Look, we know this Q&A with Supernatural star Jared Padalecki is long. We know attention spans are short these days. But when you have a chance to sit down with such a beloved actor on such a creative show, you can't cut his words short when he has so much to share about grieving a father figure's death, working with favorite returning guest stars, driving down the "crazy" road for his character, and of course, the possibility of love and/or shirtless scenes to come on-screen. So all we will say is enjoy the Supernatural scoop!
LA TV Insider Examiner: We don’t want to harp on Bobby’s death, but we do need to bring it up for a minute. It seemed like Sam was much more okay with his death than we expected. Do you see that as maybe a little bit of Soulless Sam creeping back in, as the wall is destroyed, or does he just have to be the stronger brother right now?
Jared Padalecki: For me, I feel like Sam being okay-ish with it is not that it’s Soulless Sam creeping back in, but that Sam has so much on his plate with the hallucinations and with Lucifer coming in and out of his vision that he’s having a difficult time staying on solid ground, let alone being able to focus on his emotions. It’s almost as if you have a bad, bad injury, you don’t think about how tired you are, you just think about that injury. So he’s just thinking about that injury, so to speak…It’s not that he doesn’t miss Bobby, it’s that he thinks his brother has been drinking too much, and he has something that’s huge on his plate that he doesn’t want to take over. He’s putting on a brave face right now, but he’s pretty messed up.
How much will Sam have to step in and kind of take care of his brother, in the next few episodes, instead of the other way around, as it's always been?
J.P.: That happens quite a bit from here on out. Sam finds himself in a situation where Dean’s always been the sturdy, gruff guy, not really paying attention to his emotion. But now Sam, by virtue of he can’t pay attention to his emotion anymore, is having to go be the strong guy and ‘Hey, this is the way things need to get done.’ He doesn’t have time to think of everything else.
How does Sam stay strong and stay grounded? We see him touching his hand, but his hand has to have healed by now! The physical scar has to go away, so what will keep him knowing for sure that he’s in reality?
J.P.: It’s going to go away soon. And quite frankly where we are in the season [shooting] now is he loses everything. He loses all-- what’s that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio where they spin the top?
Oh, Inception!
J.P.: Inception! Yeah! He loses his way to figure out reality and falsehood…It ends up driving him crazy. Crazy crazy where he can’t function anymore.
So Mark Pellegrino has to be coming back, but who else may make a return in Sam’s hallucinations?
J.P.: Mark’s [shooting] there right now…If somebody else comes back, I don’t know, but right now we know Castiel comes back-- but not as the Castiel we knew and loved, but in a new form, as a new Castiel.
But Sam never really loved Castiel.
J.P.: And vice versa!
How does he like this new version?
J.P.: Fine. Sam never had anything against Castiel, really. He just felt Castiel should do the right thing that he could do, and that’s sort of, unfortunately, Castiel’s demise. Because as a story, if you have a magic button that you can push to solve all of the problems, then the audience gets sick of pushing the magic button, so you have to get rid of the button. So though Jared loves Misha, and the fans and the story love Castiel, you can’t be friends with God!…The situations lose their gravity.
There’s a lot of gravity-- a lot of heaviness around Lucifer’s return, we imagine, though.
J.P.: Mark Pellegrino comes back as a vision in Sam’s head. Sam finds himself in a situation where he has to decide between engaging this vision and risking the consequences or ignoring and risking other consequences involving his brother. So we’ll see what happens.
There are also a lot of newer characters coming in and helping the boys here and there-- DJ Qualls, Kim Rhodes-- are you hoping they stay longer and kind of replace Bobby in the sense of having someone to help Dean and Sam along their way?
J.P.: I don’t think there’s any sense or desire to replace Bobby. I think if there was a desire to replace Bobby, they never would have gotten rid of him. Bobby can’t be replaced, simply. His history is too deep, and his love for the boys is too great.
No, of course not, but just to give them a new sounding board and the show a wider cast of characters.
J.P.: Yeah. It’s almost like you can’t replace the demon blood as the best weapon, but you’re going to find the next best weapon. So it’s almost more paying homage to Bobby by trying to find the friends we can but them not being able to help quite like Bobby did. For instance, we’re in episode sixteen right now, and Frank Devereaux still doesn’t have any Leviathan news for us, and you know, it never took Bobby more than half an episode to tell us what was wrong.
Nice. But that also works for the story because the Leviathans are so much worse than anything any of the hunters have ever encountered before. It’s more believable.
J.P.: Yeah, it is more believable, but also Bobby and Castiel became so good at what they did-- which was protect the boys and inform the boys-- that we now have to get a more realistic version and vision of these guys. It’s not easy for them. If the guys read an obituary and say ‘Five guys killed. Magic lion!’ and then go and kill the magic lion, well, that’s boring. So now we’re finding these obstacles we can’t just put a band-aid on and go away.
Right. Your show is not a procedural, and that’s what resonates for so many fans. Kind of in keeping with that serialized theme of character, do you believe there’s a little part left in Sam today that reflects Sam from the pilot-- the early days-- who believes he can someday settle down?
J.P.: [Pause] Yes. And I think that kid that he was that’s still in there is the reason he hunts. He hunts to do the right thing, and the boys talk about it-- Sam and Dean talk about it a lot. He hunts to protect those kids who have that so they can keep that. I think they haven’t lost touch with that. They have seen some bad-- some very bad! And it’s terrible, but they [still] know what they’re fighting for…And I’ve been asked this question a few times tonight, and I didn’t have an answer until now--
That’s good for me!
J.P.: [Laughs] It is good for you! I’ve been asked I could see Sam do something that he hasn’t done yet, what would it be? And I guess I’d go back to the original original and try to see Sam have a normal life. As best he could. We saw ten minutes of it in the pilot and then never ever again. We saw lovers here and there--
Well, now that you brought that up, will we see more [girls for Sam]?
J.P.: Not yet! Not yet. We’ll see. I think the writers are taking it easy on me because I’m having a kid. [Laughs]
It doesn’t sound like they’re taking it so easy on you if Sam is going crazy again!
J.P.: I think that’s what it is, and there’s something great about Supernatural where here we are as a show-- we’ve done 140 episodes, and Sam and Dean have had half a dozen love scenes combined. The power of the show is that we don’t have to take our shirts off to get viewers. We’re telling a story-- a universal story about hardships and hard fought wars and doing the right thing and honor and courage and sacrifice. I think if season eight was about the boys taking their shirts off, it would suck. I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.
You wouldn’t, but the fans would love it.
J.P.: [Laughs] Only for so long! They’d watch it on mute.
I don’t know that they’d watch it on mute. They’d screencap the hell out of it, and you’d be all over Tumblr. You’d trend on Twitter! I don’t know if that’s something you’re going for…
J.P.: [Laughing]
So no shirtless scene to look forward to, then?
J.P.: I’ve only read up to episode fifteen, but not-- I haven’t read sixteen yet.
But not in those.
J.P.: Not in those. Jensen’s shirtless!
Oh, wait a minute now! When is he shirtless? Or just on the set?
J.P.: On the set, all of the time, yeah!
That’s what Mitch Pileggi said about you...
J.P.: [Laughs] That prick! Mitch is big and tough, but he’s going to hear from me!
He’ll rue the day now!
J.P.: He’ll rue the day.
And what is the deal with Sam and clowns? Do we explore why he’s so afraid of clowns or does that not really matter?
J.P.: We never find out specifically. There’s not a scene where, like, Colin Ford gets beat by clowns. Straight from We Bought A Zoo to getting beat by clowns on Supernatural! [Laughs] There’s not a scene where Sam explains why he hates clowns; he won’t talk about it.
Why exactly is this encounter with clowns so much worse than the earlier episode at the carnival?
J.P.: He comes face-to-face, hand-to-hand, physical conflict, and mental anguish with really scarly, gnarly, burly clowns. There is something supernatural behind them. We’re in an episode where we don’t know why, but our worst fears are coming to life, and I get stuck in the vortex when I’m not expecting it. I don’t know why because I didn’t “partake”…and I get broadsided with it.
Supernatural airs on The CW on Friday nights at 9pm.
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