Based on the 1000+ downloads and spike in site activity, we are going to guess you are all enjoying the interview with Sera. We’re so glad!

While you are here, we hope you are also taking the time to learn about Fandom Rocks, our current charities, and consider donating to the second campaign. We are now in the third month of six, and we have raised 28% of our goal. If you could help us to get to 50% before the holidays, that would be fantastic!

We also have ideas for an auction in the works. Do you have writing, artistic, or crafty skills you could donate? Do you have some Supernatural memorabilia you would be willing to part with? We would love to hear from you!

After the jump, you will find the transcription for the first half of the interview. In this half, we cover plots, writing staff, fan speculation, things that have changed, and more. Still to come in the second half is our discussion on the writers strike, fandom, Fandom Rocks, and our quickie questions.

Any discussion of episodes six and on is “hidden” by changing the font color, so spoiler wary folks can enjoy the interview, too. Just highlight/select the spoiler territory if you don’t mind reading what Sera had to say. Enjoy!

Fandom Rocks Exclusive Interview with Sera Gamble
10/30/2007

[Sera] Hey this is Sera Gamble, and you’re listening to Fandom Rocks.

[Dana] Hey everybody this is Dana, and welcome to the eleventh podcast at Fandom Rocks. This time we’ve got a really special podcast for you. It’s an exclusive interview with Sera Gamble, who you may know as one of the wrters on SPN. Sera was kind enough to agree to a little sit down the other morning to answer some of the questions that we had.

We tried not to be very spoilery, but there are a few spoilers – hints at spoilers – in our discussion. I will say that the things we talked about were very surface spoiler-related. They involved the main subject matter that might happen in some upcoming episodes, episode 7, I think 10 and 12.

We talked just a little bit about a certain episode would be happening around, say, Christmas time, or a certain episode was going to cover X monster of the week. So, if you wanna stay away from spoilers completely, I would say .. don’t listen? I’m sorry. But, you know I stay away from spoilers, and I wouldn’t have been too bothered if I had listened to this and found out a few things.

So, having said that, if you do decide to listen, please don’t hate me if my definition of mild spoilers is different from yours. It’s not casting spoilers. Well, let me think about that. One of our questions was about faces from the past that we might see again soon. So, there is one about a name or face from the past coming back. It’s probably something that you’ll be happy to hear.

But, we’re so excited that Sera agreed to do this for us, and I’m so happy to get this out there for the fandom. We asked some questions we hope you were wanting to get the answers to.

So take a listen, enjoy, and please please please leave us feedback or comments about the interview and questions we asked – if you thought they were really silly, or if you thought we should have asked something completely different, and just in general because if you guys dig this, we’re gonna try and keep getting these special podcasts going for you guys.

So, enjoy!

[Sera] Hey, it’s Sera Gamble.

[Dana] Hi Sera, thanks so much for calling me. So, you all set to answer some questions and things?

[Sera] Yeah, I’m ready.

[Dana] Okay, great. Thanks so much for doing this, by the way.

[Sera] Oh, no problem.

[Dana] From the beginning, Supernatural has been about two brothers, traveling in their car, trying to uncover the secrets of their family, and hunting evil along the way. One of the aspects of Supernatural that fans appreciate most is its loyalty to this original premise and continuity. How does the cast and crew make this happen week after week?

[Sera] Mostly … magic. No, um, you know, it’s a well-oiled machine up there in Vancouver. They, uh, it’s mostly the same people that have been working on it from the beginning, as far as I know. So, you know, there’s a, it’s like a big, I think of it as a big giant train that’s moving really, really fast all the time. So, there’s a lot of eyeballs on it making sure it stays kind of on the track.

[Dana] Speaking of the writers and that – we kind of always lump that together with the crew, is the writing staff –

[Sera] Sure.

[Dana] Supernatural has had some changes in the writing staff that happened this summer. Has this changed your writing style or your dynamic? Or, how has it impacted the writing on the show?

[Sera] Well, it seems like we, uh, we have some staff changes every year. We’ve taken on writers, and we’ve lost writers every year. We have a really good group. I think I’m actually the only person that’s been here since day one. Me and Eric. *laughs* Oh, and Shiban. Shiban, who is now, he’s a consulting producer. He has so many projects he’s juggling. There are four full-time writers this season, in addition to Eric. It’s a really good group. The new guy is Jeremy Carver. His first episode just aired, “Sin City.” Um, he’s hilarious. We all love him. He fits right in. He’s a little strange. But he fits right in. You know, Ben Edlund. He has a lot of experience in this genre. He’s, you know, he’s kind of like a mad scientist. But also remarkably organized and well put together and really, really good at his job. And then Cathryn Humphris actually started as an assistant on the show and was promoted to staff writer because she’s just really, really good. So, we get along, and I think the dynamic is really good this year. It’s, you know, we’re becoming sort of a close knit little group of freaks.

[Dana] Yeah, we noticed, Brande and I were recording the podcast for “Sin City” last night, and we noticed Jeremy’s name, and we looked him up to see if we could figure out what else he had done. And we’re like ‘Oh! He’s the new guy!’ because IMDB only had three things for him. So it was clear that he was one of the new people.

[Sera] Yes.

[Dana] We’re excited to see where he goes and …

[Sera] I just saw a cut of the next episode he wrote, < spoilers >it’s the Christmas episode< /spoilers >. It is so fantastic. I was in the writers room watching it with him yesterday, and it’s so disgusting. *laughs*

[Dana] Oh no.

[Sera] And it will destroy < spoilers >Christmas< /spoilers > for anyone who watches it. So we’re very happy with Jeremy. *laughs*

[Dana] And Ben Edlund is another person that you mentioned that when fans saw the episode he did this season so far, which was I believe “Bad Day at Black Rock” was the one he wrote,

[Sera] Yeah.

[Dana] And after that episode a number of people were like ‘That was a very Ben Edlund episode.’ You know, all the humor flying around in that episode.

[Sera] Yeah, you know, he’s been, I think he’s been like a famous writer since he was about 17. Because he did that comic book The Tick when he was just a teenager. And so, you know, he’s sort of like, he’s not an old guy, he’s a young guy, but he’s like the elder statesman. You know. *laughs* But he’s hilarious, and he always brings something to the table that I never would’ve thought of. And, I think of all the writers on the staff, I think I probably work with him the most often and the most closely. I fell really fortunate actually to be working with him. Because I feel like it expands my brain in new directions.

[Dana] Cool.

[Sera] Yeah.

[Dana] It’s good to hear the writing team still feels like a cohesive little group there.

[Sera] We have to drink lots of coffee together. *laughs*

[Dana] Oh yeah?

[Sera] A lot. Yeah. *laughs* And then whiskey. *laughs*

[Dana] So to jump in to the title sequence and fans and what fans are talking about. That’s one thing that has also changed, every year in fact, they change up the graphics and things that they use for the title sequence, and some people speculate that the way they’ve change that look kind of ties in to the mood or the themes of that season. Can you give us any insight about that or are we just spinning our wheels?

[Sera] I actually don’t think you are spinning your wheels on that one. I’m not involved in figuring that out, but I think they’re always really cool. They’re brief and they’re cool and they’re jarring. I was happy to see the little title cards for this year because they seem to be pretty demon related and this is a pretty demon heavy season for us, so I think it’s not a coincidence.

[Dana] Okay. So, while we’re on the topic of fan speculation, let’s talk John Winchester. Episode 3 was “Bad Day at Black Rock,” and it showed us that John still has secrets to be revealed, even to Sam and Dean. The storage unit that they discovered has many fans talking about how early on John knew about Sam’s abilities, and what kind of insight it could provide to how he raised Sam and Dean differently. Not to mention, we’ve talked about this in our podcast, the fact that he used Edgar Cayce for his alias. So, how much can fans expect to learn about John this season?

[Sera] Um, let’s see. Well, the actor is a very busy man, so we haven’t had him back so far this season, and I don’t know I guess people should keep throwing pennies in in the wishing well about that and maybe we’ll have him back sometime. But John Winchester the character is still very present. < spoilers >We flash back to the boys’ childhood in the Christmas episode, and so that reveals a lot about, you know, the dynamic with John and what Christmas was like.< /spoilers >

And I also was just working on < spoilers >episode 10 with Kathryn. Kathryn ended up writing the episode. It’s fantastic. I think it’s the trippiest, weirdest episode we’ve tried this season because it takes place in large part inside people’s nightmares.< /spoilers >

[Dana] Okay.

[Sera] And so we took the opportunity to < spoilers >kind of get inside Dean’s unconscious mind, and I think it will come as no surprise to people who watch the show that Dad is very, very present for him. And his sort of issues and his past with his father, and the stuff that his father told him all the time when he was growing up is, kind of like, all in there.< /spoilers >

So, we kind of look for little places to go back, and John Winchester is a major touchstone because he explains so much about why these brothers act the way they do and why they have the relationships that they do.

[Dana] It’s interesting to hear that you are going to get < spoilers >the nightmare episode. I remember seeing an interview either with you or maybe Eric about wanting to do that alternate universe kind of theme, and you guys got “What is and What Should Never Be” in Season Two, but you’re also going to get to do a nightmare episode, so that’s exciting.< /spoilers >

[Sera] Yeah, I’m into it. “What is and What Should Never Be” was a fantastic episode, I thought. Raelle did a really, really amazing job. And by the way she is not with the show anymore, but she moved on to a really exciting genre show. I don’t know if fans … I bet the fans are keeping track. She moved over to do a vampire show on HBO with Alan Ball. So, you know, the Supernatural writers are like moving on to spread their sick fantasies to like on every network, I think. *laughs*

But, you know, I thought she did such a great job like maybe that would cover it < spoilers >for the idea of nightmares. Cause it was me, I think I gave an interview where I was like ‘Yeah, I love Freddy Kruger.’< /spoilers > and then you know every couple months, every month or two, every time I turn in scripts then I have to go into Eric’s office and bring like a whole batch of new ideas, and we’re like 55 episodes into the show, so *laughs* so like I couldn’t afford not to put it on the list, you know, cause my list was kind of short that day. *laughs*

And he’s like ‘Alright, okay, I know you’ve wanted to do this for a long time, let’s give it a shot, but make sure it’s not exactly like < spoilers >Nightmare on Elm Street< /spoilers >. Find another reason to do the episode.’ And then I ended up not writing the episode. But I was really, really happy with what Kathryn, Kathryn took the ball and ran with it, and kind of brought it in a really interesting direction. It’s different, but it’s awesome.

[Dana] Cool. Well it gives us something to look forward to. I’ll definitely have to put some spoiler warnings on our podcast.

[Sera] Oh yeah, yeah, and I’m so anti-spoiler. Especially today because I just saw the CW released some kind of little blurb about episode seven. I’m like, ugh, I won’t repeat it, but they give away a lot about the episode that I really wish they didn’t. So, you know, a special thank you to the people who are not going to be listening to this podcast until after all these episodes air.

[Dana] Maybe we’ll even piece it out and say ‘Okay, this is the section where if you’re waiting for Christmas, don’t listen to it.’

[Sera] Right, oh, and I forgot to ask you if you try to refrain from cursing in your podcast, do you?

[Dana] We try, but.

[Sera] Okay.

[Dana] You know, one of the things that we like to is put little clips of the show if fans have favorite lines, and this is something else that changed, is that opening tagline that they play at the beginning of every episode, it used to be Dean say ‘saving people, hunting things, the family business.’

[Sera] Oh right, yeah.

[Dana] And they changed it this year to his line about ‘Dad’s gone now, we’ve gotta follow up on his legacy, and that means killing as many evil sons of bitches as we possibly can,’ and I’m thinking, I’m just really shocked that they chose that for the tagline.

[Sera] *laughs* Yeah, yeah, to me that’s not even cursing, so but I will try to watch it. I was cursing so much – we did the DVD commentary for episode what was it, like 21 last year, Eric and Bob and I did it, and it was such a struggle. Especially when I’m in a room with the two of them. I don’t know, for some reason it makes me talk like a sailor, but I will try to watch myself. *laughs*

[Dana] Okay. You mentioned something that made me want to say something that has changed, but it flew out of my head. You mentioned in another interview ( http://www.winchesterbros.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=460&Itemid=2) that the Roadhouse, you felt like that was cheating because it made the brothers less isolated. Then you destroyed it in your half of the Season 2 finale. How did the the demise of the Roadhouse come around?

[Sera] Eric popped his head in my office and said ‘We’re blowing up the roadhouse in your episode.’ That was pretty much it.

[Dana] So it wasn’t something you had originally planned on writing, but he told you to write it in.

[Sera] No, that was all Eric. Happy to do it, happy to blow stuff up.

[Dana] And to follow that up, did you know when you were going to write that episode that you were also going to have to find a way to kill off everyone’s favorite mullet-head, Ash, or was that another Eric-popped-his-head-in the door and said ‘Oh yeah and Ash, too.’?

[Sera] Once we started figuring out what that meant, we realized that we were going to have to kill Ash, which was sad because he was a cool character, and I’m just a huge fan of the mullet, in general, and like specifically his mullet is pretty epic. But you can’t do something like that and then also not have consequences, you can’t do that but then save all of your favorite characters. It’s just not fair to the audience and kind of stupid storytelling. So, in order to make it really stick that the place was gone, we had to kill our favorite guy in the place.

[Dana] One character that fans might’ve been glad to never to see again – Gordon Walker – is now back with us as of “Bad Day at Black Rock.” Were you excited to see his character return as a nemesis for the guys?

[Sera] Oh, I’m so into Gordon. He’s really one of my favorites. I was really happy he was coming back. I think, I think a lot of what’s great about that character actually is – I think most of it can be attributed to Sterling K. Brown the actor who plays him. Who to me, he’s a star. He’s fantastic. I’ve been his fan since a little seen sitcom on FX called Starved years ago. So I was excited the day I saw that he had been cast, and I knew he was going to do something really special with the role. So yeah, he’s back, and < spoilers >he’s gonna be able to bust out of prison pretty soon, and his number one priority is to go after Sam, so yeah, you’ll see him again in episode seven.< /spoilers >

[Dana] Yeah, seeing him paired with Kubrick, that character, was very interesting because a lot of fans feel like Gordon’s almost crossing the line of sanity, but then you show Kubrick …

[Sera] *laughs*

[Dana] And you go ‘Well, okay, no, Gordon’s still pretty sane compared to this guy.’

[Sera] Kubrick is hilarious.

[Dana] Oh yeah, he was great, and I loved Creedy, too. They were three very different hunters, and just to see that whole range in one episode was a lot of fun.

[Sera] Well, I’ll tell you this about Gordon being on the edge of sanity. When I talk about him, I often, with Eric, we often talk about how he might be the only person on the whole show who’s actually right. Cause you know, he’s got an intense personality, he takes things really far, but in a certain way he’s just conservative, and he’s killing things for the most part that really do need to be killed, and his argument in “Blood Lust” about not being able to trust the vampires was a really sound argument. A lot more sound, I think, than Sam and Dean’s. And his argument that Sam is not right, and there’s something off about him and that he could potentially be really dangerous – there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to support that when you look at all of the special kids like Sam. I’m like ‘Poor Gordon, he’s right and no one is listening to him.’

[Dana] Is there any chance we’ll see other faces from the past in the near future, besides Gordon?

[Sera] < spoilers >Kubrick is returning, as well, in episode seven, and – yeah, actually I am in the middle of rewriting episode eleven. Hopefully it will get done before we go on strike. *laughs* It’s the episode where we bring back Agent Henrickson.< /spoilers >

[Dana] Oh, that’s exciting because < spoilers >lots of fans are saying, you know, ‘We haven’t seen that for half a season now, what’s going on there?’< /spoilers >

[Sera] < spoilers >I’m pretty in to what we’ve done with him. We really took a long time to figure out – we knew, okay, episode eleven is the episode where Henrickson returns. We played with a lot of different stories, and we took a lot longer than usual in the writer’s room to try and find the right story to tell because he is really cool, and we wanted to give him like a really juicy, meaty, unexpected turn in the story. So, I guess the best way to classify the episode is to say that it’s kind of like SPN/Assault on Precinct 13.< /spoilers >

[Dana] Your first episode as the writer this season was “The Kids are Alright,” and you mentioned previously ( http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=439) that if you ever tend to brag about your writing, it is usually when you have successfully freaked people out or grossed them out.

[Sera] True.

[Dana] So, how about that power saw scene?

[Sera] That was pretty cool, huh? *laughs* You know it’s especially great is when I write something disgusting and then Phil Sgriccia directs it because he really takes it to the next level. He did that, the knife through the eye ball in “Nightmare.” Yeah so he was telling me about that in the elevator the other day *laughs* in an elevator full of like random executive and sales people for Warner Bros. He was like ‘Yeah, we had this special piece made so that his shirt would vibrate like the saw was still going even though he was completely impaled on it.’ But, he took a lot of time to make it as disgusting as possible.

By the way I think that there’s gorier stuff coming up in my next episode, like even bloodier and gorier. So, you know, I can’t work on a show like this and rest until I’ve deep-fried a head. *laughs* That’s my goal. We’re trying to find a story where I can get ’em in a restaurant so I can just deep-fry someone’s head.

[Dana] Yeah, that’s up there. Because we had the fork, the pronged-fork-skewer thing go through, was it Wayne? Wayne’s throat, up through his mouth in the next episode. There’s been multiple times where I’ve had to cover my eyes. But the power saw was great because it had such texture to the noise they added to it. It was like chunky, grinding. That was great.

[Sera] Do you really have to shut your eyes for the gross parts?

[Dana] Not usually. I usually don’t, but you saw that coming from a mile away, so you were kind like of anticipating, so.

[Sera] The fork was pretty sweet. You know, I had never really thought this much about writing violence before because I hadn’t written very much that was this – certainly I had never written anything that had this degree of violence before and it kind of made me think – Is it bad to do this people? Does it do something weird to the audience? What does it say about me?

And, I kind of have come, right now, to the comfortable conclusion that the way to handle violence to make it enjoyable is really kind of take it to that cartoon-ish level. Like I never like those movies that are classified as torture porn, you know? The ones that just sort of like ‘Come watch an hour and a half of people chained in the basement who have to hack saw off their own leg.’

That’s not really my thing, but super cartoon-y, vampire-y kind of violence, that to me kind of goes into that comic book realm that is comfortable to watch. It’s not so – it kind of goes beyond realism – I don’t know that a fork would really ever do that. *laughs* So, I don’t have to really worry about it. I just think that it’s fun for everyone. I don’t know.

[Dana] I think the gross level has been upped, but fans can still handle it because like I said you see it coming from a mile away. The beer bottle rolled to that exact point, and he angles the fork out of the dish drainer. You see it happening, and so you still kind of want to cover your eyes because you’re not sure how much they’re going to show. The censors have been pretty lenient, it sure seems like, because there was a lot of blood and guts in those two episodes.

[Sera] We’ve got some really good directors who know exactly how to cut a scene to get maximum violence past standards and practices. Yeah, that scene is especially great because you think that what is really scary and horrible and gives you that delicious bad feeling in your stomach would be a like jump scare, something that came out of nowhere, but you really did see that coming from the moment the bottle started rolling. *laughs* They did great. That was a Bob Singer episode. I think that’s the funniest episode he’s ever done, so.

[Dana] According to IMDB, you’re listed as an executive story editor on a number of episodes on all the seasons and as a producer now in season 3. What’s the difference in your role versus the episodes where you’re the writer and how does it feel to be in the producer’s chair?

[Sera] You know, all those different titles, it’s kind of like in any other corporate type job, you get promoted, and each promotion has a different title. So, all of those different titles that you see – staff writer, story editors, and then all the different kinds of producer titles – they just represent different rungs of the ladder that we’re all climbing up, and it’s pretty customary to be promoted to the next level each year. So, it varies a lot from show to show what exactly is entailed at each level.

So, when I came to Supernatural a couple years ago with Raelle, who was my writing partner then, Raelle Tucker, we were story editors which was kind of like second rung from the bottom. *laughs* And, you know, we came on as writers, and I continue to, you know, the great majority of my job every day is writing, and breaking story, and working with other writers on their stories, but this year I kind of crossed over into producer territory, and there actually has been a lot new responsibilities just in terms of talking more with the directors, and the post-production, and sitting in on casting, and I actually really love all of that stuff.

If your question was how do I feel about it? It feels awesome! You know what? I am not cynical about it at all. I think it’s cool that my name comes up with that title by it. I think it’s awesome, like – it’s been my dream for so many years to be a writer and producer, and I’ve been talking about it since I was a kid. I just didn’t know it was going to be in TV. You know, I guess I’ve been writing in television for, I think this is like my fourth season, writing on staff, and there’s part of me that wants to go ‘Eh, it’s no big deal.’ But that would be disingenuous of me. Because, I’m really stoked, I feel very lucky, and I’m proud because I haven’t had very much of a break *laughs* the past few years, I’ve been working my ass off. *laughs* So, it’s cool. It’s good. I like to feel invested in the show that I’m working on because you know I come in here every single day and try to do something interesting. So yeah, it’s awesome, it’s cool.