Rich: I love that term of “Bobo’s our Sleeper Agent.” It’s fantastic. Our man on the inside.
Bobo: And this is me saying that I was not. Like at the outskirts-
Rich: You’ve heard it here first, people.
Bobo: Like, I was not conspiring. I was conscious. Like I knew that there was this fandom and this reading and I think there was some- you don;t want to foreclose readings, right? So it’s like-
Bobo: So I was open. I was open to that coding, but my primary job took a lot of time and a lot of- a lot of it was telling the story we set out to tell.
Rob: It’s fascinating to me really. You get involved with the theory. The theories that fans are having. It’s not necessarily fact, it’s just a theory and what’s supporting what, you know- It’s just really interesting.
Bobo: And the show that runs as long as Supernatural does, and especially at that moment of social media and fandoms, and fandom communities online. It’s like- It becomes porous. And I think Supernatural is a test study of that, unique almost. Like Star Trek was too early, later stuff was in a different era. And this show ran so long, that you kind of can ignore fans and their theories or you can engage with them. But ultimately across all those seasons the inner penetration of that discourse and those ideas became very complex. And of course Supernatural is so elastic and has so many episodes, that there was a lot of play with those expectations and those readings of the show. I sound very pedantic right now.
Rob: No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You sound really interesting and true.
Rich: No, it’s really cool. It’s really cool. And it’s really interesting- It’s really cool to hear you talk about nuances of the relationship, how it’s executed, by accident or on purpose, how it’s perceived, by the writers and people on the inside. Because it’s all conjecture from out here. It’s all just some sort of chitter chatter and water cooler talk and rumor mill stuff and kind of guess work. It’s interesting to hear how it was playing out on the home field.
Rob: And look, there’s an element of it that is fun. As a fan watching the show, it’s fun to have some theories and go “Oooh, I think-”
Rich: The “Are they or aren’t they” of it all.
Bobo: And I guess my arc on the show was from not a sleeper agent to eventually like a sleeper agent in my last season.
-Rob Benedict, Richard Speight Jr. and Robert Berens Supernatural Then and Now
Heaven Can't Wait with Robert Berens (S9EP6)
