“Were you tired or old coming out here?” Ruth Connell asked Mark Sheppard after he ambled up the stairs and out onto the stage.
“Old, but not as old as you,” Sheppard quipped.
“True. I’m 379 years old.”
Looking to the actor on his left, Sheppard asked, “Who are you?”
“I came on the show later,” Alexander Calvert replied seriously.
And that’s how the entirety of the Supernatural panel went on Sunday at 11:30AM in the Hyatt Centennial Ballroom, much to the amusement of the diehard fans in attendance.
It’s no surprise that a show that ran for 15 seasons would see its fair share of pranks, and Connell pranked Sheppard in a fairly epic way involving a number of strangers. It all started when Connell found out there were about 4,000 unsold Mischa Collins calendars available. Obviously, she had them shipped from overseas to their set in Vancouver. When they arrived, customs had questions. Four thousand angel calendars is heavy business. On the phone with customs, Connell asked if they’d heard of the show Supernatural and then if they had heard of Mark Sheppard. Luckily, the agent had, and immediately released the goods. It took multiple people, including delivery drivers and crew from the show, to get the calendars to set.
Then she started cutting out Collins.
The same photo, 4,000 times.
Connell hid Collins in every nook and cranny in Sheppard’s trailer. In the toilet. In the microwave, which Sheppard didn’t find for a month.
The panel derailed gloriously once again when asked what the most unusual thing they’ve been asked to autograph. Connell said it was signing a poster for Inside Time magazine. A man approached her booth at a convention in New Jersey saying that he and his friend, who is still on the inside, loved her.
“You’re really popular in prison,” Calvert joked. “I’m way too cute to go to prison,” he added much to his own detriment and to the entertainment of Connell and Sheppard.
Sheppard said that while it’s very cute and nice that people ask him to sign body parts so they can get a tattoo of it, he thinks it’s strange. He once had a woman tell him that she was going to tattoo the next thing he said to her, so he Crowley-voiced a booming “no.” A few weeks later, he saw her and her new “no” tattoo.
“That’d be very useful for a woman,” Calvert interjected.
“No, it would be really useful for you in prison,” Connell shot back.
It was pretty obvious during the panel that the cast bantered like a family, and a fan asked about the family aspect. Connell said it came very naturally. For Sheppard, he had a really difficult time picturing Crowley with a mother and had to visualize Crowley as having a weird longing for family and his humanity. However, Sheppard never really thought of Crowley as a demon. He thinks the king of hell could just as likely have been an archangel. After all, Crowley killed far less people than the Winchesters. “They’re a couple of Ted Bundys,” Connell remarked.
At the end of the panel, Sheppard reminisced about the days when he and Collins would go to conventions and media junkets regularly. During one of those events, they both were asked to describe the other in five words. Collins thought long and hard about nice words to say. Sheppard was left with just enough time to say “baby in a trench coat” while counting down the words on his fingers.
Connell was quick to end on a mic drop moment: “baby in a prison cell,” she deadpanned, while staring at Calvert.
