Supernatural stars Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins share untold stories as show turns 20
QUESTION 1: What was the very first scene each of you filmed on Supernatural?
JARED PADALECKI: I remember. [To Ackles] It was with you. Do you remember?
PADALECKI: I think a lot of people might watch that episode and be like, "What are they doing with the little, like, you know, hard drive disk, and it magnifies it?" Because it was the old school library hard drive thing.
ACKLES: Yeah. Didn't we go over to the Dewey Decimal System at some point? And started like looking through that.
PADALECKI: We probably did.
ACKLES: I know we used that.
MISHA COLLINS: My first scene was the very first scene that Castiel shows up for--
ACKLES: Oh, the barn scene.
COLLINS: Yes. Where you shot me. Or stabbed me?
ACKLES: I don't know. Attempted to kill you.
COLLINS: My debut performance on Supernatural was so substandard that we did a reshoot the next day, because they got the dailies back of my creepy performance and they were like--
COLLINS: Yeah, this is true.
ACKLES: I don't remember doing that again.
PADALECKI: They probably just did his coverage. [Laughs] Like, Jensen's fine.
ACKLES: Yeah, all of his stuff was great.
PADALECKI: Just bring in the other guy.
ACKLES: Just bring in that new guy.
PADALECKI: With the weird voice.
QUESTION 2: What was the most underrated episode?
ACKLES: Probably the one where Misha was introduced. No, overrated. That was overrated.
COLLINS: The episode "Baby," where the entire episode has a frame of the car in it, or is from the car's vantage point. I thought that episode was absolutely awesome.
PADALECKI: To Misha's point, I think a lot of the ones that we did that wouldn't work on literally any other television show that's ever aired, you know, where we play ourselves, where it's all from the vantage point of a vehicle, it wouldn't work.
COLLINS: And in fairness, a lot of those episodes didn't work on Supernatural either. [Laughs]
QUESTION 3: What's the series' best needle drop?
PADALECKI: Needle drop? That's like a mic drop?
PADALECKI: Oh, okay, thank you. I know mine.
ACKLES: I bet I know yours. Styx, "Renegade."
PADALECKI: No. That's a very damn close second. I'll give you a hint. My favorite needle drop is a scene I am not in.
PADALECKI: Yep. When I heard Bowie come on, [Singing] "Ground control to Major Tom," I was like, "What?" A) How did they find the money to pay for this?
ACKLES: That was the question.
PADALECKI: And then I remember the crew complaining for the week after because there was no food, because they had spent all the money--
ACKLES: Oh, that's what it was. Yeah, well, you know, sometimes filming is tough.
COLLINS: Castiel had to cradle a baby and put the baby to sleep, and it was scripted that he was supposed to sing "Highway to Hell," but on the day that I got there to film, they were like, "It turns out that's too expensive for you to sing 'Highway to Hell,' so you're gonna sing the theme song to The Greatest American Hero." [Laughs]
ACKLES: I'm gonna go back to the basics with "Back in Black." I think it set the tone for the whole show.
QUESTION 4: What's a script you remember reading for the first time?
PADALECKI: So "French Mistake" was an episode where we all play ourselves. And it was one of the few times, maybe the only time, where the writers called us ahead of time and said, "Hey, we have this idea for an episode, but we wanted to run it by you first."
COLLINS: They asked us because they had to get us to sign off on it.
PADALECKI: Because it was our likenesses.
COLLINS: They had to get our permission. We didn't realize it, but we had a tremendous amount of power.
ACKLES: We had leverage that we did not use.
QUESTION 5: Is "Bugs" actually the worst episode of Supernatural?
ACKLES: Yes, I think it was, because of what we went through and what it ended up being. Basically, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
COLLINS: Did you actually have bugs?
PADALECKI: Like 70,000 bees.
ACKLES: We were literally being stung by bees. And then they get to post [production], and the bees didn't show up on camera so they had to VIXFX the bees.
PADALECKI: We go meet the bee specialist and it's a dude with, like, mesh and a big pair of surgical tweezers holding a bee saying, "So we're going to sting you, but it can't give all of its venom. But we'll find out if you're allergic." And then, when we were shooting the episode, and they're like, "Listen, there's no queen bee here, so they're not gonna bite you. They're not gonna sting you unless you really piss them off." Well, how do you piss them off? "If you swat them." Wait, the whole scene is about us trying to get rid of bees. They're like, "Don't get rid of the bees, just guide them away. Gently guide them away. It was the most absurd thing. I sat on one bee. I don't think I killed it, thank God.
ACKLES: Well, if it stung you, it died.
PADALECKI: Oh. Then it died. [Laughs] It died valorously.... I feel like [the worst episode] was one of the Leviathan episodes that got a little too heavy into the Dick Roman of it all. We leaned so hard into all the dick jokes.
COLLINS: But what is the right number of dick jokes?
PADALECKI: That's a good question.
QUESTION 6: Name three essentials in any motel room set.
ACKLES: Partitions. The kind of see-through partitions was something that [production designer] Jerry Wanek had in every [motel room]. it was like a quintessential Supernatural thing.
COLLINS: The round, Formica-top table.
PADALECKI: Did he ever thank you? If it was for him?
COLLINS: You don't remember Mica, the PA? [Laughs]
ACKLES: That's sweet. Sounds like he's got a lot of tables.
PADALECKI: The quarter vibrating bed machine.
ACKLES: I employed it a lot.
PADALECKI: I'm sure you did.
QUESTION 7: Who's a guest star you wanted to see more of?
PADALECKI: For some reason, my brain is going to Titus Welliver. I'm such a fan of his work.
ACKLES: There's so many. We had such a long list of just exceptional people come through the door.
COLLINS: I loved all of them equally.
ACKLES: Well, we know that's not true.
QUESTION 8: Which scene required the most takes?
PADALECKI: "Mystery Spot." You kept getting it wrong.
ACKLES: I don't wanna talk about it.
PADALECKI: "Keeps a ruler by the bed--"
ACKLES: I don't want to talk about.
PADALECKI: "And every morning when he wakes up, he--"
ACKLES: I don't want to talk about it.
PADALECKI: We had to do, like, a thousand times.
QUESTION 9: Which scene required the fewest takes?
PADALECKI: Probably the barn. Our barn.
ACKLES: I don't know, I mean, there were a lot of one-take scenes.
PADALECKI: Fair enough, yeah. But I mean, in general that scene took fewer takes.
QUESTION 10: What's the scene you're most proud of?
COLLINS: For me, I think it's Castiel's goodbye scene. I loved the message that it sent more broadly. I loved the emotional connectedness that I ended up having with the scene. And I thought that I looked great.
PADALECKI: You did. It was phenomenal.
ACKLES: There's a few that stand out. Obviously, the barn scene, the scene when I come back from hell, the really kind of emotional ones. But there's one that was kind of a subtle one that I was proud of, because it wasn't scripted the way that I did it. And it was a scene when Dean confronts God. In the script, I was supposed to be really angry, and I was supposed to be yelling at him, and I was supposed to be hot. And I came in completely the opposite of that. And I just--
PADALECKI: That was you and Mary also, you and Sam [Smith].
PADALECKI: Where there was, like, a mixture of vulnerability and just rage.
ACKLES: I don't know, I felt like it was just a more powerful way of presenting that scene in that moment. I liked that one.
PADALECKI: One of mine that sticks out, "Sacrifice," I remember feeling proud of it, even when I watched it, which is so rare cause you're like, "Ah I feel good." You go home and you go to bed. And you watch it and you're like, "That sucked." This was like, I felt proud of it then and I was proud of how it looked.
QUESTION 11: What's one scene you'd like to erase?
ACKLES: That's easy for me. Fight scene with Lucifer. The marionette fight scene.
COLLINS: Nothing's coming to mind.
ACKLES: Wow, you guys are awfully proud of your work.
PADALECKI: Oh! Okay, I got mine. The wig scene in the finale. That one wig was difficult.
ACKLES: Yes! [They] should have just put a bald cap on you and called it a day.
QUESTION 12: Who was an underused villain?
ACKLES: Alastair [Christopher Heyerdahl].
ACKLES: Chris was amazing.
COLLINS: He was a guest star we should've had back.
ACKLES: He was a powerhouse.
PADALECKI: I think we all agree on that.
QUESTION 13: What was the most badass fight sequence?
ACKLES: I can tell you which one wasn't.
COLLINS: [Laughs] I know what it was. [To Padalecki] You were playing, Gadreel, Samdreel, whatever. And [director] Bob Singer had this idea for a shot that was sort of like a '70s grindhouse movie shot, where the fist comes right into the lens and that's the edit point. We did the first take, and everybody laughed. [To Ackles] And you came out, and you were laughing and you said, "Misha, that was hilarious." And I looked at you like, "What?" And you were like, "Oh, you weren't joking?"
ACKLES: We were like, "Wow, that's going to make the outtake reel."
PADALECKI: [To Ackles] I actually liked the one you directed.
ACKLES: That's funny. I going to say the same thing. I mean, obviously, I'm biased. So that would have been "Atomic Monster." It was the whole opening sequence of me going through the bunker and fighting all these guys in a kind of a dream sequence. I think it was right around the time John Wick was really popular, and I was like, "I wanna do that." I was really proud of that one.
QUESTION 14: How often were you really driving the Impala versus fake driving?
ACKLES: Anything at night was fake. Anything during the day was real.
QUESTION 15: What was the worst wig?
PADALECKI: [Laughs] Yeah.
QUESTION 16: Who had the dumbest on-set injury?
[Ackles points to Padalecki]
PADALECKI: When I broke my hand — season 2, season 3 — fighting vampires in a motel, and I tried to play it off. I fell and I snapped my scaphoid in my wrist.
ACKLES: Yeah, that was dumb.
QUESTION 17: Which filming location was the most haunted?
COLLINS: Oh, my God, yeah. It was a mental asylum. Like, an old--
ACKLES: A decommissioned--
COLLINS: A decommissioned mental asylum from, like, back in the 1950s.
PADALECKI: That did lobotomies--
ACKLES: Electroshock therapy--
COLLINS: Like torture chambers.
ACKLES: We finally got ahold of the liaison of the facility and we were like, "We want to tour the place, like for real." And she was like, "Well, we can't go to the fourth floor." And we were all like, "We're going to the fourth floor."
PADALECKI: See ya on the fourth floor!
ACKLES: She took us up there and she was like, "This is the staircase that I got pushed down."
PADALECKI: And she was so matter-of-fact about it.
ACKLES: Yeah, she's like, “Nobody else was here. I was doing the rounds by myself." She's like, "I won't go into this room." And we all walk in and hang out. But, yeah, apparently just grossly haunted, that place. There were some other ones, too, but that one takes the cake.
QUESTION 18: What was the most interesting character you got to play that wasn't your main one?
PADALECKI: I'll go with Soulless Sam.
ACKLES: Interesting. Most interesting.
PADALECKI: Again, I'll go with Soulless Sam. [Laughs]
PADALECKI: You gotta answer it, too.
ACKLES: I guess I'll go Michael? Probably. Probably the biggest departure.
COLLINS: Future Cas was the most interesting.
COLLINS: He was like, “Time to go wash up for the orgy.”
ACKLES AND PADALECKI: Yes!
PADALECKI: Misha thinks that's interesting because that's actually him as a person. [Laughs]
ACKLES: [Laughs] He's just calling himself interesting.
PADALECKI: Burning Man Misha, that's what we call him.
QUESTION 19: When was your first fan convention?
ACKLES: Mine was the summer after season 1 aired, in the U.K. It was a multi-show con. And I realized that the show had some substance when the fan reaction was overwhelming.
PADALECKI: Mine was a few months prior. It was during season 1. It was in L.A. But one of the actors there who had done a few, who was part of a big science-fiction franchise, was seeing me sign stuff. And he was like, "You got to simplify your signature." I was like, "Huh?" He goes, "You got a lot of letters. Just write your first initial and do a line. Your next initial, do a line." I was like, "But that's not how I write my name." [Laughs]
COLLINS: 2009, there was a Creation convention in New Jersey, I believe. It says "panel." You're doing a panel. And in my mind, a panel is with a lot of other people. And then I got up there and I was like, "Who am I doing the panel with?" And they're like, "You're doing panel with your microphone. Go."
QUESTION 20: Which supernatural creature would you defeat in real life?
PADALECKI: Zombie. They're so slow. They don't do s---.
ACKLES: You just turn and walk away from it.
PADALECKI: Yes, because, if you drop something, they have to count it all. You can drop 20 Entertainment Weekly questions and then they have to sit there and count it. And then you're like, "Okay, I'm out of here."
ACKLES: I'm going to go with a changeling.
ACKLES: Yep. Just a straight front [kick] to the teeth.
ACKLES: Well, I think that does it for us. [To Padalecki] Anything to add?
PADALECKI: Are you talking to me this whole time?
ACKLES: Some things never change.
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