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Helfer Is Standing in the Shadows on 'Supernatural'

By Kate O'Hare, March 15, 2007

Statuesque blond Tricia Helfer, best known to TV audiences as the slinky Cylon Number Six on the Sci Fi Channel series "Battlestar Galactica," found herself in an unusual position recently while shooting "Road Kill," the Thursday, March 15, episode of The CW's "Supernatural," starring Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as demon-hunting brothers.

"At one point, we were doing a set-up," she recalls, "and I was working with Jared, who's six-five. I'm rather tall myself, so I'm usually one of the taller actors in the room and never have to worry about somebody else blocking my light.

"I was paying no attention at all to the fact that I was hiding behind Jared in the light. It took me a couple of takes to finally realize, 'Oh, man, he's so tall. Gotta pay attention here.'

"It was lovely. They're both really sweet, nice guys, and good actors, so it was really a fun experience. If it had been a little bit warmer, it would have been perfect."

Both "Supernatural" and "Battlestar Galactica" shoot in Vancouver, Canada, but the circumstances are rather different. While her role on "Battlestar Galactica" frequently puts Helfer in the skimpiest of costumes, the show's outer-space sets are mostly indoors.

"It is indoors," Helfer says. "So I was used to Vancouver, but used to a soundstage."

The same can't be said of 'Supernatural,' which makes as good use of the fields and forests of British Columbia as "The X-Files" did in its early years.

"It was Vancouver in January," Helfer says, "night shoots, exterior shoots. The crew, I don't know how they handled it. They pretty much told me this was one of their toughest weather shoots that they had.

"We were out all night long in the forest. If it was cold enough, it was snowing. If it was a couple degrees warmer, it was pouring rain."

In "Road Kill," Helfer plays Molly, who is on the run from a creepy looking farmer she and her husband encountered while driving. After the couple swerved to avoid the farmer and then hit a tree, Molly awoke to find her husband gone. Things get worse when Sam and Dean Winchester (Padalecki and Ackles, respectively) tell her that the farmer does this once a year, and that she's probably his next victim.

"When I read it," Helfer says, "I immediately liked the role. She's the girl in peril, that's for sure, but because, on 'Battlestar,' I play somebody who's supposedly on the evil side, it was fun to play the good character that the boys can help."

Unfortunately, Molly's marital situation torpedoed any hope of romance.

"Jensen and I laughed about that," Helfer says. "He said, 'If you weren't searching for your husband, Dean would be hitting on you.' There was none of that going on, because I was crying over my lost husband. There was no kissing the cute boys, that's for sure."

On the other hand, Helfer got to try out her best horror-victim scream.

"I did," she says. "And I've been told that I have a pretty good scream. It's not too girly, but it's full. I have some lungs on me, I guess."

"Supernatural" doesn't represent Helfer's only recent extracurricular activity. In February, she was the cover girl for Playboy, with a photo spread and an article inside the magazine.

"They came across with what I wanted going into it," she says. "The pictures have a sense of fun. They're tasteful. I think they came out well, and I've had a very good reaction."

Told that many "Battlestar" fans probably bought multiple copies, Helfer laughs and says, "I hope so!"

As for other side projects, Helfer would love to do a guest shot on "24," as she's a recent convert from watching the FOX thriller on DVD.

"At one point," she says, "I had to shut [the season-five DVD] off, because I found I wasn't breathing. I was getting so tense, I was getting lightheaded because I wasn't breathing."

Talking With The Winchesters! Part 2
By Paul Kupperberg

Last week, Weekly World News presented the first part of an exclusive interview with hungers of the paranormal, brothers Dean and Sam Winchester. In Part One, the brother discussed a recent case in which Weekly World News helped take down an evil supernatural killer. This week, they talk about how they got their start in the ‘family business’.

WWN: Your family has suffered quiet a bit at the hands of demonic forces.

DEAN: We lost our mother and our Dad…

WWN: After your mother’s death, your father, John Winchester, devoted his life to finding her killer.

DEAN: Dad was a Marine. He wasn’t about to take it lying down.

SAM: He asked questions, followed leads and discovered there was a world of the paranormal out there – that the myths and legends we’ve all heard were true.

DEAN: And he met other Hunters like Bobby Singer – believers who weren’t going to sit back and let the bad guys win.

WWN: So as soon as you were old enough, you joined your father on his hunts?

DEAN: We were pretty tight there for a few years until Sam took a little detour.

SAM: I tried to live my own life… went to college…

WWN: What changed your mind?

SAM: I lost my girlfriend to the same demon that killed out mother. Then Dad disappeared and we spent almost a year trying to find him.

DEAN: While wasting some pretty nasty customers along the way.

WWN: This same demon had something to do with your father’s death as well?

SAM: We’re pretty sure of that.

DEAN: One day we’re gonna find that yellow-eyed bastard. I only wish we still had the gun.

WWN: A demon-killing gun?

SAM: A Colt revolver, made by Samuel Colt himself. Seems he was a Hunter, too. Over a hundred years ago he forged a gun with the power to kill anything.

WWN: That could come in handy.

DEAN: You said it. Only the gun disappeared at the same time Dad died.

WWN: Is it true, Sam, that you have some kind of psychic abilities?

DEAN: He’s reading your mind right now…

SAM: Stop. I sometimes get ‘visions,’ see things that might happen. They’re like dreams. I’m not the only one, though. There are others – kids born about the same time – who also have abilities. The demon says he has plans for us…

DEAN: Yeah, well he’s gotta get through me first. Don’t worry. We’ll find him and we’ll find a way to take him out. Before he can do whatever his plans are.

WWN: So the fight your father started is far from over?

DEAN: You said it, dude.

WWN: I think that about wraps it up. Thanks for your time.

DEAN: No problem. We’ve gotta hit the road anyways. There’s only two of us and a lot of ground to cover.

SAM: And a lot of weirdness to hunt down. I’ll drive.

DEAN: My ’67 Chevy Impala? I don’t think so, little brother.

For further adventures of Dean and Sam Winchester, watch Supernatural on The CW, every Thursday at 9 p.m. EST.

Supernatural Will Have Answers

John Shiban, executive producer of The CW's Supernatural, told SCI FI Wire that answers will be revealed as the second season wraps up with a two-part finale. "I think people will be surprised at some of [the answers]," Shiban (The X-Files) said in an interview. "Everybody has their theories, of course. We've got some good twists and turns in there. We've obviously hinted at some big things from the top of the season involving Sam's destiny, involving Dean's mission and what the demon is doing. ... As usual in our Supernatural world, it's not going to be what everybody expects."

Supernatural centers on brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) and their hunt for mythical creatures that prey on the human race. This season, the brothers have been seeking the demon that killed their parents and have discovered that Sam has psychic powers. The demon, it turned out, has plans for him and the children like him.

Throughout the season, "hints and tidbits" have been dropped, which will lead up to the revelations in the finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose," Shiban said. "Those things were done on purpose. At the top of the year we said, 'As we hit our mythology periodically, let's drop this piece of information. Let's let this out or let's let that out, which will set up our ending.' And I'm very pleased with how it played. I think people are not frustrated. They're not feeling we're stringing them along, which I think is good. The sense I get is that they're excited and they want to know more and they're going to get more."

Shiban added: "It's really been for us, creatively, real exciting and a real treat. We started out the year saying, 'OK, we're not just going to rest on our laurels.' And we were relatively happy with season one. There were some episodes that didn't work out as well as we hoped, and there were some things we tried that we weren't 100 percent happy with. But we said, 'Let's not just keep doing the same thing. Let's throw some curve balls. Let's open up the world. Let's add characters. Let's find different ways to tell stories, both in the area of what we call stand-alones—our sort of monster-of-the-week episodes, where we did everything from killer clowns to a demonic virus to the ghost of the serial killer—[and our mythology episodes].' We try to tell stories in a different way, sometimes with flashbacks, sometimes, [as in] 'The Night Shifter' that aired recently, where it's sort of Dog Day Afternoon and you're telling the story from the middle."

The next original episode, "Hollywood Babylon," will take the brothers Winchester undercover on the set of a horror movie that may be cursed. It airs on April 19 in the show's regular 9 p.m. ET/PT Thursday timeslot. —Kathie Huddleston

NOTE: contains some spoiler on the last ep of part 2 of season 2.

www.eclipsemagazine.com/4431/demon_dealings_on_supernatural

Thursday, October 4th
Supernatural
9 PM ET

First thoughts: Hmm. We feel sorry for Supernatural. The show has a really tough timeslot, and now it won't even benefit from following the Smallville premiere (on Sept. 27, The CW will air an encore of the Reaper premiere in Supernatural's timeslow instead). The show deserves better. Still, we know the devoted fanbase will turn out.