Supernatural actor DJ Qualls on how his tap dance with Jensen Ackles came together
We knew this week’s episode of Supernatural was going to be special, but we had no idea just HOW special. When Garth goes to treat Dean for 17(!!) cavities, he uses gas to knock him out. And what does Dean dream about? Just a casual tap dance number with Garth in the bunker.
“So a couple of weeks before I went to shoot the episode, I saw a producer who casually asked me, ‘Do you tap dance,'” guest-star DJ Qualls, who’s played Garth in six episodes of the series, remembers. “And very casually, I was like, ‘No, I don’t.’ Then I get there and I go to my wardrobe fitting and they’re like, ‘So you tap dance, right?’ They send me a video of a full-on choreographed four-minute tap-dancing sequence between Jensen [Ackles] and myself, and I am crapping myself. I said, ‘We can’t do this.'”
Thankfully, Qualls wasn’t in it alone. “Jensen was my absolute hero during this time because he didn’t know what he was doing either,” Qualls says. “They scheduled only like one or two rehearsals and he was like, ‘No, we need this every day.’ And I’m like, ‘Thank you so much.'”
The learning process wasn’t without its mishaps. “I broke two lamps in the hotel because there’s a cane thing,” Qualls says of the routine. But that didn’t stop Qualls from rehearsing at every free moment. “Every time I was out for dinner or I walked to the bathroom, I would go into a stall and do a little bit of the rehearsal.”
And in the end, it paid off, delivering an epic moment Supernatural fans won’t soon forget. “Every time one of these episodes comes out, I’m just as excited as if I’ve done a feature because we spend a good amount of time [with fans] and we come into contact with the people that actually watch the show,” Qualls says. “It’s important to us to do a good job for them. It really, really is.”
Related content:
