Eric Kripke Interview – Comic Con Press Room 2009
The Supernatural press room at the San Diego Comic con this morning was pretty full, so much so they divided us into two rooms. The video media got one room, print got the other. In previous press rooms, video got the front of the room and print the back. There were 4 tables of 10 journalists each, and everyone went around Round Robin style to answer our questions for a set period of time.
I was a freaking nervous wreck while waiting. I couldn’t believe I was actually there. Reality hit soon as first up at our table was none other than the Master genius himself. Eric Kripke sat down and as we all pushed our recorders in front of him, he joked how it was like the president, only he was far less important. Not in my world buddy.
I fired away with the first question, because unlike other press rooms this was my bread and butter show and the main reason I flew 2200 miles. I wasn’t gonna let the other media push me completely out of this one. Sadly it was the only question I got in, but that’s far better than what I got in other Q & A’s. All in all, I was thrilled with the caliber of questions and answers.
Below is a loose transcript of that round table session. As a subtle warning, MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!
My question: Okay, you’ve got a lot explaining to do. What does “God has left the building” mean?
EK: God, in the mythology of our show, God has gone missing. (Like in dogma? someone asks). Maybe, there’s a lot of cultural references that we could either be paying homage to or stealing from, depending on how kind you are. But God is missing, he’s not in Heaven. There is a bureaucracy of angels who don’t necessarily have the most benevolent intents, who are running things in his absence, and that’s sort of why Zachariah and his ilk have jump started the apocalypse. I think they just got impatient and there was no one telling them not to.
Did God go on vision quest, is he just in the wilderness, or did foul play?
EK: I’m not gonna reveal, and the reason I’m not gonna reveal is because, not anytime in the first half of the season, but God will be a character on Supernatural this season. (Lots of oohs over that bombshell). Which has led to no end of hilarity in the writer’s room of Supernatural trying to break God’s motivation. And we’re like “What does God do? What’s his motivation in this scene?” and then we start laughing and we say Gossip Girl doesn’t have these problems. (everyone laughs).
But he will be a character. I’m not going to reveal how or where and he’s not going to thread in anytime soon but this is the big season and we felt we couldn’t bring on the Devil without bringing on God too and again brings on no end of amusement that our little show has these characters asking these kind of questions and hopefully we don’t bore anyone silly this season.
You said a while ago there’s five year plan for the show and just five and I know Dawn (Ostroff) wants this to go much longer.
EK: Well, the real answer is that we never dreamt it would go five years. At least I didn’t. And so yes, there was a five year plan and a five year story. We are in the fifth year of that story. This is the last chapter of this volume and we plan on telling it well and climatically, but you know we are certainly also batting around ideas and there’s no reason there can’t be another volume, there’s no reason a new epic story can’t begin. We’re not going to stretch this one out past its expiration date, we’re not going to drag this one to a place it isn’t, we’re going to tell it the way its supposed to be told and its going to end, but another story can begin. That’s what we’re preparing for and we’ll just sort of see how this season goes.
And you would be on board with that story. You would not let that train leave without you, right?
EK: I’m going to cross that bridge when I get to it. I am breaking episode six of this season, my head is so far away from season six that I honestly have no idea.
Anything we can do to make sure that the train doesn’t leave without you?
EK: I’m very interested and anything can happen, and we’ll see. I need to see how this season goes first.
Are you getting better attention from the network now that the show is getting critical acclaim?
EK: No, they’ve been really supportive from the beginning and in the key and most important way which is they’ve always let us do exactly what we’ve exactly wanted to do. I mean, we are sort of in the CW class we’re the goth kids sitting in the back row (laughter) and they don’t try to pretty us up you know. Which is great, they let us do what we want, they let us have episodes about suicide and death and gore and then episodes about angels and God and angels that swear and are cruel and so I appreciate that because its, I’ll definitely take that, the creative freedom is great and they let us kind of work our own little mad laboratory.
Have you gotten any negative feedback from how God and Angels are portrayed on the show?
EK: Nothing major, which kind of shocks me quite frankly. You know, I actually kind of keep waiting for more. But not really. Every so often you catch like on websites and just random comments people don’t really like where the angel story is going. Even though there are malevolent angels that doesn’t mean that we’re still not talking about an overall ordered universe and that again God being a character we’re not saying there aren’t more benevolent higher powers at play here. So, funny enough we’re actually becoming, it’s weird because we didn’t necessarily set out for this is but we’re becoming this really religious show. We’ve actually heard anecdotally that fundamentalists really love the show (that gets a surprised reaction). I swear, I swear, we have a buddy, one of our writers knows friends of friends and where he grew up and he knows a lot of fundamentalists just because no other show on television has ever talked about end times with any sort of vague references to the bible and I think they appreciate it even though we’re saying that angels are evil and it’s a Godless universe and God’s either missing or dead and I think they just appreciate the little we are talking about it.
Was this the direction you planned for the show to go in originally or did it just kind of happen?
EK: These things always evolve. The main thrust of the plan is happening. For me actually when I set out, and look the reality is when you set out in the beginning you set out with cocktail napkin sketch of what you want the season to be, and the progression of demons and evil, which is what I was initially interested in, what’s the bad guy plan, what are they up to, and that’s always been the same of building from Yellow eyes to Lilith to now the Devil and that was actually how I structured it, and that’s where we’re going.
The angels actually, you can go back, I’d be lying to say otherwise, you can back to interviews I gave where said I’m not putting angels on this show, screw that, I don’t want angels on this show, and the angels kind of evolved because we started to realize that we needed in this cosmic battle we had the empire and we didn’t really have the rebellion and that we sort of saw that missing. Then we started talking more and more about angels, we wanted to open the door to whole new real estate and it has, it’s triggered all sorts of stories. But if you look at what the main thrust of mythology is it’s always what the demons are up to and now the Devil’s bringing about the end of the world and all that was going to be true that the fifth season was going to be the apocalypse just the, at the beginning of last year we said we should probably have warriors fighting the apocalypse and so that’s how that sort of evolved.
Can you comment at all on Castiel’s decision at the end to defy?
EK: Uh, he’s totally, totally screwed in season five. You’ll even see it at the clip at the panel if you have a chance to check that out. Things didn’t end well with him and the archangel that came down, I can say this, certainly throughout episode 1 he is dead and exploded into glorious smithereens, and if you notice, he’s in the room (Misha was at another table) so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. And so he’s on the run, he’s fallen, they’re hunting him down, he’s cut off from where he was, he’s now sort of lost and scared and alone with the guys and everyone’s totally boned as they’re trying to stop the apocalypse from happening. There’s basically about four good guys against the entire universe trying to stop the apocalypse.
With shotguns.
EK: Yeah, par for the course for me.
I tried to get in a question about whether he was going to direct another episode, but had no luck. With that he’s called away to the next table, and we have more teasers to get all excited about.
Coming in the next article, Ben Edlund. Or Sera Gamble. Or Jim Beaver. Or Misha Collins.
You are a legend! Thank you so much! What a great read. i am loving this. Still cannot wait!! Sounds fantastic
Alice, you are the best. This is great and I can hardly wait for the rest of it. 😀
Thank you so much for this.
Congrats Alice!!!!!!
Thanks so much! I had to sit in a mass of Smallville fans to get a decent seat for the panel -AWESOME (I know the room is huge, but Supernatural should have been in a MUCH bigger room). The director question was on my list too, but nobody got to ask it. 🙂 🙂
eeeeee! so excited! about everything can’t wait to see what they come up with! bring on sept!
Wow the guy didn’t talk about Sam and Dean AT ALL 😡 But he talked about Castiel. That’s so wrong. Even if the people didn’t ask about the brothers, he should have at least find a way to talk about them. Supernatural is about SAM AND DEAN. I don’t care about this angel/Lucifer/Castiel/God mythology 😡
Nice one Alice.
So much for going spoilerless … First vague wiff and I’m in like Flynn. 😆
Sounds so good, roll on September!
Hey, Kripke, what happened to “I have years worth of Urban Legends to tell”? Now it’s “we need this cosmic battle”?
Seriously, screw the apocalypse and the angels! We want Sam and Dean Winchester’s story.
The Kripkeeper rocks! I love that after 4 years, going into 5, he still has so much love and enthusiasm for his little show, a show that has defied all the odds by making it as long as it has on a netlet that gives it virtually no promotion. Not only has it survived, but thrived, actually growing audience in it’s 4th year. That’s extremely unusual for any show that’s been on the air that long.
I much prefer darker, arc driven storytelling, personally. If this show had always been “Night Stalker With Cute Boys”, I’d have bailed long ago. Monster of the Week eps can be fun, but would never have kept my interest year after year, week in, week out. Dean and Sam go on a ghostie/ghoulie hunt. Guest stars (I am neither invested in, or care about) in peril. Dean and Sam save the day. Drive on to the next town. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I’m torn about a 6th season. I would really like to see the show go out on a high note, not die a slow, agonizinly painful death like my once beloved X-Files did. But if Kripke stays on, and feels he has more story to tell, I’ll definitely be along for the ride. It’s been a terrific journey so far.
Suze, I know what you mean. I was trying for spoiler free as well but ah….well….okay, I admit it, I’m as addicted to Supernatural as Sam is to demon blood! It was just too damn hard to resist all the SPN news out there.
Thanks for posting the Comic Con stuff, Alice. It’s like a nice long drink of water to a parched (wo)man out in the desert of hiatus!
Finally getting around to reading this great Q&A!
What’s impressive is how Kripke is so gleefully open about his decision making process and the direction of the series. I’d say he’s pretty spoilerific, but it really makes me curious how they’ll pull off the whole God-Satan dynamic without turning into the 70s movie “Oh, God!”
Incidentally, from the picture (in which I recognize Emma of Fanbolt.com) I figured out your table: the one directly behind mine– which you can see over Eric’s right shoulder in the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalommDGOuM
Sorry ’bout the delayed reply — yep, that was my frenetic self at the table 🙂
Was running on fumes on Friday, with a brain freeze, so apologies that I didn’t make your acquaintence. Too bad we didn’t get the same level of organization from FOX that the Warner Bros. staffers had for the Supernatural interview rounds. Would have been nice to get some face time with the Dollhouse gang.
There’s always next year 🙂