The Winchesters Stars Break Down Jensen Ackles’ Role in Series Pilot

While the upcoming Supernatural prequel, The Winchesters, will see Jensen Ackles return as Dean Winchester in a series narrator role, it turns out that the actor was very hands on with the series pilot. According to stars Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly, who play young John and Mary Winchester, Ackles gave them a lot of guidance while filming.

“He was on set every single day of the pilot, just like being super collaborative, giving us notes, telling us about the universe that we might not know about,” Donnelly told TVLine. “So, it was really good insight.”

Ackles’ involvement makes sense considering that Ackles is an executive producer on the series, along with his wife Danneel Ackles. Ackles has previously said that The Winchesters will allow for connections to established Supernatural lore in “much crazier ways”.

“To be honest, I was like, ‘I don’t know if we can do this,’” Ackles revealed. “and then it took [writer] Robbie [Thompson] and me sitting down going like, ‘Well, we know we have to do this, and we know we have to do that, but if we just connect those dots with a straight line, that’s not entertaining. That’s boring. That’s a simple story. If we connect those dots in a much crazier, wild Supernatural way, then we’ve got a show.’ So that’s what we’ve been doing.”

“That’s kind of the exciting thing, in my opinion, is that the waypoints or the tentpoles that were established on the mothership, as we lovingly call it, those will get touched on,” Ackles added. “But we’ll get to those waypoints in a way that we probably didn’t expect. And that’s what we’re really having fun with is, like, the story is coming together. It’s not the washed version. It’s not the sugar-coated version of how mom and dad met. This is like what really happened.”

The Winchesters is described as follows: “Before Same and Dean, there was John and Mary. Told from the perspective of Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), The Winchesters is the epic, untold love story of how John met Mary and how they put it all on the line to not only save their love, but the entire world.”

The Winchesters is set to air Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW this fall.