A year ago, I was standing outside of the press room at Comic Con waiting for my first interview with the cast and creators of Supernatural.  It was while I was standing there that I began to hear the rumble, someone was late. . . no, someone was missing. . . someone missed his flight and wasn’t going to be there at all.That someone turned out to be Jared Padalecki.  And as delighted as I was to talk with Jensen, and Kripke and the others, it wasn’t quite the same without Jared.

Fast forward to this year and a foreboding sense of deja vu.  Jensen’s here, Kripke’s here, Sera and Ben. . .uh oh.  I feel like I’m the cursed one keeping Jared at bay year after year.

“He’s just stuck in traffic,” they assure us and then I remember that this is his first Comic Con.  Poor boy had no idea what he was driving into.

“I’m sorry, it’s a zoo outside!” Jared proclaims as he dashes in and takes his seat beside me. “Lots of craziness. Hi, hi, hi. . . ” Almost one for each reporter at the table. He looks my way and wow, he’s got gorgeous eyes! I’ve never seen him this close up and for a second I’m speechless. He’s taller and thinner than he looks on TV, tan and that emo Sam hair is falling into his eyes exactly as it’s supposed to.

Friday_Jared_07 It’s question and answer time and Jared begins talking a mile a minute, something common among us East Coasters but an unusual trait in a Southern boy. He’s talking so fast that he’s leaving words out and all of the thoughts are combining and crossing. He’ll hear his own words sometimes; a shy smile, a head duck — and before the day is over he’ll apologize 50 times for running late and not being all that he thinks he should be.

It seems that Jared even views the success of the show as someone else’s doing.

“People who are real fans of the show they love the story, the characters, but I’m still the actor, I’m not writing these scripts. I get paid to say the words that are on the page and I defer to Eric, he’s the storyteller.”

And if Kripke wants to call it quits at five?

“I love my character and I love exploring it, but I know Eric wants to keep the quality up. He doesn’t want it to be 39 seasons Bonanza and it’s like, shotgun in a wheelchair, c’m on Dean,” he quips, donning a Hillbilly accent, “with our sons running around fighting for us. If [Kripke] says four is good, then four is good. If he says five is good, then five is good. He hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”

As talk rolls around to the new season he jumps in with, “We feel like we’re stronger and more on track and it’s been really exciting and energizing to do something new. ‘Season One Sam’ who didn’t want to be there, or ‘Season Two Sam’ that was sort of messed up about their dad, and ‘Season Three Sam,’ I’ll get you out of your deal. . . now we see Sam and Dean kind of thinking about themselves, fighting for themselves cause obviously they’ve each spent four months doing something which I’m looking forward to finding out. We see them more individually, which adds an interesting dynamic to their relationship as brothers.

Comic_Con_Booth_spn2 “I love the brother conflict episodes, I love going toe-to-toe with Jensen; Sam and Dean and how their stories are playing out and they’re becoming the archetypes. We started out as the reluctant heroes, two guns blazing, the Han Solo type character and I like watching the switch. Eric and the other writers have guided us through these paces, these steps. [They have a story they] want to tell and I’m here to tell it.”

Well, maybe “tell” it, is putting it too simply as Supernatural requires more of a ‘full-body’ commitment.

“Eric sat down with me and Jensen and said, ‘listen guys, I don’t pull punches anyway but this year, I’m really not going to pull punches’ and so we hit the ground running. We read the first script and went, ‘ahhh no time off for us.’ Jensen had just got done shooting a movie and I just got done shooting a movie, so we wanted to get back and laze around a little bit. It’s Season Four, time to relax. But no, we’re hitting it hard.”

Which left me to wonder, have you ever gotten a script that when you read it you said, ‘no way?!’

Friday_Jared_08 “I have a few times,” says Jared, smiling with the memory. “The one [I] specifically [remember] was in Season One, we did “Route 666″ and it originally had us dragging a truck out of the water. It’s November in Vancouver and we’re supposed to be knee-deep in water. We’re thinking, it’s snowing outside right now, and they want us in the water? They ended up changing it for us.

“[And then] you do those killer physical episodes! We just shot one, episode two of Season Four. Instead of there being the end climax fight scene, it was the beginning climax fight scene, and the middle climax fight scene, and how many fight scenes do I have!” He pants as if he’s out of breath, his voice rising into a higher register. “The next day. . . what am I shooting? Another FIGHT SCENE! Oh my God,” he squeals in a perfect imitation of SNL’s Chris Kattan, “And I’m crying?!? Aagghghg!” Then he turns to me and calmly, soberly says, “So, certainly yeah.”

Listen To Jared Tell the Story.

And with that, he’s told it’s time to move on to the next table of reporters. Jared stands and smiles and falls into his Texas accent with a sincere, “thank y’all so much.” And then he adds, “I’m so sorry.”

Jared doesn’t take any of this for granted; the fans, the press, the support. You can see it in his eyes and in his smile. He’s going to give this everything he’s got, full throttle until the very last second of the very last scene. You’ve come along way, baby and we can’t wait to see where you go from here.

Previously published at SFUniverse.com

Jensen Ackles (Dean on Supernatural)

Sunday was Supernatural day at Comic Con and myself and a few other reporters got to have a little five-on-one  with Kripke and the boys.Claiming to be sleep-deprived (they shot until 3 am on Saturday and had to be up nearly that early on Sunday to make Comic Con), but looking terrific nonetheless, Jensen Ackles sat down beside me with a big smile and a great deal of excitement over the new season.

But before that, he had fun lining up all of our little tape recorders in front of him, drawing them in like a gambler looking for sevens at the craps table. “Yeah, baby, bring it around!”

It’s no secret that Dean is coming back from Hell in the season opener, but still I warn you that there may be spoilers ahead.

Says Jensen of the new season, “It’s definitely a big turn in the direction it’s been heading for the past three seasons.  Now they’re making Dean an integral part of the mythology of the show, which also means a lot more work for me.”  He groans and shakes his head but it’s easy to see that it’s all for show.  “I think Jared had four days off the first episode which is more than I’ve had in a season. Kripke’s words were ‘you’re a victim of your own success,’ so it’s kind of a double edged sword.

“Dean is not just trying to save his brother from his destiny, now [he’s] trying to figure out what’s in store for himself. From what I understand, it’s going to be a pretty epic season.”

Rolling into a fourth season has its ups and downs.  On the upside, he’s pleased by how the writing staff has been able to integrate what he’s brought to the character of Dean, seeing it very much as a collaborative process.  But as much as he loves the role, he’s ready to call it quits after season five when his contract ends.

“I think five would be good,”  And then he offers up a smirky smile.  “If I was on Lost, then maybe it would be a different story, it’s 30 characters and I’m living in Hawaii with 5 days off an episode.”  But he quickly turns it around into something much more important than the work load.  “Putting the work aside, as far as the story goes, I would never want people to get tired of it. I would never want people to be like, ‘okay, they’re phoning it in now.’ I’d rather go out strong, leave them wanting more.”

When it comes time to reflect on the prior season, Jensen, Kripke and the others all have a twinge of disappointment in their voices.  With the writer’s strike forcing them to unfold the “Dean’s deal” storyline faster than planned, it all didn’t come together as they’d hoped.  The one episode that stood out for all of them, though, was “Ghostfacers.”

“I really loved shooting the “Ghostfacers” episode simply because it was a format we’d never dealt with before. Travis and AJ and those guys were hilarious to work with and very difficult to work with in the sense that our director just kinda let them go off page and improvise as much as they wanted. The difficultly came in just trying to keep a straight face through most of the takes.”

Jensen laughs softly as those days return to him and one person in particular comes to mind.  “I’ll bust him, but Jared is not good at that. If anybody is going to crack first, it’s him, and oh man, once you get the giggles it’s hard to stop. That was fun, a good time.”

But Jensen didn’t have a particularly good time when it came to the final episodes.  He was really pushed to his limits when it came to filming the final green screen shot of his descent into hell.

“It was miserable. I [spent] about four hours in prosthetics ’cause all those hooks and pieces through the wrists and cuffs and everything, and once I was done I walked on stage and they hooked me up.  Cuffs around both wrists and both ankles and then just a belt harness [around my waist] so I was wired up with five different wires.  Five guys wrenched me up about 13 feet in the air.  I had so much [fake] blood all over me, the harness slipped and the buckle was piercing into my hip.  I’m hanging there, all of my weight on this one buckle digging into my hip, and I hung there for what felt like ages and it got so bad that tears were rolling down my face and I was like, ‘let me down, you gotta let me down.’ It was tough, but it turned out to be a really cool shot.”

Click Here to Listen to Jensen Tell the Story

The only thing more torturous for Jensen than filming the final scene of the finale is being asked the question, “why did you make a horror movie on your summer vacation?”

From his reaction, I’d say he’s been asked this more than once.  And though it seems like the answer should be a philosophical diatribe on why horror is an honorable art form, the actual answer is much simpler.

“I only had about two months off so there weren’t a whole lot of projects that I was even available for. So the fact that this fit right into that time constraint, it just kind worked out to be that one.”

And with that it’s time to move on, to more reporters and then a room packed full of several thousand screaming fans.

“It’s funny,” says Jensen.  “We’re kind of isolated in this little corner of the world up in Vancouver and we spend so much time at work, we’re pretty much 8 days an episode, all day we’re there and the only people we see are each other. So when I come to places like this and I see people who thoroughly enjoy what [we’re] doing, it’s very rewarding.”