In Supernatural, Dean is the impulsive cool brother, while Sam approaches many situations a bit more soberly and intelligently. However, during his audition, Jared Padalecki, the actor playing Sam, wanted to be a bit too cool and almost lost the role.
What is Supernatural? The series revolves around the lives of Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles, and Sam Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki. The two are searching for their father and hunting supernatural creatures on their journey.
Over its 15 seasons from 2005 to 2020, Supernatural became a cult series, partly due to the charm of its two lead actors. Jared Padalecki almost didn’t get the role of Sam because he wanted to be too cool during the audition.
You can find more series like Supernatural here: 7 series like Supernatural with strong reviews on IMDb
In the early 2000s, everyone was expected to be like James Dean
How did the first audition go for Jared Padalecki? In Michael Rosenbaum’s interview format Inside of You, Jared Padalecki also talked about his first audition for Supernatural. It didn’t go well at all because Eric Kripke, the creator of the series, initially didn’t want him, as he didn’t seem intelligent enough.
Padalecki explains in the interview that in the early 2000s, if you looked like Michael Rosenbaum or Jared Padalecki
, it was expected that you would play broody
during auditions. Translated, that means thoughtful
or pensive
and refers to a mysterious, cool aura. It seems that this worked back then. You were supposed to play the James Dean.
After his audition, however, the criticism was that Kripke was more interested in an intelligent type, similar to David Duchovny. It seems that Padalecki did not convey this trait during the audition. However, his manager saved him.
The manager called Kripke and told him how smart Padalecki actually is. In the SAT, a test for college applicants in the USA, he received a very good score. He had a scholarship and was a debate champion. After that, Kripke gave him another chance to audition.
Interestingly, Padalecki mentioned in the interview that it was mainly Eric Kripke who didn’t like that he was auditioning for something. His manager then told him to go back and be smarter
.
In his second audition, he apparently talked about literature and Shakespeare. This seems to have worked because he got the iconic role. Another iconic character was actually only supposed to appear in three episodes, but he wanted more: Fan favorite was supposed to leave Supernatural after 3 episodes, but he was bold and asked the boss for more
