New interview with Misha Collins from ChicagoNow.com
Wow, my Chicago internet papers are all over Supernatural today! First Maureen Ryan and now ChicagoNow.com. Cool!
This time it's an interview with Misha, talking about Castiel and what's coming up for him in season five, and his connection to Chicago.
Enjoy!
Misha Collins of 'Supernatural' takes on Lucifer, call girls, Oprah
Curt Wagner on 09.10.09
Pretending to be a Russian exchange student at the University of Chicago helped prepare "Supernatural" co-star Misha Collins for an acting career.
When Misha Collins heard that Oprah Winfrey had shut down Michigan Avenue this week to tape her talk show, he was immediately struck by a similar storyline in his CW series "Supernatural."
"As if this woman needed to feel that she had anymore power," he told me during a phone interview as Winfrey greeted her audience outside RedEye's windows on Tuesday. "I hope Oprah doesn't crowd your city too much for too long. That could be kind of apocalyptic in and of itself."
Collins knows about the apocalypse, at least the one his character, the angel Castiel, will try to prevent when "Supernatural" returns for its fifth season at 8 p.m. Thursday. Castiel is something of a fallen angel now. Having been fired from heaven, he teams with demon-hunting brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), but "we're also being collectively pursued by all of the forces of heaven and all of the forces of hell."
Collins, who studied social theory at the University of Chicago, says the season is intense.
"That's a lot of material for the writers to work with," he said of the season's mythology. "It's hugely ambitious and I think they are tackling it head-on and doing a great job of it. We're confronting Lucifer and the apocalypse. It's no small potatoes."
The latest "Supernatural" storyline may be an epic confrontation that could lead to the end of humanity (for more on that, check on The Watcher's Eric Kripke interview), but Collins says the most hellish experience on set is trying not to crack up laughing.
"Sometimes it's too much fun. Sometimes it really is frustrating and hard [to not laugh]," he said. "We shot a scene that had a cushion-fart gag in it last week which nearly held up production. We simply could not get through it."
As has been the case throughout the show's four previous seasons, what we see onscreen isn't all gloom and doom. With Castiel striving to have human experiences this season, Collins gets to have some fun onscreen as well. Watch for Dean to take his angelic buddy to a brothel this season.
"Yes, he's trying to deflower the angel," Collins said, laughing, "and it doesn't go quite according to plan."
Collins talked more about Castiel's future, working on "Supernatural" and how goofing off at the University of Chicago prepared him to become an actor.
How is acting opposite the devil, who I see from all these Twitter posts today is being played by Mark Pellegrino?
We haven't had any scenes together yet, but I imagine it's going to be good. Actually, Mark and I did a movie together several years ago. If it's anything like that was, it's great working opposite the devil. He's a really good actor.
Did you ever think you'd be playing an angel?
No, I never did. In fact I had done a string of sort of bad-guy characters for a couple of years. I played a serial killer, assassins. Actually I played two serial killers now that I reflect. I was thinking, "I gotta get out of this bad-gay stuff." Then the angel role came along and I thought "Fantastic!" Except that I kind of have a slightly bad-guy angel, but it's a very welcome reprieve for me.
Castiel's not like a white-robed, cheery, fluffy-winged angel, is he?
No, there is no harp in this ensemble.
That would be funny though.
[Laughs.] They should work that in.
There's humor on "Supernatural," but not that light. It's a fairly dark show with dark stories. Is it serious on the set?
It's not at all a dark set behind the scenes. I think that the biggest challenge to shooting the show is not laughing during takes, because there are always some antics going on. It's a lot of fun and literally, sometimes it's too much fun. Sometimes it really is frustrating and hard. We were talking about the apocalypse and simply could not stop laughing last week. We also shot a scene that had a cushion fart gag in it last week, which nearly held up production. We simply could not get through it. So it's a great crew and a really fun set to work on.
I hear Dean takes you to a whorehouse this season. That should be fun.
Yes, we've shot that already. I can vouch for that. Yes, he's trying to deflower the angel and it doesn't go quite according to plan.
Will Castiel be helping the brothers out this year?
Most of my stuff actually is with one or both of the guys. I'm helping them sort things out but I've also got a mission of my own, which is revealed in the second episode. I'm there helping them help sort stuff out, but we're also being collectively pursued by all of the forces of heaven and all of the forces of hell. We've got to all watch our backs pretty closely. It's pretty intense.
So you were fired from heaven?
Yeah, I was laid off. I was fired so I can't even collect unemployment.
Do you have powers this season?
I do have powers. My powers are slightly diminished. There are certain things I can't do. I don't think I'd be able to repair a person's broken leg anymore but I do have other powers like teleportation and I believe time travel as well. I'm not totally useless yet.
But Castiel is trying to become more human, right? That's sort of been his storyline, but I read it will be more prevalent this season.
I think Castiel is seeing more and more what the human experience is like. He's becoming more human as time goes by, partly from his exposure to people and learning about them and partly because his powers are diminishing and he's becoming less angelic.
Ultimately he's not going to be a human, is he?
I don't know the answer to that. I don't know where that ultimately goes. But I don't know that that would be impossible. In fact, there's an episode that we shot this season where we flash forward to the future and in that scenario there's, um, I don't know, that might be too spoilery. I'm not going to say what I was going to say. Self-edit.
OK, let's talk about your connection to Chicago then.
I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad, where I studied social theory and spent four years in the south side of Chicago, [in] Hyde Park, running like Forrest Gump up and down the midway. I loved Chicago. It's a really great place. It's a great place to go to school, if you're into books and the basement of the Regenstein Library, which at the time, I was.
And you were there for four years? Did you get to do much of anything besides study?
[Laughs.] Yes, but not as much as one would probably like in their college years. I remember while we were there, there was a study of the top 400 universities and they ranked them according to various different criteria and the University of Chicago, at the time, ranked 400 out of 400. Right under the Naval Academy.
So it wasn't the most social environment in the world. I interned briefly at WBEZ. That was awesome. I spent some time hanging out in the archives at the Field Museum picking up shrunken heads and things like that, which was really exciting.
Cool. Is there anything that happened in Chicago that sort of has stuck with you and that you kind of use all the time now?
Yeah. You know, I didn't study acting in school and I didn't know that I was going to go into acting when I was at Chicago, but I started goofing around a lot in character and I actually spent some of my class time pretending that I was a Russian foreign exchange student and things like that. I guess the general antics and freedom that I felt; just screwing around in character when I was in college, I think was a big factor in why I ended up going into acting as a career. It was sort of my first foray.
But then you went on to Nepal, right, to study at a Buddhist monastery? Was that before college or after college?
That was during college. I took a year off from college and went to Nepal and Tibet, yeah.
And you started a software company. You've done a lot of things that you don't see on an actors resume, I guess, that often.
Yeah. I think part of what helped was that I didn't really know that I [would end up acting]. I didn't get into acting until a little bit later, so I had a chance to do some other stuff first. Actually, once you get into it, it does become somewhat consuming. And you don't have as much time as it looks like you do to do other things because you're always hunting down that next job.
I certainly, since I've started being a professional actor, I haven't felt that I have had nearly as much freedom as I had before because I don't really feel that comfortable going away, going to Nepal for example, or going work in the White House or something like that because you end up missing out on a lot of opportunities when you leave LA.
Speaking of the White House. You worked there during the Clinton administration in the Office of Presidential Personnel. Did you like working in the White House?
I did. I did in the sense that it made me realize that I didn't want to go into politics anymore. So it was an educational experience. But frankly I didn't have that much fun there. It was what got me into acting. I thought I was going to be a politician when I grew up and that's what got me out of that, and actually into acting.
So what'd you do, just sort of flee Washington and then go to LA?
I did. I went directly. I didn't know anyone in LA, loaded up the car, drove across country. It was somewhat arbitrary. It was going to be either LA or New York and NY. I'll try that for a little while. That was a decade ago.
~~~~~
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This time it's an interview with Misha, talking about Castiel and what's coming up for him in season five, and his connection to Chicago.
Enjoy!
Misha Collins of 'Supernatural' takes on Lucifer, call girls, Oprah
Curt Wagner on 09.10.09
Pretending to be a Russian exchange student at the University of Chicago helped prepare "Supernatural" co-star Misha Collins for an acting career.
When Misha Collins heard that Oprah Winfrey had shut down Michigan Avenue this week to tape her talk show, he was immediately struck by a similar storyline in his CW series "Supernatural."
"As if this woman needed to feel that she had anymore power," he told me during a phone interview as Winfrey greeted her audience outside RedEye's windows on Tuesday. "I hope Oprah doesn't crowd your city too much for too long. That could be kind of apocalyptic in and of itself."
Collins knows about the apocalypse, at least the one his character, the angel Castiel, will try to prevent when "Supernatural" returns for its fifth season at 8 p.m. Thursday. Castiel is something of a fallen angel now. Having been fired from heaven, he teams with demon-hunting brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), but "we're also being collectively pursued by all of the forces of heaven and all of the forces of hell."
Collins, who studied social theory at the University of Chicago, says the season is intense.
"That's a lot of material for the writers to work with," he said of the season's mythology. "It's hugely ambitious and I think they are tackling it head-on and doing a great job of it. We're confronting Lucifer and the apocalypse. It's no small potatoes."
The latest "Supernatural" storyline may be an epic confrontation that could lead to the end of humanity (for more on that, check on The Watcher's Eric Kripke interview), but Collins says the most hellish experience on set is trying not to crack up laughing.
"Sometimes it's too much fun. Sometimes it really is frustrating and hard [to not laugh]," he said. "We shot a scene that had a cushion-fart gag in it last week which nearly held up production. We simply could not get through it."
As has been the case throughout the show's four previous seasons, what we see onscreen isn't all gloom and doom. With Castiel striving to have human experiences this season, Collins gets to have some fun onscreen as well. Watch for Dean to take his angelic buddy to a brothel this season.
"Yes, he's trying to deflower the angel," Collins said, laughing, "and it doesn't go quite according to plan."
Collins talked more about Castiel's future, working on "Supernatural" and how goofing off at the University of Chicago prepared him to become an actor.
How is acting opposite the devil, who I see from all these Twitter posts today is being played by Mark Pellegrino?
We haven't had any scenes together yet, but I imagine it's going to be good. Actually, Mark and I did a movie together several years ago. If it's anything like that was, it's great working opposite the devil. He's a really good actor.
Did you ever think you'd be playing an angel?
No, I never did. In fact I had done a string of sort of bad-guy characters for a couple of years. I played a serial killer, assassins. Actually I played two serial killers now that I reflect. I was thinking, "I gotta get out of this bad-gay stuff." Then the angel role came along and I thought "Fantastic!" Except that I kind of have a slightly bad-guy angel, but it's a very welcome reprieve for me.
Castiel's not like a white-robed, cheery, fluffy-winged angel, is he?
No, there is no harp in this ensemble.
That would be funny though.
[Laughs.] They should work that in.
There's humor on "Supernatural," but not that light. It's a fairly dark show with dark stories. Is it serious on the set?
It's not at all a dark set behind the scenes. I think that the biggest challenge to shooting the show is not laughing during takes, because there are always some antics going on. It's a lot of fun and literally, sometimes it's too much fun. Sometimes it really is frustrating and hard. We were talking about the apocalypse and simply could not stop laughing last week. We also shot a scene that had a cushion fart gag in it last week, which nearly held up production. We simply could not get through it. So it's a great crew and a really fun set to work on.
I hear Dean takes you to a whorehouse this season. That should be fun.
Yes, we've shot that already. I can vouch for that. Yes, he's trying to deflower the angel and it doesn't go quite according to plan.
Will Castiel be helping the brothers out this year?
Most of my stuff actually is with one or both of the guys. I'm helping them sort things out but I've also got a mission of my own, which is revealed in the second episode. I'm there helping them help sort stuff out, but we're also being collectively pursued by all of the forces of heaven and all of the forces of hell. We've got to all watch our backs pretty closely. It's pretty intense.
So you were fired from heaven?
Yeah, I was laid off. I was fired so I can't even collect unemployment.
Do you have powers this season?
I do have powers. My powers are slightly diminished. There are certain things I can't do. I don't think I'd be able to repair a person's broken leg anymore but I do have other powers like teleportation and I believe time travel as well. I'm not totally useless yet.
But Castiel is trying to become more human, right? That's sort of been his storyline, but I read it will be more prevalent this season.
I think Castiel is seeing more and more what the human experience is like. He's becoming more human as time goes by, partly from his exposure to people and learning about them and partly because his powers are diminishing and he's becoming less angelic.
Ultimately he's not going to be a human, is he?
I don't know the answer to that. I don't know where that ultimately goes. But I don't know that that would be impossible. In fact, there's an episode that we shot this season where we flash forward to the future and in that scenario there's, um, I don't know, that might be too spoilery. I'm not going to say what I was going to say. Self-edit.
OK, let's talk about your connection to Chicago then.
I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad, where I studied social theory and spent four years in the south side of Chicago, [in] Hyde Park, running like Forrest Gump up and down the midway. I loved Chicago. It's a really great place. It's a great place to go to school, if you're into books and the basement of the Regenstein Library, which at the time, I was.
And you were there for four years? Did you get to do much of anything besides study?
[Laughs.] Yes, but not as much as one would probably like in their college years. I remember while we were there, there was a study of the top 400 universities and they ranked them according to various different criteria and the University of Chicago, at the time, ranked 400 out of 400. Right under the Naval Academy.
So it wasn't the most social environment in the world. I interned briefly at WBEZ. That was awesome. I spent some time hanging out in the archives at the Field Museum picking up shrunken heads and things like that, which was really exciting.
Cool. Is there anything that happened in Chicago that sort of has stuck with you and that you kind of use all the time now?
Yeah. You know, I didn't study acting in school and I didn't know that I was going to go into acting when I was at Chicago, but I started goofing around a lot in character and I actually spent some of my class time pretending that I was a Russian foreign exchange student and things like that. I guess the general antics and freedom that I felt; just screwing around in character when I was in college, I think was a big factor in why I ended up going into acting as a career. It was sort of my first foray.
But then you went on to Nepal, right, to study at a Buddhist monastery? Was that before college or after college?
That was during college. I took a year off from college and went to Nepal and Tibet, yeah.
And you started a software company. You've done a lot of things that you don't see on an actors resume, I guess, that often.
Yeah. I think part of what helped was that I didn't really know that I [would end up acting]. I didn't get into acting until a little bit later, so I had a chance to do some other stuff first. Actually, once you get into it, it does become somewhat consuming. And you don't have as much time as it looks like you do to do other things because you're always hunting down that next job.
I certainly, since I've started being a professional actor, I haven't felt that I have had nearly as much freedom as I had before because I don't really feel that comfortable going away, going to Nepal for example, or going work in the White House or something like that because you end up missing out on a lot of opportunities when you leave LA.
Speaking of the White House. You worked there during the Clinton administration in the Office of Presidential Personnel. Did you like working in the White House?
I did. I did in the sense that it made me realize that I didn't want to go into politics anymore. So it was an educational experience. But frankly I didn't have that much fun there. It was what got me into acting. I thought I was going to be a politician when I grew up and that's what got me out of that, and actually into acting.
So what'd you do, just sort of flee Washington and then go to LA?
I did. I went directly. I didn't know anyone in LA, loaded up the car, drove across country. It was somewhat arbitrary. It was going to be either LA or New York and NY. I'll try that for a little while. That was a decade ago.
~~~~~
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