#dean:with lee

[acklesforlife]

Christian Kane talking to AssignmentX about his Supernatural debut and friendship with Jensen Ackles:

AX: Can you talk about your guest-starring role earlier this season on the “Last Call” episode of SUPERNATURAL? You played Leo Webb, an old Hunter friend of Dean Winchester, played by Jensen Ackles. Leo owns a bar and performs there with his band, and gets Dean up on stage with him, so you and Jensen Ackles sing together on a duet of Waylon Jennings’s “Good Ol’ Boys,” which was the DUKES OF HAZZARD theme song. Of course, Leo turns out to be a bad guy, so he and Dean have a massive barroom brawl. Were you and Jensen Ackles friends, or did you get cast because SUPERNATURAL likes to have BUFFY and ANGEL actors on their show? Of course, SUPERNATURAL has now been around for …

KANE: A hundred years. I’ll tell you the bottom line story, which is fun. And don’t forget, Mark A. Sheppard was one of the regulars on [SUPERNATURAL], and he was on LEVERAGE, he was our bad guy on our show. Me and Jensen Ackles have been friends for over twenty years. He’s one of my oldest friends in Hollywood. I remember all the way back [in 2003] when I was in Texas, doing SECONDHAND LIONS with Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, and it was Thanksgiving, and Jensen happened to be home, and he drove all the way from Dallas, Texas, to pick me up in Austin, and take me back to have Thanksgiving with his family. Anyway, he’s always been a friend, he’s always gone out of his way.

They asked me to do SUPERNATURAL a couple times, and asked me what I thought about it, and I just didn’t think things were right. A lot of people bring in Eliot Spencer so that their main character can beat him up, to give validation to that character. And Jensen’s character didn’t need validation, but I knew Jensen was going to beat me up if I came. So Jensen called my house. And he said, “Kane, you want to come do SUPERNATURAL? It’s the last season.” I said, “How’s the money?” He’s like, “S***ty.” I went, “Of course it is.” I said, “Do we get to fight?” And he goes, “Yup. We also get to sing together.” And I was like, “I’m in.” I said, “Do you beat me up?” “No. But I do kill you.” [laughs] “Of course you do.”

And I got on a plane and went to Vancouver, and got to sing and “dance” [do fight choreography] with, like I said, one of my oldest friends in Hollywood. That was so much fun. There were no stunt doubles, it was really us, getting to be boys again. And of course the singing, we went into Bryan Adams’s studio in Vancouver, Canada, and both of us laid down the tracks, and then we went and had a beer. It was like the old days, when we used to play music together, and we got to do what we do. I told him – I literally sent him a text – I said, “Is there going to be a fight scene?” He said, “They’re working on it.” I said, “This is ridiculous, man. I said, “You got a demon hunter and Eliot Spencer in the same room. You think somebody would hit something. Otherwise, it would be like watching Thor and Wolverine assemble a floral arrangement.” [laughs] He started laughing. He said, “You’re absolutely right.” The next day, they had jacked the fight scene up quite a bit.

AX: Did you guys pick the Waylon Jennnings DUKES OF HAZZARD song, or did production just say, “Well, this is what we got the rights for you to sing”?

KANE: You know, Jensen sent me a couple of songs that he enjoyed, but I think overall – I’m not a hundred percent on this – Jensen did call back with the song choice, so I’m pretty sure Jensen had that up his sleeve, and I think he made that happen, which I thought was outstanding – these people thought enough about me coming in, and thought enough about the episode with me and Jensen both in it, to go out and buy a song that prestigious. And I was like, “Come on, man, ‘Good Ol’ Boys,’ me and you, back on the screen, come on.”

AX: And they also used your song “House Rules” on the episode soundtrack …

KANE: Yeah. And that was another little gift they gave me. I’m telling you, man, it was one of the funnest jobs. I hadn’t seen Jensen in a few years, since he was up there [shooting SUPERNATURAL in Vancouver] and I’d been in Portland. It might seem closer than that, but it’s really not that close. And I was doing LEVERAGE and LIBRARIANS, and we’d talk, but we didn’t get to see each other. And so we caught up right where we left off. It was a blast working with him.