Creator Julie Plec on ‘The Girls on the Bus’ and future of’Vampire Diaries’

She’s on the move. 

Creator-executive producer Julie Plec, best known for teen supernatural dramas such as “The Vampire Diaries,” and its spinoff shows “The Originals” and “Legacies,” has moved on to less magical fare with the Max series “The Girls on the Bus.” 

“I like writing about emotions,” Plec told The Post. 

“I like making people feel things, and I have found in my career, when you write in a young adult space, people are more open to having those raw feelings. So to me, the young adult space will be where I ground my heart.

“But, the more I can get away with making people have all the feels in more adult storytelling, the more I’m going to do it.”

Now streaming (with new episodes out Thursdays) and co-created by Plec and Amy Chozick, “The Girls on the Bus” follows four female reporters covering the presidential campaign of front-runner Caroline Walker (Joanna Gleason). There’s idealistic Sadie McCarthy (Melissa Benoist, “Supergirl”); seasoned veteran Grace Gordon Greene (Carla Gugino); conservative TV correspondent Kimberlyn Kendrick (Christina Elmore); and social media influencer Lola Rahaii (Natasha Behnam).

“I love Grace so much, because she reminds me of all the badass female producers I worked with, coming up in the business,” said Plec. 

Even though the show is loosely based on Chozick’s 2018 memoir, “Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling,” the presidential campaign is fictionalized, which is on purpose, Plec said. 

“The premise we had at the beginning was nobody wants to relitigate the 2016 election. And nobody wants to acknowledge the world we’re currently living in,” said Plec. 

“But there’s so much intrigue in the political circus — we thought, ‘How do we capture the frenzy of that, without having to live in this space of a post-Trump/Clinton universe?’ Our touchstone all along the way was a nice marriage of Jim Brooks and Cameron Crowe,” she said, referring to the writers-directors of the 1987 film “Broadcast News” and the 2000 movie “Almost Famous.” 

She added that she wanted to focus the story on “female friendships and a female workplace.”

By the time she was watching the last episode, Plec said, “I thought this feels a lot like two shows I watch religiously: ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ and ‘The Morning Show.’ ”

Aside from “The Girls on the Bus,” Plec will also adapt the hit teen thriller “We Were Liars” for Prime Video, alongside Carina Adly MacKenzie.

“We just finished casting all of the series regulars. One announcement is out already. We start shooting this summer in Nova Scotia . . . I think it’s going to be really special. I’m hoping we do justice to the book,” she said. 

She added, “These are the shows of the moment that will take me to the fall, and I’ve actually just found a writing partner to adapt a book, ‘The Art of Scandal,’ a wonderful novel about a ‘The Good Wife’ sort of woman who realizes her husband is cheating on her, and has to take stock of her life, her marriage and is stepping into her own power.”

Regarding if there will be more shows in the “Vampire Diaries” universe, Plec said, “I hope the door is not closed — that would be devastating! I have a bunch of ideas in my head for more.”