Misha Collins from SUPERNATURAL - Exclusive Interview

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MISHA COLLINS ON “SUPERNATURAL”
By Abbie Bernstein

Misha Collins first appeared as the Angel Castiel in the 2008 Season Four premiere of the CW’s SUPERNATURAL, “Lazarus Rising.” Over the ensuing years – SUPERNATURAL is now on its ninth season and has been renewed for a tenth – Castiel has gone from being stoic and mysterious to helpful to losing his powers and becoming alcoholic to regaining his powers, getting a God complex and starting a war in Heaven to being occupied by evil Leviathans to apparently dying to coming back to being duped by Heaven’s scribe Metatron (Curtis Armstrong) to being human to regaining his angelic grace and now leading an angel faction. During his tenure on SUPERNATURAL, Collins has also played the human man whose form was taken by Castiel and even himself in the Season Six “French Mistake” episode, where our heroes Sam, played by Jared Padalecki, and Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles, find themselves transplanted to our world on the SUPERNATURAL set, where everyone thinks the brothers are actors Padalecki and Ackles. (If you watch the show, you already know about this. If not, welcome to SUPERNATURAL – it’s strange, but usually not quite that strange.)

Collins, born Dmitri Tippens Krushnic in Massachusetts, has a lot of other acting credits under his belt, including a stint on 24 in that show’s first season as the son of Dennis Hopper’s character. Collins has a funny story about that gig. “Peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches, which is what Dennis Hopper was screwing up all my takes with. He would put a peanut butter and potato chip sandwich on my forehead during our scenes.”

Collins has also written, produced and costarred in DIVINE: THE SERIES on the Internet. His debut as a SUPERNATURAL director, “Mother’s Little Helper,” airs on the CW March 25. Collins is also the founder of Random Acts, a charity organization. Collins also founded the annual (as of 2011) the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World has Ever Seen, also known as GISHWES, which benefits Random Acts and was recognized by Guinness as being the largest international scavenger hunt held thus far.

Collins is present at a party CBS throws for the Television Critics Association. He also makes himself available to reporters during a break in his schedule at Creation Entertainment’s SUPERNATURAL convention in Burbank in November 2013. This interview is a combination of a private conversation at the former and the group discussion at the latter.

When Castiel walked into a lake at the beginning of Season Seven, atoning for his sins and filled with monstrous Leviathans that were taking over his body, it looked like the character was actually dead. Was he meant to come back all along?

“There was a point where I think they thought they were writing me out of the show,” Collins says. “I don’t know why they thought better of it, or why I ended up having more longevity, but there was a point when I think the plan was to get rid of the character.”

Would Collins have been okay with leaving the series? “Well, I’m happier in this scenario,” he replies. “I’m glad to be back on the show. SUPERNATURAL has been awesome to me and it’s fun to work on and I love being on set there.”

Sometimes Collins gets word that he’s wanted for an episode before he knows exactly what he’ll be doing. “The scripts don’t come out that far in advance. They’ll typically call an actor to say, ‘We want you for Episode Seven,’ but the script is still being developed at that point.”

From a distance, he’s also called upon to do some stunts, which is great as far as Collins is concerned. “The running, jumping, hitting, kicking, skipping, prancing stuff I enjoy very much,” he reports.

Does Collins have a favorite version of Castiel – original flavor, alcoholic, power-crazed, human …? “Actually, I kind of like where Cass [was] at the beginning of Season Eight. It’s a little different from what we’ve seen before, but it’s definitely got a lot of the old Cass in it. He’s a little bit more weary, a little more worldly, but it’s a lot of the old Cass that we’ve known for some time.”

Early in Season Nine, Castiel is human and working in a gas station convenience store. Most actors are happy when they get a gig because it means they won’t be behind a counter somewhere. How does Collins feel about being an actor …

“And have to work in a convenience store?” Collins finishes the sentence. “That’s a very, very interesting and thought-provoking question.”

Can he elaborate on his response. “No,” Collins deadpans.

More seriously, Collins talks about Castiel’s experiences in being human this season. “Cass has his faculties and he knows who he is and his personality is not changed radically now. He’s the Cass that we have known for a long time, except that he’s now human.” The change was, he says, “not just a power wipe, it’s also an infusion of humanity, if that makes sense. In Season Five, he kind of lost his powers a few times, but [at the start of Season Nine, he was] not only powerless, but actually experiencing what it’s like to be human, if that makes sense. Season Five, when Cass lost most of his angel powers and he started grappling with a lot of human issues, feels darker. He was drinking, he was dealing with a darker side of things than now. Now it’s more mundane, but I wouldn’t say that it’s actually light. I think that the stuff that he’s been dealing with is, how to brush your teeth, how to feed yourself and how to make sense of what your purpose on the planet is, but that’s kind of a heavy question.

“I’ve said this before,” Collins points out, “but one of the things I like about working on SUPERNATURAL is, it hasn’t gotten stagnant for my character. There’s always something new going on and making him be a human is something that I had my fingers crossed that they would do starting back in Season Five. So I’m really glad that they have finally done it and I think that they’ve done it in a really good way, so I’m really happy about it. I think that the big question that Cass [was] grappling with – is there meaning in being just a human? Is working at a convenience store in and of itself not only gratifying and fulfilling, but a purpose that gives meaning to one’s existence? That’s a pretty good question to be grappling with, so I don’t know. I know things that I can’t talk about. And it’s not just because I’m clairvoyant. Which I am,” he jokes.

How is Collins preparing to direct his SUPERNATURAL episode? As the cast and crew have worked with him so long as an actor, does he have any expectations of how they’ll work with him when he’s directing?

“I think that for the most part,” Collins responds, “the crew is going to be supportive and helpful, at least for the first day or so. Once they see how badly I’m botching things, they might sort of throw their hands up in disgust and stop helping me, but I think that the crew will be helpful, and that’s nice, going into my first big directing experience with a crew that knows me, that I know, that I’m not going to feel like a fish out of water. And then – I don’t know. I mean, Jared and Jensen, generally speaking, are pretty respectful of directors who come in. The first-time directors on the show, they kind of give them a wide berth and certainly give them a fair shot. I’m not going to have that experience,” he quips, “so that’s too bad.”

Will Castiel have a large role in the episode Collins is directing? “In a perfect world, I think I would be very light or not in it at all, because it’s just more to think about. If I am directing myself, I think for the most part, the direction I’m going to be giving is, ‘That was awesome. Great work. Way to bring it.’”

Although by now the SUPERNATURAL production team is a very efficient machine, Collins observes, episode directors still have a lot of input. “Oh, it’s well-oiled, but directors are definitely responsible for overseeing special effects. You have department heads – you have visual effects and special effects and makeup effects and there are all these different department heads who have your back and they want to do the best job they possibly can, but the director has to synthesize all of those inputs and bring it into a focused whole. I think SUPERNATURAL, probably more than a lot of episodic television, gives directors a fair amount of leeway and allows them to do their thing. We don’t have a director/producer up on the site – a lot of shows that shoot [outside] of L.A. [SUPERNATURAL is written in Los Angeles but shot in Vancouver], where the writers and producers aren’t around watching what’s going on in production will have a point guy, basically a producer/director, who will direct maybe five episodes in the season, but will also keep an eye on the production and make sure that the guest directors that are coming in are toeing the party line, doing things the way they’re supposed to be doing them. We don’t have that on SUPERNATURAL, so sometimes people come in and totally fuck stuff up. And there’s nobody there who is saying, ‘No, no, no, we don’t do that.’ I think that it probably gives the tone of the show a little bit more variation than a lot of episodic television has, like it’s not all the same, but we also have the same cinematographer and the same wardrobe department – we have a lot of key department heads who are actually giving a consistent tone to it. That helps even things out a little bit. But yeah, it does vary.”

Robert Singer – the namesake of Jim Beaver’s character Bobby Singer – is a SUPERNATURAL executive producer who frequently directs, but Collins explains that this doesn’t mean Singer is up in Canada all the time. “Nobody is. Kim Manners was, but he passed away in Season Four. So since Season Four, we have not had a director/producer [permanently stationed in Vancouver]. I mean, Bob is a director and producer, so he’s more that guy than anyone, but he’s not up there. He’s in L.A. So if there’s a question that crops up, Bob and [show runner] Jeremy [Carver] will get a phone call, but there’s no eyes on the production. Jim Michaels has his eyes on the production, but he’s not a creative producer on the show, he’s [on the financial side]. And he probably, for that reason, has a little bit more input than a producer who is the financial producer does normally, because he’s stepping in a little bit where those guys would normally be doing the work.”

Ackles has directed several SUPERNATURAL episodes at this point, as well as starring in them. Has Collins sought any counsel from his fellow actor? “I have. I’ve talked to Jensen about his experiences. He’ll deny it, but he actually gave me a bunch of advice that was helpful. Basically, I grilled every director that has come along and asked them for their input and have assembled a long Cloud app that I’ve been storing all my director input in.”

Meanwhile, Collins relates that he’s been exercising his creative and culinary passions while bonding with his young son. “COOKING FAST AND FRESH WITH WEST, for those of you who haven’t seen it, is a little weird Web series that is pretty fun, with me and my two-year-old. He’s now three. We just shot the third installment. I was a little nervous, because he’s older and he’s talking now and he’s a little self-conscious of the camera and stuff like that. And it started really lame, because he just wasn’t doing the stuff that he did before,” Collins laughs, “and then when he got into the kitchen appliances, things really took shape. So it’s really funny. I couldn’t stop [laughing] – tears were running down my face.”

Then there’s GISHWES and Random Acts’ reconstruction project in Haiti. Collins reports, “We got a Guinness World Record for our scavenger hunt, which is awesome, and the work that we’re doing down in Haiti has been really amazing to me. I was not a hundred percent sure that it was going to go as well as I had promised, and it seems to have gone even better. The construction that we’re doing down there is going really gangbusters, so I’m super-happy with that. And Random Acts is actually doing a lot more stuff outside of Haiti, so that’s exciting, too. We’re getting a lot of littler projects underway, and that’s all thanks to the SUPERNATURAL fans. I have a job, I get to work with a nonprofit that I’m really proud of, and I have a Guinness World Record from these fans. So I’m very happy with them altogether. GISHWES is a regular LLC, it’s not a nonprofit, but [in 2012] we donated $40,000-plus to Random Acts, which is the organization that did the project that I worked on in Haiti. So we’re basically trying to donate as much as we can, but it is not technically a nonprofit.”

Does Collins have a favorite episode of SUPERNATURAL that’s aired so far? “Yes. ‘The French Mistake,’ that’s my favorite episode.”

Is there anything else Collins would like to say right now about SUPERNATURAL’s ninth season? “I just think that this is shaping up – I’m putting it in the top two seasons of the series. I really think it’s going to be a great season. I’m excited about it.”

Interviewed by Abbie Bernstein