Before The Winchesters, John and Mary Winchester (Campbell) were played by two sets of actors on Supernatural – first by Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Samantha Smith, and with younger versions portrayed by Matt Cohen and Amy Gumenick. With the upcoming Supernatural prequel premiering this Tuesday, October 11 on The CW, a new duo comes in – Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly.
Executive Producer Jensen Ackles is, of course, familiar with all of those actors, and he talked about what made Drake and Meg perfect for this new duo of hunters.
“Obviously, there’s a version of these characters that lives prominently in my head,” Ackles said. “When we were going through the casting process, Drake really jumped off very quickly as somebody that almost seemed like a hybrid of Dean and Sam, not necessarily a replica of a previous John Winchester. So that was really interesting to all of us, because this is pre-John turning into the person that we really knew, that Jeffrey Morgan played. There was a kind of an innocence, a youthfulness, and a thirst for life that Drake brought to this character that was really unique and refreshing.”
“It reminded me of somebody that could very easily be the father of those two brothers,” Jensen added.
For Meg Donnelly, anything they asked for, “she knocked it out every time.” She had a confidence to her that made her ideal for Mary — and it didn’t hurt that Meg was familiar to the Ackles household.
“To be fair, we knew Meg very well, because Meg’s movies played in our house every day for years. Every day through COVID, we watched her sing and dance,” Jensen’s wife and fellow Executive Producer Danneel Ackles added. (Bianca Kajlich’s family has a chicken named after Meg – she’s very popular!)
“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I could probably sing just about any song that she sang,” Jensen joked, to which Danneel said “Not probably. He can definitely do it.”
“[Meg] exuded something that we were all very interested in immediately. There was really no question. She’s so strong, and there was almost a Dean-esque quality to the way that she was playing Mary, which I felt the role really needed. She was really the only one that was bringing that, and it just kind of caught us all. It caught all of our attention,” Jensen explained.
Executive Producer Robbie Thompson credits Robert Ulrich and his team for finding the Winchesters cast, which Danneel notes were all their first choices, and he echoed what Jensen had to say about the two leads. “It’s true what he was saying about the Sam and Dean that you kind of see in both of them, and it was really apparent in their chemistry read, which I hope we can put on the DVD for hilarious reasons,” he teased.
The Winchesters is here Tuesday, October 11 on The CW – see all of KSiteTV’s Winchesters content here!
