SUPERNATURAL at TCA: Live-Blog

SUPERNATURAL will start season 10 this fall, and to celebrate that, The CW has brought Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Jeremy Carver to the Television Critics Association press tour.

Following along for the live-blog…

11:38 AM: We’re starting off with a retrospective clip reel. Mary’s death is always brutal to watch. (It’s the same sizzle reel we got during the Upfronts, but now it has the 10/7 premiere date.)

11:41 AM: “We always knew it was going to be a physical show,” Ackles allows. It’s a whole spectrum of physicality between the action and the comedy. “We’ve grown up on the show,” Ackles says.

Though they want to do a lot of their own stunts, which they admit pisses off their stunt guys. “I’m 32 and Jensen’s….48? The bumps and bruises aren’t as easy as they were when I was 22,” Padalecki says.

11:42 AM: Padalecki says his favorite stunt was the end of season 5 when they had to jump through the fake stained glass window. “That freaked me out….there definitely was a wardrobe change.”

He points to a season 1 fight between the brothers, as a point when “you very quickly realize your dreams of being a professional athlete wouldn’t [have] come true.”

11:44 AM: Ackles points to a scene they did this past year where he fought his own stunt guy in filming, and they ended up filming that scene for 9 hours. “There’s a gratification to that, too…I earned these bruises.”

11:45 AM: On continuing on no matter what the quality:

Padalecki: “The short answer is no: if the show quality diminishes [we’ll hang it up]…I truly do deeply care about the show and Sam Winchester…I don’t want him broken down and beaten down into something I don’t end up respecting. And I respect [them all] now…but for me, I’ve been able to do a lot during the show…I love my personal life very, very much…when It’s time to hang up the Sam Winchester hat, I’ll welcome that chapter.”

Carver: “They remain the hardest working bunch I’ve worked with. It starts with these guys, and Bob Singer [who is directing an episode]…there’s so much story left to tell, which is remarkable to think about since we’re in season 129 right now.”

Ackles: “We still get excited about it and it hasn’t tarnished in 10 years…I got all giddy about [the season 9 finale script]….as long as there is that giddy, that excitement, we will keep going…we love telling these stories.”

11:49 AM: “We’ll be staying with Demon!Dean for more than one episode,” Carver teases. And it’ll be a “different” kind of Demon!Dean than we might expect.

11:50 AM: “Castiel is very much in the picture in season 10…we start with his grace is fading and he’s in danger of dying if he doesn’t figure out how to deal with it,” Carver says. “He’s very much a weakened angel.”

11:51 AM: Padalecki and Ackles applaud the show being able to break the fourth wall, and the fans for sticking with it.

11:53 AM: Padalecki mentions that he meets teen fans who started watching SUPERNATURAL when they were six-years-old.  He says they meet a lot of young fans who watched the show in school. “It’s remarkable,” Padalecki says.  He says he and Ackles sometimes wonder if people will stick with the show, but they realize that not only are fans staying with the show, but new teen fans are joining, too.

11:55 AM: “Just when you think we’re able to identify our fans,  you get a 75-year-old TSA agent who sees your passport and says, ‘I love your show, I watched every episode with my granddaughter,”” Ackles recalls. He also points to the accessibility of the show on Netflix, and now people can have viewing parties, etc.

11:57 AM: “We don’t pay a lot of attention to it, rightly so,” Ackles says of fanfic. He wants his view of the character to be purely just what the writers are intending. “If the fans are latching on with these characters…and [the show] inspiring their own creativity, that’s fantastic. It’s art, at the end of the day. It’s entertainment, people can draw from it what they will.”

“We’ve spent more time with each other than any other human on the planet in the past ten years,” Ackles says of his relationship with Padalecki. He calls him a brother, off-on screen. Padalecki adds, “I feel like I’d be doing it a disservice to put into words what I’ve learned from Jensen…it’s hard to quantify in a few short sentence.”

“The stuff I read about Sam Winchester is pretty sacred to me,” Padalecki says on why he avoids fanfiction — for now, he only wants to read what Carver and the writers have to say about him. He says he fully intends to read some fanfic “one day.”

“There’s probably certain type of fanfiction I’d be more interested in others,” he allows. He loves that the art they are a part of is inspiring.

12:02 PM: Vancouver “does a great service to shows of this genre,” Padalecki says. Ackles points to getting to use the shorter days for their scenes that require the darkness, and the cold allows them to wear coats which can hide weapons.

“I think we’ve been able to remain properly out of the craziness that is Hollywood and that has allowed us to be focused,” Padalecki adds. He thinks if he filmed in the city where he lives, there would be too many distractions.

12:04 PM: Does Carver know the ending? “It’s a good question and I have to answer it per the usual…I know that Eric Kripke always had an ending in mind which he hasn’t yet shared with me. I have an imagine and the like, but I always want to keep room for, as our colleague Bob says, happy accident as well….I don’t think we want to limit ourselves. Just because I have the perfect image in my head, doesn’t mean these guys have something that would be OK.”

“Jensen, do you realize he just invited us to help write the ending?” Padalecki jokes.

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And we’re done!

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