The fact that the original Friday the 13th was short on character development didn't bother Padalecki. "Before I got the script, honestly my thought was, 'Man, I really like Friday the 13th,' and I’d seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre that they had done and I loved it. We actually watched it before we started shooting House of Wax. We watched it and Joel Silver says, 'Listen, this is kind of what we’re doing. We're trying to remake a classic and make it new and fun and modern and sexy and scary.' And we watched it and all of us were like, 'That was a really good movie.' That was a really well shot, really scary, really real, the characters were fun, you kind of felt for them and you kind of could…identify with them," said Padalecki at the LA press day for Warner Bros Pictures' Friday the 13th. "You're like, 'Oh, I get it,' you know? They actually had hearts, which is nice because I love sort of just the cheesy horror for the sake of horror, death for the sake of death and, you know, oh fun, crazy, it’s like, 'Let’s wait for the next kind of kooky death.'"
"But it’s kind of fun as an actor to go like, 'Hey, kill me, fine, that's cool, and make it fun, but like give me something to do. Give me something to kind of make it real for myself so I'm not just running around oh when’s my turn to die?' So that was exciting to read the script. And then exciting to sit down with Brad Fuller and everybody and talking about, 'Hey, we're going to try and make it real. We’re going to try and plug into the reality.' It’s so funny because you're filming a movie about a guy who’s immortal and he’s going to go kill everybody in the woods, but we’d sit down and he’d be like, 'This doesn't feel real,' you know? And you're like, 'Well, no, it doesn’t feel real. This is Jason. It’s not real.' Sometimes we’d pause for like 30 minutes – like, 'This is where the audience is watching it and they start to laugh and they get up and leave because it’s so bullsh-t,' you know? And so we’d sit down and fix it and they're like, 'Let’s make it real. This wouldn't happen, none of this would really happen but this really wouldn't happen.' And so that was nice to be a part of."
Derek Mears takes on the role of the hockey mask-wearing killer Jason Voorhees in this addition to the Friday the 13th franchise. In real life, Mears comes across as a big lovable teddy bear of a man. In fact he's so nice Padalecki says that had Mears not been wearing the mask, he would have had a hard time acting like he was afraid of him. "If he hadn’t had the mask and the physicality then I would have been like, 'Oh Derek, you're not going to hurt me. You could kill me but you're too nice,' you know? Like I could probably sort of kick him in the shin and he’d be like, 'Man, leave me alone,' you know? But he’s tremendous," said Padalecki. "I sort of get to cheat and I have lines and I can use my facial expressions and stuff like that, and he just expresses so much with his movement. He's so capable that it was really easy to get there. And then plus they call action and you're looking at Jason and you're like, 'Ha-ha I grew up watching you. Let’s fight.' So that's really cool."
"It was really comforting to work with him because we had a couple of fight scenes, as you know, and like the one in the barn. I had mud in my eye - I couldn't wipe my eyes and so most of the takes, like the second end of the take I’d have sand and stuff, I couldn't really see anything. And so I’d slip and he’d kind of just like pause holding me and put me back up. I’m 220 pounds and he was just like, 'I've got you,' like back on my feet. I was like, 'Thank you.' He's really a cool guy. I can't wait to see his performance."
Keeping this totally spoiler-free, there will be no details revealed about any of the many death scenes (that, of course, involve Jason) in the film. But Padalecki – again, without giving away any names – was around on the set when a number of the death scenes were shot. "We filmed locationally, obviously, so if I was not in a location… Like let’s just say I wasn't in a woodshed, then I would not have seen what happened in a woodshed. Let’s say however I was in the woods, that if someone happened to die in the woods and I’d been on that day…"
"It’s almost like really cool to watch on screen and kind of really just exhausting to watch in life," said Padalecki on the actual process of staging a death scene. "It’s like a sex scene or something. It’s like, 'Okay, well we can kind of see your breast so kind of lean to the right a little. Okay, yes, okay. Now your neck.' It’s just so calculated it’s almost like, 'Okay, well if you stab like this, then we're not going to see the light shining off the blade, so make sure you stab like that.' And you're like, 'Oh,' and you realize like man, it really takes a lot. It’s not just like, 'All right, go in and stab, and then go like wow!,' and the hand coming down and it has to look dead. 'Oh the hand flexed a little bit, we could tell you were, so like really keep the hand…' You don’t think about that. It’s a very painstaking process to kill somebody on screen, and especially for a horror movie. I mean I assume it’s just like, 'Blah, blah, blah,' but for a horror movie where it’s about the deaths it takes a long time."
Page 2: Jared Padalecki on Stunts and Supernatural
