Jared Padalecki Clears Air on ‘Supernatural’ Beef with Jensen Ackles: “I Respect His Opinion”

Finally, we’ve got some answers in regards to an argument between The CW‘s favorite brothers. Supernatural‘s Jared Padalecki addressed his recent social media outcry against co-star Jensen Ackles for not including him in any of the show’s prequel talks, sharing that the two are (and always have been) on good terms. In an interview with The New York Times last week, Padalecki opened up about the experience that left him shell-shocked back in June.

The misunderstanding came about with the news that The CW was working on a Supernatural spinoff series The Winchesters, set to follow Dean (Ackles) and Sam Winchester’s (Padalecki) parents in the same universe. Ackles was set to spearhead the project — with Padalecki having no involvement in the series. Having not heard any of the news before Deadline reported the story, Padalecki fired off some tweets slamming his on-screen brother for keeping the project under wraps.

“Dude. Happy for you,” Padalecki began. “Wish I heard about this some way other than Twitter. I’m excited to watch, but bummed that Sam Winchester had no involvement whatsoever.”

Though it seems like the two of them were beefing, Padalecki cleared the air while discussing the finale of his show Walker with the Times.

“I hadn’t heard of it, and then he and I chatted [the next morning],” Padalecki said. “He just kind of explained: ‘Man, it’s not picked up yet. It’s not even written yet.’ He knows and I know how much Supernatural means to both of us, and it wasn’t a secret he was trying to keep, necessarily. It was just something that he didn’t feel really even existed yet. But he has been like: ‘Hey, I’ll let you know what’s going on.'”

Padalecki went on to say that there’s absolutely no bad blood between him and his former co-star, and that going forward, the cards for The Winchesters are in his hands now — with or without Padalecki.

“I love Jensen deeply. He’s my brother — he has been for many years, and he always will be, no matter what. He’s spent more time with me on camera than anybody probably ever will, so he knows my strengths and weaknesses more than I do, and vice versa,” he said. “I respect his opinion.”

Though some folks thought the whole exchange was a joke, the actor did say that everything he tweeted was in complete earnest. Furthermore, Padalecki said that he didn’t want folks to assume that any role he played on the project was being kept from them.

“It was just one of those things that because it was online, and people were assuming I was part of it, I really wanted to just say: ‘Hey, I’m not keeping a secret from you guys. I just don’t know about this,'” Padalecki clarified. “And I should be old enough to know better than to put something out there and expect that people will understand. It’s hard to tweet a specific tone. If you write it online, it’s like, ‘Oh, he doesn’t know! They’re going to kill each other! The world is ending!’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no.'”

But the whole misunderstanding seems to have passed, and as for Padalecki? He’s learned his lesson: “I try to avoid social media as much as possible because of that,” he concluded the interview with a laugh.

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