Back in July, there was a disturbance in the Supernatural realm: Stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles appeared to be fighting. Ackles had announced he and his wife were working on a prequel to the long-running show. This was apparently news to Padalecki, who fired off a tweet dripping in sarcasm and fury. But by the next day, Padalecki assured the base that things were cool between them. Now, a few weeks later, he’s further clarified what went down.
In an interview with The New York Times (as caught by Deadline), Padalecki said that his pissy-sounding tweet wasn’t actually that pissy. He was simply trying to tell people that he wasn’t involved in the project.
“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,’” he told NYT. “And I should be old enough to know better than to put something out there and expect that people will understand.”
He admitted that social media isn’t always the best place for nuanced communication. “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!’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘No, no, no.’ [Laughs.] I try to avoid social media as much as possible because of that.”
When he did speak to Ackles following the snafu, he got his answer. “He just kind of explained: ‘Man, it’s not picked up yet. It’s not even written yet.’ 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,” the actor said. “But he has been like: ‘Hey, I’ll let you know what’s going on [going forward].’”
The promised show, entitled The Winchesters, wouldn’t even be about Sam and Dean but about their parents, John and Mary, showing how they met and fell in love. It will be told from the perspective of Ackles’ Dean. Will we wind up seeing Padalecki’s Sam after all Considering the project was still in the larval stage a month ago, you’ll probably have plenty of time before you find out.