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After kickstarting his career on Gilmore Girls, Padalecki hit the horror trail with roles in Cry_Wolf, House of Wax and his current hit TV series, Supernatural. this month the 26 year old continues that streak with a starring role in the new Friday the 13th.

So how was your experience working on the new F13?
I had a great time shooting Friday the 13th. We filmed the movie in Austin, which is just an hour north of the city I grew up in - San Antonio. I’ve always loved Austin - I’m a huge Longhorn fan. I was actually enrolled at UT Austin in the school of engineering when I booked Gilmore Girls, and I had to leave college behind. During the shooting of the movie, my sister graduated from UT with her architecture degree, so I was able to be there for that, and my brother and sister-in-law had a baby girl in Dallas (which is just a 3 hour drive north), so I was able to be there for that too. Aside from the many reasons I had to already love Austin, the cast was awesome: a bunch of young, cool, intelligent people who were all happy to be there and we all clicked immediately.


Any cool 'behind-the-scenes' stories?
We definitely had some crazy times during the filming of the movie. Being a horror movie, we shot mostly nights, so we were always a little loopy and exhausted when we were shooting. The craziest times that I can recall were during the filming of the fight scenes between Clay and Jason. Once again, being a horror movie, it was night shooting and of course, for dramatic effect, they brought in some rain towers, so before each take, our lovely wardrobe women would be covering us with dirt and mud and hosing us down for continuity. By the end of a few takes, we would have dried back off, so we'd repeat the process. I can confidently say that we were all freezing our butts off.

How is the new version different from the original?
This version is very different from the original. It’s not really a remake, it’s more a re-tooling. The main difference as far as I’m concerned is the fact that the villain in the original is Jason’s mother, and in the new version it is Jason.


Can you give us any details about your character Clay? Is he a victim or a hero?
My character Clay is out to find his sister who has gone missing, and that’s when he "runs into trouble". I don’t necessarily think that "victim" and "hero" are mutually exclusive, but if I were to classify Clay as one or the other, I would call him a hero. I say he's a hero because he sets out to do the right thing, and he tries his best until the bitter end.

 

Do you have a favorite scene or part of the movie?

I’m really excited to be in the audience and watch a lot of the scenes in the movie, but if there’s one specific part that I’m the most excited about, it’s when  jason drops off the roof behind our police officer and introduces him to the sharp end of a fireplace poker. In my opinion, that’s when the action REALLY starts, and I think that scene sets up the rest of the movie for the audience to be on the edge of their seats.

 

You seem to be drawn to horror projects (Cry_Wolf, House of Wax, F13), was that streak intentional?
The streak was certainly not intentional. Having been a regular on TV shows for the past 9 years (5 years on Gilmore Girls, currently filming season 4 of Supernatural), I don’t have a lot of time to film movies. Those movies just happened to fit into my schedule and being a fan of the genre, I was really excited to be a part of all of them.

Apart from F13, what’s your favorite horror movie and why?
Though it’s not necessarily a horror movie, I always like to try and give The Shining some of the respect it deserves, the acting, the directing, the script... the movie is downright terrifying. If I ever am in the mood to scare myself, that’s what I’ll watch.

By Carla Thorpe