Pleasing the fans, luckily, is – I hope this doesn’t sound bad, I should preface it by saying that I love my fans, but I do not care in the slightest about it. It’s my job not to care. If I start trying to please the fans, then it would backfire and I’d end up not pleasing the fans. It’s my job to take what is given to me and plug myself into it. Like fans plug themselves into Supernatural, and into that world, in my world I have to plug myself into Sam. There are a lot of actors that could play this character, Sam Winchester, I could name a thousand, and I only say thousands because I can think of thousands, but millions that can play this character. Taller, shorter, better looking, less good looking, blacker, whiter, the only thing I can bring to Sam that none of them can is my own experience. And that’s it. It’s not that I’m the best actor or that I look like Sam should look, it’s just whatever I can pull from or draw from my past. So if I start to ignore that and try to please the fans, then I completely destroy Sam Winchester…Even if it says he looks hot, he looks better than he used to, even that’s bad, because you get cocky or you get the false confidence or arrogance and you just start focusing on vanity, which I don’t want to do. My job is to flesh out Sam Winchester however I can, not to take from a billion people, but to play it my way, otherwise all these shows would be CGI.

Jared Padalecki, talking about where to establish the balance between fan service and keeping creative control over his character, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships by Lynn Zubernis and Katherine Larsen, p. 184. (via kansaskissedlips)

Leave a comment