When we started casting, we had archetypes in mind, which were Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. We were really looking for Sam to be empathetic, kind, and likeable, and really the audience surrogate. The person who the audience would most see themselves as and really carry the story through their eyes. And that required a really unique likeability. For Dean, we were looking for Han Solo. We were looking for devil-may-care, charismatic, a little rough around the edges, a little edgy, says things that are not always the kindest thing, as long as they’re funny. And that was really what we started out with.

And Jared and Jensen both just so inhabited those parts, and then proceeded to blow us away with how dimensionalized they were. For Jensen, the level of emotion and totally flawed, screwed-to-hell psyche that he brings to Dean, we really are enamored with. This idea that on the surface here’s this Han Solo devil-may-care persona, but when you really scratch beneath the surface, you see that anyone who has that persona has it because they are just so messed up, and that you would have to be so screwed up and damaged to be the person who always jumps first off a cliff.

So, he really brought Dean to life in a really three-dimensional way, and Jared did the same thing with Sam. Yes, Sam was likeable, and the audience surrogate and all the things he was supposed to be, but also angry, and disaffected, and, at times, hilariously funny, loyal, and despondent. He brought in all of these different colors that have really brought these characters to life, which I think is probably very rare for a genre show to have—characters as dimensionalized as ours—and I’m really proud of it. - Eric Kripke [x]