In the run up to the show's series finale, IGN is revisiting some of our favorite SPN memories with members of the show's wider family. We're starting things off with one of its first guest stars – Samantha Smith, AKA matriarch Mary Winchester, whose fiery death on the ceiling in the drama's pilot served as the catalyst for the show’s entire story.
It’s a moment no one's forgotten about, despite her multiple returns over the years. "It's probably the most-shown 'previously on' recap clip of the whole show," Smith laughed, recalling her character's early exit, which seems to get flashed back to at least a couple of times every season.But for Smith, the road started back in 2005 at the offices of executive producer-turned-consulting producer McG, where she had her audition.
"I remember sitting in the waiting room and there were like three or four other women there. I recognized many of them, but it was one of those things where you're like, 'I'm here, I did all this prep, and we're all here for like these two lines in a pilot,' but, you know, that's the way it goes," Smith recalled wryly. "And it wasn't disparaging in any way, it was just like, it's a great script and stuff, but we die in the first 90 seconds … I remember [pilot director] David Nutter was in the room and the producers. There was a plant in the room, and I had to … run in [at the start of the scene] and I ran right into the potted plant. It was like a tree, which ended the audition on a hilarious note."
Hilarious and clearly memorable. A little less memorable was Smith’s first meeting with Ackles and Padalecki – after all, Smith wasn't on camera with them in any of her pilot scenes; Mary died while Sam was still a baby and Dean just a little tot.
"I think I met them in passing on one of the sets, on the lot. I can't remember exactly, but I do remember meeting them again at the screening that was at McG's house," Smith told IGN.
"I didn't get to know them until I went back up to shoot that next episode, which was like halfway through the season – called 'Home.' I'm sure I met them once at some point, but I didn't know them, I didn't know who they were, they didn't know me, so it was kind of just a like, 'Nice to meet you; how exciting; and I'm gonna go burn up now!'" she recalled of her time filming the pilot.
Mary Winchester's murder by the demon Azazel sparked years of plotlines and twists, and as Smith noted, her character's episode 1 death has been shown in "the journey so far" previews for years. The iconic death scene was done safely and with some specific direction from Nutter, Smith recalled."I was lying on the floor between these two fire bars, like these gas lines essentially with holes cut out of [them] and they had the camera on a crane-y thing over me, pointing straight down at my face and I was looking up," she said, recounting how Nutter was “giving me very specific [directions] like how to move my mouth and how to look like I can't breathe and how to make it all as scary and creepy as possible. We only did it a couple of times. It didn't take a lot, but then they had to do a wire frame of my body so that they could do the fake ceiling burn.”
It's not easy for a show to stay on the air for 15 seasons, but one of the ways Supernatural has stayed fresh and also familiar is by bringing familiar faces back. A character's death on this show is rarely the end of their journey, something Smith got an inkling of while sitting next to Supernatural creator, Eric Kripke, who told her on the pilot shoot she'd likely return.
"People often say that, but it doesn't frequently come through and every time that I started to come back, it was always a surprise," Smith admitted of Mary’s multiple reappearances across the seasons. "I kept thinking, 'How many more ways are they going to come up with to bring back this character?' And they did [it] as ghosts, as spirits, as flashbacks, as hallucinations, as all kinds of things, and then even as a real, live manifestation of a character named Eve, and that was my last one … until they called me mid-way through Season 11 and said, 'We want you to come back for the finale.'"
Smith was expecting a brief arc, but Mary's return, courtesy of Amara (which Dean got to ask Chuck's sister about in the Oct. 15 episode), was anything but."They brought me back and taught me to fight and run around with guns and cars and honestly, it was like a dream role that was just kind of handed to me," she said. "It was the most fun – more than I even could have guessed. I had no idea."
Mary's eventual final exit took place in Season 14's "Absence,” when she experienced death-by-Jack (which set up a major rift with his pseudo-dad Dean). Although she's gone – and this time, it seems for good – Mary had a huge impact on her boys. Sam and Dean always had a rosy view of their mom growing up, and her Darkness-granted return introduced them to the flesh and blood woman they never got to know.
"I think when Mary came back to life it was not A: expected and B: anything like anyone had envisioned. I don't think Mary was the person the boys would have expected, [and] I don't think the fans expected it when the writers brought Mary back as a fully-realized human with flaws and agendas and opinions," Smith told IGN. "She wasn't just this sort of perfect mother character that they all expected. So I think that was a big adjustment for the boys. They had this canonized version of their mom and she just wasn't that person. Well, not completely – I think that was obviously in there, but Mary's tough. Nobody knew that John [Winchester] wasn't the original hunter for a long time. And I think that, if anything, it expanded their understanding of what unconditional love of family really is, because in true Winchester fashion, she didn't do what they wanted her to do or what they thought she should do, she did what she thought was right and they had to love her anyway."
15 seasons is a long time for a show to run on network television. The Simpsons, Gunsmoke, E.R. and Grey's Anatomy all made it to that milestone, but none of them had the kind of complicated mythology built into every episode that Supernatural does. It's quite the feat that the genre show is capping its run after a decade and a half of intricate storytelling. Smith thinks that the reason the show has resonated with audiences for so long has a lot to do with family."I think that it's the imperfection and bonds," Smith told IGN. "I think a lot of people have turbulent family lives and the consistent and constant reconciliation between the boys… they feud and they disagree, but when push comes to shove, they're always their first priority and someone they would give anything for, give everything for, really. And I think that was true of all four of the Winchesters, and it extends to Rowena and even Crowley. They ultimately sacrificed themselves for the greater good, and that's such a heroic notion and so idealistic.
"And yet the characters are incredibly fallible and human and flawed and funny and well-rounded," Smith continued. "There's so much to all of them, and I think that everyone can see a little bit of themselves in all the characters. And I think that the characters - who are all so different, but all had such attachments to each other – [made it feel] like a real family in the way that all of our families are diverse and flawed and full of love and feuding and foreverness."
Supernatural airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. The series finale airs on Nov. 19.
