Eclipse Magazine interview with Jared

[agt_spooky]

Morning!

Here's a nice interview with Jared, over at Eclipse Magazine. It was done back in July, at ComicCon, where Jared talks about the upcoming season four.

Sam Winchester at War – An Interview With Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki About his Character in Season 4

September 16th, 2008 · Posted by: M R Reed in Television

Jared Padalecki at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con/copyright 2008 M R Reed

Life gets complicated when your brother comes back from hell!

Jared Padalecki, one of the two hot young stars of the hit Warner Bros/ CW Network Series Supernatural comes striding into the press room of the 2008 San Diego Comic Con on the determined mission to make up for lost time after getting inexplicably hung up in traffic and now running late for meetings with the press to promote the upcoming 4th season of Supernatural. Taking his place in the ‘hot seat’ to answer questions, the handsome 26-year-old actor is immediately handing out a heartfelt apology for keeping everyone waiting on him.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Padalecki says as he takes care to make eye contact with everyone present and acknowledge him or her in his apology. Then, since time is running late, he quickly gets down to the business of answering questions about the upcoming 4th season of Supernatural and some of the directions his character of Sam Winchester is headed in.

In the past 3 seasons, Padalecki’s character Sam Winchester has undergone some very life altering changes, from being yanked out the normal life he was building for himself, to finding out he had psychic powers that a high level demon know as Azael or The Yellow-Eyed Demon has plans to take advantage of, to having to watch his older brother Dean Winchester (played by Jensen Ackles) have to make good on a deal with a demon to trade his soul into hell in one year’s time for having Sam brought back to life. Season 4 is no different and Sam finds himself dealing with the aftermath of Dean’s death and sudden resurrection by a mysterious force.

The first thing that Jared Padalecki is quick to point out is that Sam is dealing with whole different set of circumstances than in the Supernatural season 3 episode Mystery Spot where Sam had to deal with watching his brother Dean dying over and over again in many different ways with no way for Sam to stop it. Padalecki points out that the events of ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ in which Dean’s soul is taken into hell and his body ravaged to death by hellhounds, has no ‘reset button’.

“It’s more real,” Jared Padalecki says of what Sam goes through after Dean’s death at the end of No Rest for the Wicked.’ “ While there was both pain and death in the Mystery Spot, which was obviously this crazy loop that you kind of saw for what it was and that it was the Trickster’s doing, Sam sort of came to realize that he was just dealing with this illusionary pain.”

Yet that all changed at the end of season 3 and Padalecki tells us that Sam had to deal with the total reality that he had buried his brother, his brother died. “It wasn’t the Trickster, it wasn’t fake it, was four months of living without his brother, of having to exist without his Dean being there with him,” Padalecki’s voice fills with something close to the same sense of feeling of what his character has gone through as he relates Sam Winchester’s distraught emotional state to us.

Jared Padalecki tells us that Dean’s resurrection from hell also creates a new complication for Sam Winchester who has had to learn to deal with being without Dean there to be his partner in the war against the demons.

“There is a line in the first episode where they’re talking about taking care of these demons and Dean is like ‘we gotta wait’ and Sam is like we ‘gotta do it now we, can’t wait’ and Dean responds with ‘well now the older and smarter brother is back’ and Sam kind of takes offense because Sam has been alone for four months and he’s been doing it alone. And not kept in touch with anybody, not kept in touch with Bobby and just kind of gone off and maybe had been a bit suicidal like, ‘hell if my brothers’ gone, I’m going to go out and if I die in a war, I die in a war’.”

When questioned about whether Sam, as happy as he is to have his brother Dean back, is starting to find himself dealing with feelings of resentment upon Dean’s return, Jared Padalecki expresses total agreement that Sam is feeling resentment as well as happiness.

“Of course there is a lot of pain a lot of built of resentment stemming from his brother’s sudden return to life and into Sam’s life.

“Sam’s always had a sort of a sense of ‘why me’. The very first thing, from the very first moments in the pilot- like why is this happening to me I don’t want this life, why did I wake up when I was three years old with a gun and I don’t know how to use it. Why is Sam’s life now nothing but a constant embracing of violence? Because he had to, he was forced to. His brother is dead,” Jared tells us, his voice strong with a deep sense of wanting us to understand this motivation he sees his character of Sam Winchester going through.

That doesn’t mean that Jared Padalecki isn’t aware of what the character of Dean Winchester is going through and what affect it is having on him and how it relates to what is affecting the brothers and creating conflict for them and changing the dynamics of their interaction with each other.

“We see the same thing from Dean. Dean has also spent four months somewhere doing something. So he and Sam both have secrets from each other and now as opposed to not being able to hide it, like in the finale of season two, you know when Dean made a deal and Sam asked, ‘how long do you have?’ and Dean said he had a year, and Sam said ‘I will get you out’. You know it was the brothers. Now they both have their own thing and now they are trying to figure out either if they are going to let the other brother know what’s going on or if they are going to keep it and hold on it and be much more individual in their pursuits and not working together.”

So what is all of this change in direction for his character offering Jared Padalecki as an actor in a long running series? A lot of fun

“One of the traps of television is inevitably you’re making 22 hours of film and essentially it can start to get repetitive. It can be the same questions and same answers and the same this and the same that,” Padalecki gives a shrug of his broad shoulders as he tells us about this pitfall that can sometimes sap an actor’s desire to go on giving his best performance in an ongoing TV character role. Then his eyes light up with laughter as he talks about what is different from this in working on Supernatural.

“It’s not the case with this show, though. It’s starting to mix it up and the writers constantly keep us guessing, keep us on our toes about what is coming next. So it’s neat to do new things and to try to figure out what the hell is coming next for your character and realizing that in some cases it might literally mean hell is coming,” Padalecki says with laugh.

Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester

One thing is for certain when you listen to Jared Padalecki talking about his work on Supernatural is how much he really enjoys being a part of the series and playing the character of Sam Winchester.

“One of the first things I ever really loved about this show is that you get to laugh, you get cry, you get fight, you get to do everything. So it’s very exciting for me as an actor to get to explore a new side of Sam and it’s a side of Sam that I always wanted to explore. Ever since going to the bad side and we got to see Sam go all bad ass, I was whew that’s kind of fun even though it was a demon, but I was like … I like that, lets get back to it. So it’s going to be exciting to me. I’m looking forward to it.”

And with that, all too soon our time with Jared Padalecki was up and he had to go. “So sorry guys,” he is once more apologizing and making eye contact as he rises up to his full and very impressive 6’4” height to go off to do his next round of questions, which will be centered on the promotion of his new horror film, Friday the 13th. Padalecki has the lead role in this updated ‘re-imagination of the 80’s cult horror classic of the same name which will be hitting theaters on February 13th, 2009.

Meanwhile fans and viewers can catch Jared Padalecki in his role as Sam Winchester in the Supernatural season 4 premiere episode, Lazarus Rising, on Thursday September 18th at 9PM EST on the CW Network.

 

Comments

[khek.livejournal.com]

That first sentence has to be the longest and most awkward one I've ever read. No, wait, the sentence that makes up the third paragraph is worse!

I had so much trouble reading this interview that the content kind of escaped me... Yikes!

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

That first sentence has to be the longest and most awkward one I've ever read. No, wait, the sentence that makes up the third paragraph is worse!

LOL! Yeah, it definitely could've had an editor look at it, that's for sure. :-)

I had so much trouble reading this interview that the content kind of escaped me... Yikes

Yeah, it's kinda like a fanfic story with a bunch of errors in it that overwhelm whatever the story was supposed to be about. *g*

[dairwendan.livejournal.com]

I love how the writer emphasized that Jared made eye contact with everybody both times he apologized! That must not be the norm.

There is a line in the first episode where they’re talking about taking care of these demons and Dean is like ‘we gotta wait’ and Sam is like we ‘gotta do it now we, can’t wait’ and Dean responds with ‘well now the older and smarter brother is back’ and Sam kind of takes offense because Sam has been alone for four months and he’s been doing it alone.

I can't wait to see this scene!

And not kept in touch with anybody, not kept in touch with Bobby

SAM! Naughty!

Now they both have their own thing and now they are trying to figure out either if they are going to let the other brother know what’s going on or if they are going to keep it and hold on it and be much more individual in their pursuits and not working together.

Oooooh, bad times!

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

I love how the writer emphasized that Jared made eye contact with everybody both times he apologized! That must not be the norm.

That's because Jared's a gentleman. :-)

I can't wait to see this scene!

Yeah, it's pretty obvious there's going to be some tension between them at certain times, trying to get back in synch with each other. Oh, boys!

Oooooh, bad times!

That's what I'm afraid of! I don't want them pulling away from one another! [sniff]