The site IGN has up a nee interview with the new Supernatural Showrunner Sera Gamble.
Sera talks about the brothers relationship, what happened, what changed, season 5 finale, more family insights and more. Spoilers ahead.
Read it…
Supernatural is about to enter Season 6 – something that was once seen a long shot, as the network was sometimes slow to renew the series, while series creator Eric Kripke spoke about the five-year plan he had for Sam and Dean Winchester. But this past year, The CW renewed Supernatural relatively early, ensuring that we will see what happens to the Winchesters in the wake of their battle with the devil.
With Kripke stepping down as showrunner, Sera Gamble was a natural to take on that role this year. Having been with the series since it began, Gamble had already been made an executive producer on the series, writing many notable episodes along the way.
I recently sat down with Gamble to talk about what’s next for Supernatural, in a season that will somehow see the return of Samuel Campbell (Mitch Pileggi, who will appear on a recurring basis), the grandfather Dean met when he time traveled back to the 1970s in Season 4.
IGN TV: Fans are so passionate about this show. Is it funny to know that for years they were saying, “Please let it be renewed, please let it be renewed,” and then hear wariness from some when it is renewed this time, just because they love it so much and are afraid of it going on longer than it should?
Gamble: ‘You know who might f**k up the show? The writers! You know who might f**k up Sam and Dean is the writers!’ [laughs]
No, we love the fans. That’s the thing about writing on a genre show. I’m a genre fan. I will boldly admit to being a life-long Trekkie. I was born and bred on the cheesy rock [set] and William Shatner. So I am well aware of what it is to be part of a fandom. And fandom is defined by meticulous care and really giving a s**t and having strong opinions and arguing. It’s a community with opinions. If they were in a room they’d be fist-fighting some of the time. You know, the Sam-girls and the Dean-girls would be like pulling each other’s hair, some of them! That goes with the territory, and it’s also immensely rewarding because they’re giving a s**t and they’re paying attention.
IGN: If you hadn’t gotten renewed, would that Season 5 finale been the same finale we saw, minus Sam showing up at the end?
Gamble: I mean it’s a good question for Eric [Kripke], and I heard what he said at Comic-Con, which is that more of the deaths would have permanent. He pitched to me a finale of the show very early in the run of the series that had a lot of similarities. We have a lot of ideas for series finales, and now we get another opportunity to do one. And stuff that didn’t get in that one will get in the next one. Classy problems!
IGN: What’s it like for you taking on the showrunner duties this season? Has it been a very different experience?
Gamble: Well, it’s a bit more responsibility, but I think I’m very spoiled. I have Eric on the creative team; he’s still very much an active member of the show. He was completely involved in the creative conception of the season. He’s actively involved in the breaks of the episodes. He just bows out when we start talking about casting and budgets. He’s like, “Aaaand I’m gone. I’m gonna go home and change some diapers. I’ll see you all in a couple days.” Then Bob Singer, of course, has been co-showrunner of the show since the beginning, and he is one of the best and most seasoned showrunners in the business. He is absolutely a huge part of the reason that Supernatural not only is still on the air but looks anywhere near the way it looks and sounds anywhere near the way it sounds, on the budget we have and the time we have. He’s right there with me. So if every new showrunner had what I have starting out, there probably would be a much lower suicide rate in Hollywood. [Laughs]
IGN: Sam and Dean obviously have had their issues, to say the least, but they’ve also reconciled quite a bit. Where would you say they are at now this season, after all they’ve gone through?
Gamble: Well, look, there’s always going to be new issues. We consciously skipped ahead a year at the beginning of this season, and one of the reasons that we did that is because Sam and Dean have been nose-to-nose for quite awhile. They really had to come to a place of understanding, and you can’t leave them there forever. But also, Sam was gone and Dean did his best to move on. When we pick up the series, he has been out of the business for a year. He’s been living with a woman and her child. He’s been doing his best to basically live a civilian life. And this is like completely psychotic and weird in the Supernatural world. He’s tried to grieve Sam normally, as much as he can – minimize the amount of trying for demon deals and Hoodoo spells and just let him go and move on. Coming back to a Dean like that is a different Dean [than we’re used to]. So when you put Sam and Dean back together, it’s kind of about what ingredients have changed. Then you put them in new circumstances and of course all new problems arise, and we’ve been writing about those.
IGN: What can you say about Mitch Pileggi coming back into the show, in what sounds to be a much bigger way?
Gamble: I can say we’re excited about it, and he’s knocking it out of the park. He’s just — again to genre fans — he’s a really big deal. He’s a terrific actor. He is part of a story line about the Campbells, Sam and Dean’s mother’s side of the family, who are actually a long line of hunters; that’s fairly rare in the hunting community, where generally speaking you become a hunter because you see your mom get burned on ceiling or you see your sister’s face get ripped off by vampires or something. So hunters are generally loners and maladjusted and seat-of-their-pants and they learn how to do stuff out of necessity. These are better adjusted, better organized, kind of more stable… It’s a different picture of hunters and their family. We were interested in exploring that.
IGN: You guys do such a great job of taking characters that we’ve only seen maybe once or twice and bringing them back with a lot of importance. Is there anyone you have in mind that you’d like to bring into the mix this season?
Gamble: Crowley [played by Mark Sheppard]. He comes back in a pretty big way. He’s one of our favorite villains in the history of the show. The way I like to describe Crowley is that he’s punished for his success in a certain way. You know, he was on the run during the apocalypse within a post-apocalyptic hell. If you do good, then you get promoted. So he’s doing well for himself, but the last thing he wants is more responsibility.
IGN: I have to ask… was Chuck actually God?
Gamble: I have to say… what do you think?
IGN: That was my first thought [when he disappeared]. That’s where I was leaning, when I watched the season finale. So, will we see Chuck again, or is that the last of him?
Gamble: We have no current plans to see him again. I never say never. There might be a reason to bring him back at some point, but I can’t definitively say one thing or the other because we are so enjoying people debating it. [Laughs]
IGN: I am so curious the Supernatural anime [Supernatural: The Animation]…
Gamble: I don’t know much about it. I just know that’s awesome, right?
IGN: It’s amazing that it exists!
Gamble: One day I went into Eric’s office and there were these weird animation drawings, and I was like, “Is that Sam and Dean?” He’s like, “They’re doing an anime.” And do you want to hear the best part? They don’t want us involved. They’re doing all the work! We get to just watch it like viewers and enjoy Sam and Dean in a whole new way. And we were just like, “That is so cool!” We’ll just get beer and invite everybody over. It’s just so weird to get to watch the show without having to break the stories. And like we said at Comic-Con, we’re hoping for a lot of tentacles.
IGN: [Laughs]. That was my thought too, when I heard there would be episodes that were completely original. “Well, there’s got to be a tentacle monster.”
Gamble: Oh, the tentacles are coming out!
IGN: Almost every time we interview Jeffrey Dean Morgan, we ask him, “Is John Winchester coming back to Supernatural?” And he always says the same thing, which is he loves the show and he’d love to come back and that maybe if they’re wrapping things up, they could bring him back. Do you think that’s ever in the cards?
Gamble: I mean, that’s good to know! We don’t know yet. Hopefully we’re not wrapping things up yet. We love him as much as you do. He’s a movie star! Every time I see Jeffrey Dean Morgan, he’s on a giant poster that I can see from the freeway, and I’m like, “That’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan! Oh my God!” We’re just happy for his success.
Although, every time we have a story we’re like, “You know who’d be perfect for this? Really, the person should be Dad.” And it has come up fairly often, and we’ve been like, “Is he avai–” “Noooo… He’s not available. He’s shooting– have you heard of Watchmen?” “Oh, that little thing… Whatever.” So, you know, he’s a movie star, but we hope so.
Supernatural: Season 6 premieres Friday, September 24th on The CW.
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