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Jared Padalecki opens up about Supernatural prequel misunderstanding with 'brother' Jensen Ackles
Earlier this summer, the Supernatural fandom felt a great disturbance across social media when it seemed the show's two long-serving stars, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, were in the middle of a beef over a potential spinoff project. Now, Padalecki is opening up about the issue, calling it essentially just a misunderstanding brought on by social media.
In a recent interview with The New York Times to promote his series Walker, Padalecki addressed the disagreement, spawned by news of a potential Supernatural prequel series, in part by emphasizing his continued connection to Ackles.
"I love Jensen deeply. He’s my brother — he has been for many years, and he always will be, no matter what," Padalecki said. "He’s spent more time with me on camera than anybody probably ever will, so he knows my strengths and weaknesses more than I do, and vice versa. I respect his opinion."
In case you missed it the first time around, the perceived beef began back in June when reports began circulating that Ackles and his wife Danneel were re-teaming with The CW to develop The Winchesters, a prequel series that would follow the adventures of Sam and Dean Winchester's parents, John and Mary. Ackles would serve as producer on the project, and was also reportedly up for narrating the series. As the news began circulating, Padalecki responded to his former scene partner on Twitter, noting he was "bummed" that he apparently wouldn't be involved, and even following up to tell a fan that he was "gutted" by the surprising news.
After a day or so of drama, during which the Supernatural fandom expressed all manner of feelings, both Padalecki and Ackles tweeted that they'd talked through the disagreement and made up. Now, two months later, Padalecki describes the whole thing as more of a misunderstanding that began when he tried to use Twitter to simply let fans know their assumption that he was involved in the project was false.
"It was just one of those things that because it was online, and people were assuming I was part of it, I really wanted to just say: 'Hey, I’m not keeping a secret from you guys. I just don’t know about this.' And I should be old enough to know better than to put something out there and expect that people will understand," he said. "It’s hard to tweet a specific tone. If you write it online, it’s like, 'Oh, he doesn’t know! They’re going to kill each other! The world is ending' And I’m like, 'No, no, no.' [Laughs.] I try to avoid social media as much as possible because of that."
Padalecki also noted once again that Ackles had emphasized to him how early in the development process the prequel series really was. Does that mean the door's still open for a Winchester Brothers team-up of a different kind? At the very least, Padalecki said his co-star has promised to keep him in the loop.
"He knows and I know how much Supernatural means to both of us, and it wasn’t a secret he was trying to keep, necessarily. It was just something that he didn’t feel really even existed yet. But he has been like: 'Hey, I’ll let you know what’s going on.'"
