It’s his birthday today.
Jared Padalecki talks a lot about his process (when he’s asked, which is not too often unfortunately). He reads the script over and over again, reciting the lines over and over, as he takes a run, as he drives, as he walks around. The script vibrates through him. He doesn’t just get “familiar” with the lines. My interpretation of this process is that the lines are IN him, as a rhythm, so much so he doesn’t need to think about it consciously.
I admire the thoughtfulness of this approach. Padalecki started working as a teenager, and absorbed lessons on the job. He was an adorable late teenager, with the floppy hair associated with early-2000s boys. The BANGS. He speaks about the vibe for young American actors at the time: it was all about introspective brooding. Maybe inspired in part by Jared Leto on My So-Called Life? Padalecki is many things, but he is not a brooder, at least not of the self-conscious variety. He tells pretty funny stories about his initial audition for Sam Winchester in Supernatural, and how he went in there brooding like James Dean. This wasn’t the right vibe for Sam and creator Eric Kripke wasn’t keen on Jared. Padalecki’s manager gave him the feedback: “Sam is smart. We’re looking for someone who seems smart.” Pretty brutal, but Jared took the coaching for the callback (because of course he got called back: he clearly had something). He abandoned the brooding and came in just as his smart self. And it shows.
He’s so relaxed. It’s amazing because … there’s the character we all would come to know. There’s very little difference between the audition and what this same scene ended up looking like in the pilot. I can imagine Kripke watching this like “Well, there’s Sam.”
The audition I want to see is the “chemistry read” between Jensen Ackles and Jared, but it’s not available. Obviously the chemistry was right. The two of them said to each other, early on, during filming the first season, “We might get a couple seasons out of this.” This was very exciting and more than they could have hoped for. During the filming of the pilot, they commiserated: “This is … really good, actually. We might get picked up.” Never would they have guessed the show would be on for fifteen years.
In the first half of the first season, Jared was finding his way. He had done Gilmore Girls and people still have affection for him for that, but Gilmore Girls didn’t really prepare him for Sam Winchester. Supernatural was dark and gritty and emotionally complex, and – at least in the first season – it was really only about the two of them. It was a heavy load. He’s in every scene. The characters were, at first, broadly drawn: Dean is the tough wise-cracking older brother (Han Solo), Sam is the intellectual idealistic younger brother (Luke Skywalker).
Sam spends the first season grieving the death of his girlfriend, and fighting with his brother about how to interpret their messed-up childhood. Dean is the leader, Sam the follower. This was how it was established. The lines in the early brother conflicts are pretty on the nose at first, and Jared hits the conflict hard. This is not a criticism. This is an acknowledgement of the challenges in the material early on, and also how young he was. This was new ground for him: he had to step into this new space, where he had more room to maneuver than he did on Gilmore Girls, where he had more room to develop a character, to keep exploring. The first half of the season, you watch him grow, and it happens really fast. It’s like you can visibly watch him expand in confidence and subtlety as an actor. It’s thrilling. I would say that, by “Asylum” you are watching him rise as an actor while simultaneously feeling the ground beneath his feet.
On the heels of “Asylum” is “Scarecrow” and then “Faith”. These two episodes show Sam the character finding himself and his voice, but it’s happening with the actor too.
For me, as a viewer, it was “Nightmare” where I feel Jared Padalecki really stepped into the role and into his own talent and strengths as an actor. In my massive re-cap of “Nightmare”, at one point I said “From here on out it’s the Jared Padalecki Show”. It was a revelation for me. I suddenly SAW him. And I SAW what he brought. Most of this has to do with listening, and how listening is active, and how in the power of Padalecki’s listening IS his objective (or Sam’s objective). This is esoteric actor stuff but it’s super important when we are trying to understand what an actor is DOing. (My acting teacher at the Actors Studio always said, “The name of the job is ACT-or. Not FEEL-er.”)
How Jared listens to “Max” is so active it’s an object lesson in the concept. The mistake actors make is to not realize listening is active. They focus on the lines and forget about the listening. I’ve said it so many times it’s probably tiresome but:
All great actors are good listeners. There are no exceptions.
“Nightmare” was when I really saw Jared LAND. And it was because of how he listened. I was literally like “WOW. THERE HE IS.”
He’s the full package. He’s hilarious, and often – his funniest moments are his REACTIONS. This recalls John Wayne’s famous comment: “I’m not an actor. I’m a RE-actor.” Jared is such a great example of this. There are moments in Supernatural when something absurd happens and the “button” on it is Jared’s reaction. It’s not schtick. It’s organic. There’s a moment in a later season – I think “Paper Moon” – where Sam and Dean are trapped by a pack of werewolves, who force them at gunpoint to kneel, and Dean says something grandiose and macho, a wisecrack in the face of death, and Jared flashes him a look like, “Oh God that was corny.” It looks involuntary. I would bet it is involuntary. (And perhaps is an example – of which Supernatural has many – where the two talented leads subverted the lines, adding shadings that might not be there in the actual text. Jared laughing at the corniness of the line.)
I think my favorite moment of his in Supernatural comes in Season 6’s “Like a Virgin”. Castiel (Misha Collins) spills the beans about what happened to Sam during the previous whatever months. Sam had no idea. He’s shocked and upset, but he has to pretend like he already knew, mostly so he won’t alarm Castiel. He wants Castiel to keep talking. Tears flood his eyes, but on top of the emotion is this faux-casual expression, placed over the depths which have been STIRRED. Jared plays so many different things, simultaneously, in this small moment. My friend Dan Callahan, who writes about acting, says that so much of good acting is about proportion. A lot of bad or ineffective performances are mostly because the actor gets the proportions wrong. This small moment is in perfect proportion.
Jared is well-known for his advocacy for mental health awareness and is disarmingly open about his own struggles. He has had to advocate for himself to get a handle on his anxiety. When he is able to draw on this in his acting, it’s immensely powerful. (The final section of season 8 in Supernatural, the section in season 7 where he hasn’t slept for weeks and is running on fumes.) This is not to say that art is autobiographical: I really dislike such assumptions. Jared is an ACTOR, and he thinks clearly and deeply about Sam. But when you play the same character for 15 years, it’s hard to separate: they are you, you are them, you have distance, you have no distance – it’s all the same.
In the mid-2000s, Jared did a Christmas movie with Peter O’Toole. At one point, he got overwhelmed by the emotions in a scene and was teared up between takes. O’Toole intervened, telling him to give all that emotion to the character. It belongs onscreen, otherwise it’s just you. This advice from a veteran like O’Toole blew Jared’s mind. You cry real tears, you feel real feelings, but put it all into the story. It’s not about you.
I feel him do that, consciously, in those “sequences” I mentioned in Supernatural. He had to go to a very dark place. It’s difficult to even look at him in the “insomnia” section in Season 7, and the “trials” section at the end of Season 8. By then, he was a veteran actor himself. He knew how to work. He can be incredibly buoyant, and goofy, and his laugh is huge and free and joyful. Emotions come easily to him. He can go deep fast. He’s got easy access to what’s going on down there. A lot of people don’t.
When he broods now, it’s because he’s lived it. My doctor told me once during the period when I was trying to get well, that I was going through life trying to drive with the emergency brake on. I could only go so far, I could only accelerate so much. I had to get the right diagnosis and get treatment before I could finally pick up some momentum. Once you face the monster, once you actually are brave enough to look at it and say “No” to it … you can accelerate. It’s such a good analogy.
We’ve watched that happen with Padalecki, unfolding in real time, evident in his personal appearances as well as in his performance onscreen. But struggle, as it tends to do, has left its mark. It is part of what makes him him as an actor.
aw Sheila this is such a lovely tribute to his work and the learning process as a whole – someone capable of taking on a big job and stepping up to it, episode by episode. It’s hard to think of a more facilitating environment: locked away in the north for 22 episodes, with a naturally skilled and supportive colleague, surrounded by craftsmen and technicians, talking with actors every scene. I think those training grounds have virtually vanished in US TV now. I find the O’Toole experience moving as well, the lineage of craft, the grace afforded to a younger actor by an older one.
I feel like, because of his facility with suffering, what his masculinity brings to the show is underrated (often by fans who really enjoy and identify with a kind of frail, victimised Sam). The way the show is kind of structured by the twin poles (uh oh) of Jensen’s masculine vulnerability and Jared’s masculine steel. We’ve talked a lot about this down to the level of me falling off my chair when Jared just, like, is in Hollywood Babylon haha. But I feel like the end of S1 when he’s facing off with John the writers were like shit!! What we’ve got here is the willow and the oak, and the different ways they endure the stress of what comes to them will underpin the see-saw of our plots for 11 seasons.
Inevitably I must get into Dabb-posting and how and the thinness of those seasons seemed to undermine Jared’s process. Everyone fell back onto crutches and bad habits in those years but Jared’s were particularly noticeable, with Sam being so criminally underwritten. I didn’t follow Jared into his other ventures although I respect his commitment to the procedural! But I am guardedly excited about The Boys – my biggest hope is that it taps into the cold and arrogant vein of his work – still get chills thinking about his Lucifer in that red light in season 15! thank you director Jensen! More like that please!
Finally – that picture up top is ARRESTING. Phew.
Jessie – hi! really insightful about him, thank you! and you are so right about there being no more “training grounds” like that.
// because of his facility with suffering, what his masculinity brings to the show is underrated (often by fans who really enjoy and identify with a kind of frail, victimised Sam). //
YES. I have felt this but not put it into so many words. As you know I kind of came to this show in a backwards way, through the fandom – the Tumblr fandom – which gave me very skewed preconceived notions about the show and the two main characters.
// The way the show is kind of structured by the twin poles (uh oh) of Jensen’s masculine vulnerability and Jared’s masculine steel. //
I love this. Frontierland, with all its silliness, pointed this out so strongly – it really was ABOUT that.
// when he’s facing off with John the writers were like shit!! What we’ve got here is the willow and the oak, and the different ways they endure the stress of what comes to them will underpin the see-saw of our plots for 11 seasons. //
so true! Jared is so strong as an actor – and his choicees are equally as BIG as jensen’s are – like sometimes when he’s angry even the way he inhales – it’s like with every inhale he’s making contact with whatever it is going on down there.
And agreed that Sam was the primary casualty of the Dabb years – and Jared did his best to fill in the blanks but I think he eventually just got tired of having to do it, and I don’t blame him. The writers literally seemed to not remember what happened in former seasons – no continuity – “why are planets round” – the less said about the better.
// my biggest hope is that it taps into the cold and arrogant vein of his work //
Oooh that would be amazing. He’s SO good in that particular key.
your rant about “why are the planets round” on the plaidcast was very cathartic! or does it count as cathartic if I can’t actually purge the feeling? It was relatable, anyway!
Fingers and toes crossed for The Boys…… it’s so frustrating that we have to wait a whole year.
// does it count as cathartic if I can’t actually purge the feeling? //
hahahaha I know. I don’t think I’ll ever be okay with it.
“What we’ve got here is the willow and the oak, and the different ways they endure the stress of what comes to them will underpin the see-saw of our plots for 11 seasons.”
So beautifully said! I love this. And it felt like such a reversal in the early seasons, with a young Sam that still said “gosh” – but turned out to have a backbone of steel.
One of my favorite places where we highlight Sam’s steel (especially in comparison to Dean in similar situations) is with Crowley. The number of times that Sam is like, “Absolutely, we should kill Crowley. I’ll do it right now, and I won’t be shedding tears for him” – well, it’s more than once! Dean talks a big game, but he’s ultimately more susceptible to Crowley’s long game. Sam has his own susceptibilities…but putting up with Crowley is not one of them. There’s a part of me that wishes we would have let Sam just destroy Crowley in a way that was shocking or cathartic, instead of letting him rot in side plots with Lucifer and Rowena in that godforsaken warehouse-dungeon set.
a young Sam that still said “gosh” – but turned out to have a backbone of steel.
he’s the one who left! as a kid! he’s extraordinary.
oof, you said it about Crowley. His unwilling, roundabout affection for the Winchesters was so effectively used for s9 and his and Dean’s ‘summer of love’ – and Sam hates him so much! I would have rather have seen him kill Crowley than be told to care about him killing Rowena.
// than be told to care about him killing Rowena. //
God, it was endless. I never could get away from the thought that Rowena was brought in to keep Crowley occupied – so they could honor Sheppard’s contract but essentially sideline him. Sheppard was very interesting on the whole thing on Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast – he said something like “I had to play the same scene 5 times – ” his “plot” spinning its wheels – so he knew the writing was on the wall. But just a really gross way to treat a beloved regular character!
Bethany – I so agree with you – wow – Sam taking out Crowley would have been perfect – and also a death WORTHY of Crowley’s status (not to mention Mark Sheppard’s incredible performance).
The question of the brothers’ susceptibility is endlessly interesting – early seasons really played with this, as the show did in general – the issues of consent and penetration and also taking over someone else’s body/autonomy. Dean remains “intact” more than Sam does – Sam is usually the one “taken over” – again at least in earlier seasons.
But the emotional susceptibility is such a deep rich topic – and they had so much fun playing around with it early on. Dean is clearly more susceptible to John’s manipulations – it;s almost Dean’s version of being possessed. His body language changes when John calls – he has to put on his shirt! Sam is the oak! I have my own headcanon about this – Dean’s boundaries were compromised early on (in my opinion) – so he has a harder time maintaining his shape – even though it’s Sam who is being inhabited by Meg and losing his soul and all the rest.
And so Dean being groomed by Crowley – and just being vulnerable in that particular way – is fascinating – and of course it happens when he and Sam are basically broken up, lol.
I love LOVE this aspect of the show and these wonderful characters!
What a wonderful article, filled with so many insights. Thank you!
Marcy – thanks so much for reading!
This is really beautiful, Sheila! I love seeing his progression through your eyes and learning more about his process. I’m sure he and Jensen have both absorbed their characters over the course of 15 years, to the point where they can respond instinctually in character. But some of my favorite Jared performances are the ones that let him try on other characters. I love the deadness in his eyes as Meg, the way he holds his shoulders and turns his head as Gadreel, as if he’s not used to being embodied. And of course the half-season eternity that he played Soulless Sam. He’s a really thoughtful performer, and we were lucky to have him!
Bethany – hi! Sorry it took me a while to get back to this, I was away with my family.
// some of my favorite Jared performances are the ones that let him try on other characters. //
Me too!! I also love the scene at the end of The End, when he’s Lucifer in the white suit in the garden. The way he chose to approach it – with zero threat or sneer – nothing overtly evil – just gentle sympathy and understanding – is SO smart and he does it so well. He’s so much more frightening there because he’s so soft-spoken, elegant, and understanding. But it’s so different from Sam’s brand of understanding.
// the half-season eternity //
it went on FOREVER and I love it! they made us work for our catharsis!
Also – I love that moment in Paper Moon! Dean is making a sexually charged quip about being “flattered” after being put on his knees, because OF COURSE he is, and you can see Sam silently wondering if the last thing he’s going to hear before he dies is his brother defensively flirting with a werewolf. A great example of both of them fully inhabiting their characters in a 2-second throwaway exchange.
// is his brother defensively flirting with a werewolf. //
hahahahahaha
Defensively flirting is Dean’s stock in trade.