Interesting Dynamics- Jensen Ackles Talks About the Cast Additions to Supernatural

Jensen Ackles who stars as Dean Winchester on the hit CW series Supernatural caught an 8am flight directly from Vancouver B. C. to the International Comic Con in San Diego on Saturday after filming an episode of Supernatural until 2am says that he is excited about the newest additions to the cast of the series for one big reason. “Thank god they’re adding someone else so I don’t have to look at Jared so much,” Ackles says this with a mock serious expression on his face before breaking into a warm smile at the mention of his absent co-star and laughingly admitting he’s just kidding about that being the reason he is looking forward to having two new regular recurring characters added to Supernatural for it’s 3rd season. Jared Padalecki who plays younger brother Sam Winchester on Supernatural couldn’t make it to Comic Con due to having to work until 6am filming. 

The new additions to Supernatural are Katie Cassidy as Ruby, who is a hunter who is described as being ruthless and slightly deranged and Lauren Cohan as Bela, who is a mercenary out only for what benefits her. Eric Kripke the creator of Supernatural has been making it a point to let the fans know that Bela and Ruby are not being introduced as love interests for the Winchester boys, but rather as antagonist to create more problems and more trouble for Sam and Dean. Kripke has stated that as of right now the two new characters are slated to appear in only twelve of the twenty-two episodes of 3rd season of Supernatural.

Jensen Ackles says that he is very much aware that the writers and creators of his series Supernatural had tried in the second season to introduce new characters into the dynamics of the show and for whatever reasons some of those characters just didn’t seem to work out. As far as the introduction of Ruby and Bela in the third season, Jensen Ackles says he is well aware that the producers are taking a chance here. While Ackles very clearly states that to him the two new regular, recurring characters of Ruby and Bela are definitely a welcome addition, he also says that he did have some initial concerns himself about how the two new characters were going to be worked into the series and into the dynamics of interacting with the Winchester brothers. Ackles says that the biggest initial concern he had and that he felt was part of the drawback in the introduction of other characters in the past to a show that really seems to be conceived as just being about two brothers is the vagabond lifestyle that the main characters of Sam and Dean Winchester have.

“We travel around so much and we don’t really have any roots planted. It’s not like Smallville where you’ve got the lead character and then you’ve got a team of supporting cast to help out with the work load, and everyone stays in one place.” Jensen Ackles says speaking from the experience of having once been part of the Smallville team of supporting cast playing assistant high school football Coach Jason Teague in season five.

“The fact that we are constantly moving and constantly rolling, it doesn’t really lend itself to having recurring characters as much as we’d like it too.The character of Ruby, played by Katie Cassidy, who is also a hunter the same as Sam and Dean but more of a loose canon type character is going to be introduced in the first episode of Supernatural’s 3rd season.

Jensen Ackles says that he is appreciative of the effort that is being made to try and bring in new characters for the brothers to interact with yet again had some initial concerns as to how this character was going to be introduced and how it was going to worked into the dynamics of the series from that first episode. “I didn’t know how they were going to introduce them and it’s very interesting because I wasn’t sure how she (Ruby) was going to fit in, but after reading the first few scripts it looks pretty cool and I’m interested to see where they take her.” Ackles says, with a broad smile that makes it clear he is looking forward to where the show is heading with the addition of this new character.

Bela the mercenary who will be causing trouble for the Winchester boys in other ways will be introduced in the 3rd episode of Supernatural’s season 3.

Jensen Ackles tells us that he was on hand to do the audition read with Lauren Cohan for the studio executives and that he was really intrigued with the interesting dynamics of opposites that her character has with his character of Dean Winchester. “When I read her for her network test, it was neat because Dean is kinda like this motorhead, blue collar, southern, gunslinging cowboy guy and Lauren is this kind of refined English person. It was like this two totally opposite ends of the spectrum types and you know opposites attract or they might not, I don’t know, so it definitely lends itself to possibly having some interesting dynamics.” Ackles’s voice is filled with genuine excitement for the possibilities these potential dynamics could bring for his character and for Supernatural overall.

For the first two seasons of Supernatural Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki have been almost solely responsible for carrying the enormous workload of filming and being the central part of the storylines and when asked if having the two new additions will lighten the workload for them Jensen Ackles response is a heartfelt “God, I hope so, cause now I can get more sleep,” as he momentarily slumps down in his chair, resting his head on his arms on the table as he playfully demonstrate how exhausted he is right now, saying that just by the end of this day he will be ready to crash into bed.

“It’s not that I don’t want to be working on the show, I love it,” he says with affection for his role as Dean Winchester as he straightens back up, “and I thinks that’s what I want to preserve. Because after doing nine months of this every day all day and your losing sleep, just to have that preservation of the love for the show and the work and to have somebody come on and take a little of that workload off I think will only improve things. I know that Jared and I are going to work better cause we’re not going to be so dead tired at the end of the day and after nine months we’re not going to feel like we just ran a marathon and are being asked to sprint for another two or three miles so it will be nice.”

To further his point about how much he feels this is going to be a benefit to the Supernatural as a whole that he and Jared aren’t going to be solely under the constant pressure of the full workload, Jensen Ackles relates these changes to how The X-Files benefited from having the two leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson be supported by additional cast members. “You look at X-Files and it was always about David and Gillian’s characters, but they also had characters surrounding them that supplied critical points of the story – Smoking Man and the other FBI agents- who were permanent fixtures but didn’t necessarilly take away from the two lead characters.”

Jensen Ackles is very much behind these changes to Supernatural as is evident by the earnest tone of his voice as he expresses the hope that the addition of Ruby and Bela will only add to keeping Supernatural on track. “Hopefully this will keep the show about what’s it always been about and just add more dynamics to the show.”

As to where Jensen Ackles’ character of Dean Winchester is going on a more personal level writer/executive producer Sera Gamble hints that they are working on possible storylines that involve the background surrounding Dean’s mysterious amulet necklace and regarding the issue in last season’s finale of Dean trading his soul and having to give up his life after one more year for an eternity in hell in order to bring Sam back to life, series creator Eric Kripke says that they fully intend to start addressing this almost immediately and having the boys finding out just how difficult it’s going to prove to be to get Dean out of it.
And if Eric Kripke’s reassurances that the cast additions isn’t going to mean that the Winchester boys and the new girls will go be-bopping around in the Impala as a ‘scooby-do’ like foursome, Jensen Ackles adds with a wicked grin that he thinks Dean will be spending what might be his last year alive just searching for that elusive perfect piece of pie and meeting up with lots of hot, sexy girls to do lots of THAT. You’ll have to ask Jensen to explain what he means by ‘that’ or as Eric Kripke explains it, “tune into the ‘Dean Winchester Diaries’ on Showtime after midnight!”Season 3 of Supernatural premieres on October 4th and will air regularly on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW Network.

Article and photos copyright2007 to M R Reed.