Ian Somerhalder is the second cast member to direct an episode of The Vampire Diaries (2009). The first was Paul Wesley in the season 5 episode Resident Evil and in the season 6 episode Woke Up With a Monster.
The title of this episode, 'The Downward Spiral,' comes from a 1994 song by the band Nine Inch Nails.
Annie Wersching (Lily Salvatore) plays Ian Somerhalder (Damon Salvatore) and Paul Wesley's (Stefan Salvatore) mother but is actually only one year and eight months older than Somerhalder and five years older than Wesley.
When asked in an interview with Variety how they choose what episodes the cast members gets to direct, Julie Plec said: "We wanted [the cast] to have this opportunity, but we also wanted them to take it seriously and wanted them to understand it's not just like, oh you're the star of the show so you get to direct. We made a bootcamp list of things that they need to have accomplished before. Even if we assigned the episode, we would take it away if they didn't run through the proper hoops -- sitting down with the studio, prepping an episode from start to finish, going to L.A. and sitting with the editors, shadowing directors on set -- we had a full-on list and both of them [Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder] really rose to that challenge and made sure that they really fulfilled those obligations."