Misha Collins at the Bing presents THE CW PREMIERE PARTY | ©2011 Sue Schneider

Big spoiler for those who didn’t see last week’s season premiere of SUPERNATURAL – the angel Castiel, played by Misha Collins, is really not himself. In the Season Six finale, Castiel opened Purgatory and ingested all the souls of creatures within, making himself big-G God. As we learned in the Season Seven opener, “Meet the New Boss,” that kind of diet just doesn’t agree with an angel, either physiologically or ethically, and Cass wound up vomiting most of the souls back from whence they came. Unfortunately, a few really bad ones, the Leviathans, stuck around and have taken control of Castiel’s body. The fact that Collins is no longer a series regular doesn’t bode well for the outcome of this situation.

This interview was conducted before this last development was known to the public, but Collins is happy to discuss all other aspects of his tenure as the angel who has been (mostly) helping SUPERNATURAL heroes Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki) since the start of Season Four.

ASSIGNMENT X: So, is it good to be God?

MISHA COLLINS: It is good to be God, yeah. It’s nice to get the recognition that I’ve been working so hard for. It’s hard to be God. It’s not easy. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it. Maybe at home with your family?

AX: I don’t think they’d go for that, really. Castiel has been trying it with your on-air family, though. How’s it working?

COLLINS: [sighs] Well, it’s not going as smoothly as one would hope, to be honest with you. Being God is not all it’s cracked up to be and it’s not as easy as one would think it would be. You’d think that Death would be really in your favor as God. Of course, I’ve run into some pretty big obstacles and problems already.

AX: Castiel has been through a lot of changes since he arrived on the show …

COLLINS: Yeah. One of my favorite things about the show is that nothing is stagnant. The storylines are constantly changing, the characters are constantly changing, there’s always something new to work with. I love that about it. Cass has changed a lot, and I think a lot of times finding those transitions I think that he’s gone from being a very confident, self-assured, powerful creature when he first showed up to wanting to assimilate into human society more and being a little more unsure of himself and a little more awkward and then transitioning back to being God is another big change, so there’s been a lot of shifts over time and negotiating each one of those provides its own sort of unique challenges, but they’re all interesting and fun and make the job a lot of fun.

Misha Collins in SUPERNATURAL - Season 6 finale - "The Man Who Knew Too Much" | ©2011 The CW/Jack Rowand

AX: When you first appeared on SUPERNATURAL as Castiel, was it was planned that you were going to be a regular for several seasons?

COLLINS: It was a few episodes originally. Actually, when I auditioned for it, I thought it was one episode, and then it turned out it was three, and then six and then twelve and it kept evolving. Yes, of course, it was always a surprise.

AX: Was that because the producers/writers felt the character was fun to write for, or was that because Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles were saying, “You know what, we enjoy having this guy around”.

COLLINS: [joking, deadpan] The way it basically works is, Jared and Jensen, who play Sam and Dean, are up in Vancouver, largely isolated from their friends and family, and I went up there to shoot a couple episodes, and they really liked me, it was like they had a friend up there and they absolutely insisted that I be kept on and so the writers totally retooled the show just so that Jared and Jensen would have a friend. Because Canadians hate them, as a rule.

AX: You had said that when you very first did Castiel, you were trying for that voice that breaks windows, and you blew your throat out. Is there any kind of difference in what you’re doing now that he’s God?

Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins in SUPERNATURAL - Season 6 - "The Third Man" | Misha Collins in SUPERNATURAL | ©2010 The CW/Jack Rowand

COLLINS: Yes. I think that I consciously made a decision to make God push it just a little less than Castiel does in the window-breaking department. He’s still got a pretty butch voice, but not quite as butch as Castiel’s [laughs].

AX: You’ve had a lot of great moments with Mark Sheppard, who plays the demon Crowley …

COLLINS: Mark is really good to work with. He’s a great actor. And he’s going to be back again this season. He’ll be in the storyline quite a bit.

AX: Was “The French Mistake,” the episode where Sam and Dean jump into our reality and find themselves masquerading as Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, encountering a version of Misha Collins as played by you, as crazy for all of you on the show as it was for the audience?

COLLINS: Yes. And it was awesome. It was great. That was my favorite episode, maybe of the whole series. Super-fun to do, super-fun to watch, inside jokes that were just for the crew – it was really cool.

AX: At what point did you know where your character was going in Season Seven?

COLLINS: At the very beginning of Season Six, they gave me a pretty good indication of the arc of the character, but I didn’t know that I was going with God at that point. They actually originally planned to make Castiel into God at the end of Season Five, but instead, Chuck [the prophet who was writing the adventures of Sam and Dean as they happened] was God.

Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles and Julian Richings in SUPERNATURAL - Season 7 - "Meet the New Boss" | Misha Collins in SUPERNATURAL | ©2010 The CW/Jack Rowand

AX: As to the concept of Castiel being God at the end of Season Five, was that what they were planning to do to end the series when they didn’t know the show would be renewed?

COLLINS: I don’t know if that was about the series ending, or just the storyline for Castiel sort of culminating in that, but I know that they had a very cohesive plan for ending the series at Season Five if they needed to.

AX: Was there sort of a feeling with Season Six of, “We didn’t expect to get this, so we’re going to play a little, and back to normal for Season Seven,” or as normal as SUPERNATURAL gets?

COLLINS: No, I think they always has a Plan B for it. I think they always have a plan in place. If the show is to ever end with the season, they have a way to wrap it up and if not, they have a plan to carry on and that’s just where we are right now.

AX: Outside your work on SUPERNATURAL, you’ve been doing a lot of charity work in Haiti, as have your “Mishamigos” followers on Twitter. Are you are going back and forth to Haiti a lot?

COLLINS: No, I’ve actually only gone to Haiti once recently. A bunch of SUPERNATURAL fans came along and they raised money to build an orphanage, and we’re building it right now. It’s going swimmingly. I had been in Haiti in the Nineties and I had some ties there and I had friends who were doing some good work there, so I joined up with them, but the earthquake definitely helped put Haiti back on my radar and fortuitously, different opportunities actually made that work out as a place for us to do some work.

AX: Mark Pedowitz, the current head of the CW, said that as long as the ratings are good, he’d like to have SUPERNATURAL on the network schedule.

COLLINS: It’s good to have a fan of the show at the top.

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Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Interview with SUPERNATURAL star Misha Collins

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