Jared and Jensen Gold Member’s Panel at VanCon: Jensen Joins Twitter, Osric Chau Jokes and Other Fun
(Photo courtesy of @FangasmSPN). At this morning’s Jared and Jensen Gold Members only panel at Salute to Supernatural in Vancouver, history was made! Yes, in front of the crowd, Jensen Ackles joined Twitter. But other stuff happened too, and this ended up being a very fun half hour. I have all the details about the panel below, including the blow by blow of this very famous moment in Twitter history.
– There’s a documentary crew filming here this weekend. It’s Clif Kosterman’s brother, Mitch running the project. They’re in the corner filming both the crowd and the behind the scenes action as we waited for Jensen and Jared to arrive.
– They showed a bunch of vids while we’re waiting. The clips with the shirtless guys seems to be getting the louder response, at least on my side of the room. We’re a little more depraved over in our corner.
– 10:05 am. Yep, they never start these things on time (scheduled start 10 am). 99.999% of the time Jared is the culprit. Is today the .001 margin of error? Unknown, but not likely.
– Jared asks for the crazy stories from the con so far. “Two fingers of Matt Cohen.” Jared – “I’m not going to ask.”
– Jared wanted to know if there was a boat tour (he was referring to Misha’s Friday cruise that he had with 70 fans). He strangely wanted to know the name of the boat, because he saw one out and wondered the name of the boat. “It wasn’t called Misha,” he laughed as that was a fan’s answer.
– Jared did a roll call of first timers. Half of the room raised their hands. Yes, there’s a lot of new people coming to these cons these days. He mentioned the 200th episode (a common the theme for this weekend), which they are shooting right now. Jensen has shot 2 days of the episode so far, Jared only 1. Name of the episode, “Fan Fiction.”
– Jared blames his shoulder surgery on being a beanpole. “I got ninjafied.” Jensen – “For the first time in 10 years I have more muscle than he does.”
– Jared starts a story with “I was on a plane this summer…” and everyone starts laughing. For anyone that doesn’t get the joke, Jared has been railing on American Airlines on his Twitter feed recently. He told us about how he had a sling on in the plane and the woman sitting next to him helped him out. She asked how he hurt his shoulder. “I hurt it wrestling.” Woman – “In school?” Jared laughed, “I’m 32.” She wondered what he did for a living and he let her know he was an actor on a TV show. She hadn’t heard of Supernatural, but was curious if it was on Netflix. She really wanted to see it. Jared told her, “If you watch an episode every other day for the next year you’ll catch up.” Her stunned reaction – “What’d you say?” She had no idea there was 195 episodes out there!
– We got the whole story about the recent accident involving the Impala and the driver, Frank. Jensen told the story. Frank was pulling the car onto the trailer and the throttle got stuck. He tried to hit the brakes, but the power of the engine was too much. Thinking of the safety of those around, he cranked it left to get away from people, jumped over the median, knocked over a sign, went down a ditch and crashed into trees. It snapped his collarbone, and part of it was sticking out of the skin. He was in terrible pain and while the fire truck got there in five minutes, the paramedics took 40 minutes! Jared tweeted a picture of the car. The car itself is fine, a dent on the underside of the bumper, and that was probably already there. Turns out the accelerator got stuck on some wires and it was easily fixed. The car made it out way better than poor Frank.
Poor ‘pala 🙁 pic.twitter.com/2S5UhrJ7iS
— Jared Padalecki (@jarpad) August 24, 2014
– They recently shot something at a Gymnasium (in their FBI suits). There were some basketballs on the other side of the gym and Jensen started shooting baskets. “I look over at Jared and he’s just got one arm.” Jensen then demonstrates Jared sadly bouncing the basketball with one arm. Yes, the injury has been taking it’s toll! Jared told Bob Singer this summer he had to have shoulder surgery and will try to be ready by filming. Singer, who has had shoulder surgery before, knew better and wrote it in. Sam is wearing a sling the first four episodes. Jared was proud to show up for the 200th episode (shot by Phil Sgriccia) without a sling.
– Someone in our row in the back corner of the room asked Jared, “Does Osric have to sleep with one eye open?” Jensen – “Osric already sleeps with one eye open. He’s a ninja. I’ll take any Chuck Norris proverb and insert Osric Chau.” So they do! They break into a few Chuck Norris jokes inserting Osric’s name. “Osric Chau does not sleep, he waits.” “When Osric Chau gets out of the boat, he doesn’t get wet. The lake gets Osric’d.”
Here it is, the moment of history! Someone gets the ball rolling by asking about Jensen and his Facebook page. Jensen explains the whole thing to us. When he was at Comic Con, he was at Nerd HQ. There was a Facebook booth in the green room. Two people came up to him and said that they have his name on Facebook and it has 4 million likes. He had no idea what that meant! They offered to give him the page, for nothing. They told him all he has to do is verify it and that will debunk the other ones. They walked him through the process of taking the account over, and he did. So yes, Jensen owns that Facebook page now, but he hasn’t done anything with it.
That was the perfect segue to Jensen and Twitter. He’s been resisting social media and Twitter as well all know. He knows though how it’s become an important tool for the industry and it’s very good connection to the fans. So, he announces that right there, on the stage, he’s joining Twitter! He gets out his phone and Jared walks him through the process.
Jensen said that the network got his name and the account has been setup. He decides his first tweet is to take a photo of all us and it’ll be the first tweet. “I’m not going to send out pictures of my breakfast, just so you know.”
“You’re going to break Twitter,” some fans shout as the joins start going through the roof. He called his twitter name, @JensenAckles a “handle.” They joked on stage about him using old trucker lingo. “What’s your avatar going to be?” Jared asks. “You lost me,” Jensen answers.
Jared and Jensen go the corner and Jared stands on a chair and takes the picture of the crowd. Then they go back to the stage and try to send the first tweet out. Jensen has to be guided by Jared to send the tweet! He looked so lost through the whole process. It was pretty adorable. First there was a matter of which hashtags to use. He was told about hashtag #VanCon. Then they were told #Porncouver. “Porncouver???” Jared asks us incredulously. Apparently he hadn’t heard Richard’s opening speech on Friday. He was told to blame Richard.
A reassuring pat from @jarpad as @Jensenackles tries to tweet #vanconpic.twitter.com/C7UiFriWJ9
— Fangasm (@FangasmSPN) August 24, 2014
Jensen beats his head on the mic trying to get this message together, because they still can’t decide on what to include. It’s hilarious. Finally they send, and Jensen is sweating it out after sending the tweet. “Twitter 1, Jensen 0.” Then Jared tweets the announcement on his Twitter. Jensen by this time already has 18,000 followers. Jensen, “I’m a Sam girl, I’m not following.”
Then Clif comes over and reveals the tweet didn’t go through! The tweets are bouncing. There’s no cell service!! (Tell me about it. We’ve had that problem all weekend). So they have to try again. Jared has to hold the phone way over his head!!! Finally, it works. The entire room is rolling in laughter.
“In the 3 seconds I’ve tweeted it, you’ve got 2,000 followers,” Jared said. They also noticed there were already some hate tweets! Jensen asked, “Does that mean I have to do that ice bucket thing?” He’s not doing it today. He’s been nominated a dozen times, and that’s just his family. His aunt in Denver challenged him yesterday.
Hey #SPNFamily… It’s official. My gay thing is on twitter. Follow @JensenAckles. I have a feeling he’s gonna beat me to 1 mil.
— Adam Rose (@RealAdamRose) August 24, 2014
Welcome to Twitter, son! It’s about time! XO Mama Tran @JensenAckles#spn#supernaturalpic.twitter.com/CmEvFlQFdL
— Lauren Tom (@LaurenTom9000) August 24, 2014
It’s official! I am hereby confirming that Jensen Ackles IS now on twitter. U R welcome 🙂 @jensenackles#JensenAcklesOnTwitter
— Jared Padalecki (@jarpad) August 24, 2014
Clif shows the guys the twitter on the laptop, and Jared shows the timeline to us. Messages are coming in fast and furious. “Welcome to my world Jensen Ackles.” Jared admits he gets really scared when messages start flying at him like that, and that’s why he can’t answer any of us.
After proclaiming this to be a historic event (it most certainly was), the J’s take their bow and go off the photo ops. We go rushing back to our hotel rooms, because we need some damned internet service to start sharing this wonderful news.
More reports to come from Vancon later, including the afternoon Jared and Jensen panel for everyone else. No doubt Twitter will be a topic of discussion.
Thank you so much for sharing! For people like me, so far away from you, it’s very nice to get news this way. I do love your web site and I appreciate your work a lot!
I had to laugh at Jensens comment that he won’t be tweeting pics of his breakfast – since that’s exactly what Mark Sheppard had done just a few hours earlier!
(Hope the nasties don’t get too bad for him).
So glad to hear Jared is done with the sling, and good on Bob S for knowing to write it into the show.
I think many of the fans are worrying about the nasties. It is nice he joined twitter.
Now I just hope he survives it. 😉
Nice work Alice and sorry to hear about the internet trouble there.
– Lilah
Great summary of the panel. Glad you had fun. THank you.
Aww so sweet. Thanks for the write up. Love these two.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! Yes, I’m shouting. 🙂 Your reports are so appreciated.
Thanks for this, Alice! I’ve been sharing this article with my followers and even a few real life friends. They’re pretty excited about Jensen joining twitter too 🙂
Thank you Alice for bringing this goodness to those who are not able to be there. I’m loving every word!
I really really hope the nasties stay away from our Jensen. Don’t want him hurt in any way.