SDCC: Jim Beaver On The Death & Return Of Supernatural’s Bobby Singer

Since very close to the beginning, an important force in the world of Supernatural has been Bobby Singer, the mentor to Sam and Dean Winchester. Last season, that world was shaken when Bobby was killed in the episode “Death’s Door.” Later in the year, one of the most well-kept secrets in recent TV history was pulled off as Bobby returned as a ghost. But now, the flask that was tied to Bobby’s return appears destroyed, yet…. what is Jim Beaver, the actor who played Bobby Singer, doing at a Supernatural press room at Comic-Con, if his time on the series is done? Members of the press, including KSiteTV, tried to find out.

“I don’t know what that means,” Beaver says mysteriously. “It could mean almost anything, couldn’t it? I mean, we’re not talkin’ the Big Bang theory. Or, heh heh, Two And A Half Men,” he jokes. “You notice they didn’t throw me in front of a subway train and chop me into tiny, tiny, tiny pieces. So right there, I think that’s a good sign.”

It sounds like there was a wide range of emotions for Beaver when it came to Bobby’s death last season. “It was an interesting thing, because when they told me they were going to kill me off in ‘Death’s Door,’ I was taken aback. But they said ‘no, no, no. You’re coming back as a ghost.’ But then when we were filming that story, which was another month or so later, after they told me, right toward the end of the episode, they gathered the whole cast and crew together and ran a tribute video to me that they had made showcasing everything I had done over the past seven years. And I was like ‘I feel like I’m at my funeral.’ And that was the first time I went ‘wait a minute. Maybe they changed their minds!’ So I was very happy when they finally called and said ‘you can come back’,” he explains. Bobby’s return, however, had to be kept from the fans, who usually have crafty ways of figuring out when their favorite actors are returning to Vancouver-based shows. “I had so much fun with that. I lied to the world, and I pulled it off, and that made so happy,” he says. “For some reason, I get spotted on the street in Vancouver more than most any place I go, I don’t know why that is… but I thought ‘somebody’s going to see me in Vancouver and decide that I’m coming back, and that would ruin it!’ That would ruin the surprise for everybody. So I made up this Abominable Snowman movie, shooting in British Columbia. I tweeted pictures from the set… thank you, Google Images… and I told stories about guys getting lost in the snow, and everybody bought it. It was so cool.”

Did anyone wonder why the movie wasn’t on IMDb? Beaver was asked, but he says he had an answer ready. “I said ‘it’s French producers, and they’re arguing over a title, and as soon as they get the title, they’ll put it on IMDb.’ It was great. Because I could sit there on Twitter every night, and make up answers to all of the questions people had. By the time I was Tweeting pictures of frozen toilet seats, pretty much everybody had bought it hook, line, and sinker. It made me very happy,” he says.

Beaver has been asked about his potential return to Supernatural throughout the convention, and generally responded with an “anything’s possible” kind of answer. “On one hand, as you may have noticed, I don’t like to spoil surprises. On the other hand, they don’t tell me much until the script shows up on my porch, and that only usually happens five, six days before an episode starts. So, I’m woefully underinformed. But yeah. I feel bad having to answer everybody the same answer, but hope springs eternal,” he says.

Supernatural returns October 3, 2012 on The CW. Come back soon for more interviews and be sure to drop by KSiteTV’s Supernatural forum!