Credit: CWActor Jared Padalecki, who starred in the beloved series Supernatural for 15 seasons on the CW, is no longer afraid to turn around and say what he thinks about the network that canceled his show.
Jared Padalecki portrayed Sam Winchester in Supernatural alongside Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester, a pair of demon- (and pretty much every kind of spooky entity, up to and including angels) hunting brothers whose adventures earned them a fervent cult following. The series had a legendarily difficult journey to the airwaves, with creator Eric Kripke legendarily spending a decade pitching it to studios before Warner Bros finally decided to give it a try.
Eric Kripke, who now acts as showrunner of the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys, has remained critical of networks since. He was an active participant in the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, explaining to interviewers that, although Supernatural was one of the most-viewed series on the streaming platform Netflix, he received virtually no payment for it. He said:
“The residuals I get are from its airing on TNT, which you know, it gets a couple hundred thousand views. The Netflix streaming of Supernatural is consistently in the Top 10 for billions of minutes streamed. Part of that is because there’s so many episodes, but still, if you just go by how many people are spending minutes watching that show, it blows away Squid Game and blows away things that are massive hits, and I’ve gotten a total of zero residuals for that.”
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Supernatural managed to last for a staggering 15 of Dean and Sam Winchester battling ghosts and ghouls, resulting in 327 episodes. The series concluded in 2020, but almost immediately, rumors of a Jared Padalecki-Jensen Ackles reunion or series revival began. A spinoff prequel titled The Winchesters, starring Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger was canceled by the CW after a single season.
When the WB merged with CBS to become the CW (currently owned by Nexstar), Supernatural went along with it, but it sounds like Jared Padalecki does not have the cozy relationship with the network that one might expect from the former Sam Winchester.
After Supernatural concluded, Jared Padalecki starred in the CW drama Walker, an updated reboot of the 1990s Chuck Norris series Walker, Texas Ranger. The series lasted for four seasons and was canceled last month. To be blunt, Padalecki seems salty about it. He recently told Variety that he feels he was basically canceled to make room for cheap, board game-inspired game shows and used a Maya Angelou quote to further drive it home. He said:
“I talked with the head of CBS [Studios] and the head of Nexstar/CW, I talked with the other [executive producers] on Walker, and I think it was a multivariate kind of issue. My understanding is — and again, this is just what I’m told — that Nexstar is going in a different direction with The CW. I mean, they have an hour of Trivial Pursuit and an hour of Scrabble coming up. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just download the app or grab a board game and play with your friends, but they’re clearly just — what’s that great quote? It’s like, “If somebody tells you who they are, ask questions. If somebody shows you who they are, believe them.”
While Jared Padalecki may be used to a show going into the double digits of seasons, he seems to feel the cancelation has to do with the network no longer having the same values as it did during his Sam Winchester years. He continued, “I feel like The CW that I was a part of last year is not The CW that I was a part of under [former chairman and CEO] Mark Pedowitz for that entire, almost 20-year stretch.”
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At a certain, it does feel like Padalecki is blowing off some pent-up frustration, as he eventually just gets right out and says it:
“They’re just changing the network around, where it’s not really going to be a TV network as much as it’s going to be, “Here’s something fun for an hour that you’ll never watch again, but hopefully you watch it. And it’s cheap!” And I hate to say that, but I’m just being honest. I mean, f*** it. They can’t fire me again. I’m just being brutally honest. I think it felt to me like they were looking for really easy, cheap content that they could fill up time with.”
Later in the interview, Jared Padalecki revealed that he was in talks to appear in the upcoming final season of The Boys, which has also featured his former on-screen brother Jensen Ackles. It’s a good thing because after those comments, he might not be getting a new CW show anytime soon.
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