everything out and be happy that we’re on a fabulous TV show,” she says. “As a cast, we have all worked so incredibly hard to get here. We don’t want people to think of us this way.”

Source: Hollywood Insider

A quintet of young TV actresses was arrested last month on disorderly conduct charges after they allegedly participated in a photo shoot while hanging over a bridge above a Georgia interstate.

The women, four of whom star in The Vampire Diaries, a show debuting tonight on the CW network, were nabbed on August 22 after cops received numerous 911 calls about “females hanging from” the Rumble Road Bridge in Smarr, a town about 65 miles south of Atlanta (where the drama is filmed).

The women were also reportedly “flashing motorists” driving northbound on Interstate 75. According to a Monroe County Sheriff’s Office report, the actresses were being shot by photographer Tyler Shields, whose digital cameras were inspected by a cop who discovered numerous images showing “the females hanging, sitting and straddling the bridge.” One photo, a deputy noted, “even showed one female being held by her legs by the other females, as if they were trying to throw her over.”

As seen in the mug shots on the following pages, the arrestees included Nina Dobreva, 20, the lead actress in The Vampire Diaries. Dobreva is pictured below. Dobreva’s co-stars, Candice Accola, 22, and Kayla Ewell, 24, were also popped (Dobreva, Accola, and Ewell are featured prominently on the CW web site and in ads and commercials promoting the show). Actresses Krystal Vayda (who is not in the cast) and Sara Canning, 22, and photographer Tyler Shields, 27, were also collared. The six arrestees were booked at the Monroe County lockup where each posed for a mug shot.

Shields laughed when TSG told him how cops claimed that one actress was dangled from the bridge. “They have a flair for the drama,” he said. “I didn’t Suge Knight the cast of ‘The Vampire Diaries.’ The photographer, who said the group “never did anything remotely bad” during the shoot, told TSG that he paid $4000 in fines to settle the charges against the group. An image from the Georgia bridge shoot can be found on Shields’s web site.

Source: The Smoking Gun