Bardicvoice’s VanCon Reports, Part Six: Mark Sheppard and Mark Pellegrino

(All photos courtesy of sweetondean)

The two Marks made up the first of the paired panels, playing off of and to each other nearly as often as they played to the crowd. Some of this little account is going to read like a script, with them tossing comments back and forth!

Mark Sheppard (who’s going to appear here as MS in shorthand, while Pellegrino will be MP) opened by telling the crowd – who cheered him almost as much for being in Doctor Who as for Supernatural! – that Jared was too big to get into the TARDIS. He explained that he’d introduced the Supernatural cast members to the Who cast at the San Diego Comic Con in July, and laughed that Jared hadn’t been able to get into the mock TARDIS on the SDCC floor.

One fan asked who would win in a showdown fight between Lucifer and Crowley, and Sheppard didn’t hesitate!

MS: Crowley would win, of course!
MP: (drawling) Oh, really? You’ve only seen a few layers of Lucifer; there’s more. Much more.
MS: (ignoring MP, straight to audience) I’m much sneakier and much better than he is.
MP: (pure Lucifer, full of promise) The day of reckoning is coming.

With the memory of Friday’s karaoke party fresh in everyone’s minds, a fan asked Pellegrino which was his favorite scene in Rocky Horror. He rolled his hips and said, “Well, ‘Sweet Transvestite’ [the song he’d used to bring the house down at karaoke!] is one of my favorite scenes!” Pellegrino teased Sheppard about doing karaoke, but Sheppard pointed out that although he’d appeared on stage, he hadn’t sung anything, never did, and insisted he never would; all he did was stand there, say “No” to singing, and get other people to sing instead!

Both of the Marks were asked which of their scenes in Supernatural had been their favorite ones to film.

MP: (to MS, suggestively) Kissing Jim?
MS: (pretending affront) No! The only fun part of kissing Jim was I’d already kissed a man on the show. Jim was all like, “okay, no problem” until it was time to do it, and then he was panicking! My favorite scene was the first one where I gave the boys the Colt. All that snark. Always being a step ahead of them. I give Jared the gun, he aims it at my head and pulls the trigger and I say, “Oh, yeah, right – you probably need some ammunition.” Such fun.
MP: I loved the stuff as Nick, when the devil comes in the form of my wife.
MS: End of season 7, I think the bag of honey was the worst. Misha just pushed it into my face!

They were both asked who on the show was most like and most unlike their characters.

MS: Misha is most like a baby in a trenchcoat. Jared picks me up and starts shaking me all the time. There’s a mischievousness about Crowley that appeals to me and I hope I have, and intelligence. In those ways, we’re alike. But it’s the extraordinary circumstances our characters are in, running Hell like a convention line. (aside to MP, spoken as Crowley) I changed your Hell, by the way.
MP: (as Lucifer!) I noticed that. I’ll get you back.
MS: (back to discussion, explaining to audience) You build on parts of the character.
MP: And then they start to write for you, your peculiarities and the way you speak.
MS: Good writers observe the things that we bring that were different from what they envisaged, and then they start to write for you. You don’t have a lot of time. Characters change. There are areas to dig deeper.

Asked what he thought would happen to Crowley, Sheppard grinned.

MS: They won’t kill me because no one would believe it any more.

A fan praised Sheppard’s work on The Closer, and asked if there was any chance we would see his character in the new spin-off series, Major Crimes.

MP: Gavin on The Closer, loved him. Don’t know if there’s a place for him in the new spin-off, but I hope he comes back in some capacity. There’s talk, but talk is cheap until you sign on the dotted line.

To the complete befuddlement of Pellegrino – and a substantial part of the audience, judging from the expressions on a lot of people around me! – a fan asked Sheppard a question that consisted almost entirely of one compound word – SuperWhoLock – and Sheppard lit up. He ragged on Pellegrino for not getting the reference, and then spelled it out.
MS: SuperWhoLock – Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock. Of course! I would do anything to be on Sherlock to complete the trifecta! But before you go all crazy, asking or petitioning to be on it isn’t the way. If the show creator writes a character that fits me, I’m sure they’ll ask. And I’m sure I’ll say yes!

Asked about what it was like on set, Sheppard took the lead again.

MS: Our fun is while we’re doing what we’re doing – add the gag reels to the episodes, and you have an idea of what our days are like.

I don’t recall how this topic got broached – perhaps a question about the scariest monsters – but Sheppard wound up giving Pellegrino (and the audience) an extended lesson in the truly scary monster concepts Stephen Moffat had created for Doctor Who, particularly the Silence (from the episodes Silence in the Library and Silence Will Fall) and the Weeping Angels introduced in the justly famous episode Blink. (If you haven’t seen these, I encourage you to look them up; the concepts are terrifying! Especially the Angels, who literally are stone and cannot move when anyone or anything is looking at them, but then move so quickly when unperceived that they could kill you while you blinked.) Sheppard extolled the brilliance of Moffat’s imagination in creating terror out of anything or nothing, as he did when he speculated about a very ordinary crack he saw one day in the wall of his son’s bedroom and wound up turning it into a story concept of a catastrophic crack in space and time swallowing people.

From Doctor Who, the discussion turned to Sheppard’s pre-acting career as a musician, in which he’d played drums for multiple bands since the age of 15, including the Irish group Light a Big Fire. Rapidly listing off bands in which he’d played, which went by too fast for me to catch, he laughed that he’d been in every band that almost made it big but didn’t! He added that he thought a lot of expressive musicians wound up becoming brilliant actors to satisfy their need for expression that wasn’t being satisfied purely through music, citing Tom Waits as an example along with himself (although he didn’t claim the ‘brilliant’ adjective for himself!).

Asked to describe Jared, Jensen, and Misha in one word each, Pellegrino demurred, but Sheppard was game.

MS: Jared: (no hesitation!) Moose. Jensen: (with consideration, and spoken very deliberately, with decision) Gentleman. Misha: (after a little searching thought) Fluffy! [grin] I use moose for Jared because it means that I love him.

Asked about working with Joss Whedon, Sheppard laughed.

MS: Well, he likes me! But really, the show runners – Whedon, all of them – are fabulous people to work with. Dealing with the studios and networks, they have to endure the politics of selling soap, but every single one of them is a fan. They’re committed to what they’re doing. Great visionaries. Great writers.

One of the last questions proved particularly hilarious; someone asked, if they each designed a Hell for the other, what would it be?

MP: (shaking his head, handing off the question to MS, speaking as Lucifer) You’re the one redecorated my place.
MS: (slipping into Crowley) What’s a Hell for me? A place where I couldn’t talk, a silent room with nobody to talk to. For you? (cocking his head at MP) A room full of – cats. Hungry, angry cats, and nothing else. Loud, annoying, and then they’ll eat you. Last I saw you outside of Sam, you were falling apart. Thought the cats could pick off the falling bits. Pick off the cornflakes on what’s left of your face.
By the time Sheppard got to the “falling bits” part, Pellegrino was laughing too hard to talk!

I know I missed other things, but the last bit I did manage to catch was Sheppard’s advice to actors on how to achieve reality in performance whether in procedurals, science fiction, fantasy, or anything else.

MS: Never try to act all the procedural gobbledygook; it’s the human stuff at the end that matters. Deal with the business between characters, not the words on the page.