‘The best job I ever had': ‘From ‘Supernatural' to ‘The Boys,' Eric Kripke talks his biggest hits — and miss (ahem, ‘Tarzan')

Yahoo

a day ago

Eric Kripke is proof that even the most successful creators in Hollywood still battle impostor syndrome.
'I will let you know when I have that moment,' the Supernatural creator and The Boys showrunner told Gold Derby when asked when he felt he'd finally made it in the cutthroat industry of entertainment. 'It's my honest answer. Every good writer I know is like, 'This is the one that they realize I'm a fraud.' I mean, none of us really know what we're doing.'
More from GoldDerby
'The Penguin's' Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti reveal the secrets behind their transformative performances (being huge Bat-fans helped)
How some Emmy categories lost and others gained nomination slots
Peter Straughan breaks down the power plays and personal tragedy in 'Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light'
Even after Supernatural, a show that Kripke conceived and ran for the first five seasons of its 15 (!) seasons, the Toledo, Ohio, native feared he'd never work again. The modest and candid Kripke did finally admit that he's felt a little bit more stability in the wake of The Boys' insanely popular run since it premiered on Prime Video in 2019 (its fourth season bowed this past June, with a fifth and final season expected in 2026).
In our latest edition of The Gold Standard, Kripke shares stories from all his various supernatural hits.
After developing and writing the WB's ill-fated 2003 one-season wonder Tarzan and writing the 2005 horror movie The Boogeyman, Kripke created Supernatural, which followed the adventures of the monster-hunting brothers Sam () and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles).
I was hoping to get to five [seasons]. But what I was really hoping for was to correct a lot of the mistakes I made with my show before it, which was Tarzan on the WB. That was just such a flaming sh-tshow. And the vast majority of it was my fault. So I really wanted to build a show that corrected those mistakes. Like, for example, if you're going to make a network TV show, you really need to figure out what your engine is. How are you going to generate story every week, 22 times a year? Tarzan had none of that. Supernatural was basically designed to be a story engine, whereas there's some supernatural mystery every single week, and the guys have to get involved every single week, and it's all like Americana and urban legends. … It was just designed to be an effective network television contraption. And I think it did that well, and I think it's one of the reasons it went as long as it did is it. It's maybe too good of an engine [laughs], it just never, never stopped. And then through the exploration of it, seeing how great Jared and Jensen were and then, Misha [Collins] and all the other amazing characters, it sort of evolved in a very organic way. Because you're just looking at great film and great actors, and you just start saying in the writers room, 'Why aren't we why are we pushing that further?' So all the mythology and all the character stuff, it was always there, but it probably became heavier as the show continued.
The [moment] that pops into my mind is when we were shooting the pilot, and it was a scene on a bridge where Sam and Dean are talking about their mom. And it's kind of emotional. And I felt good about who we had cast. They seemed great, but you never know until you know. And watching that scene [on monitors] at video village, that was the minute I knew, and I was like, "Oh, shit. These guys are really good, and you really believe them as brothers." And I turned to Peter Johnson, who is one of the executive producers, and we both gave each other the exact same look at the exact same time, like, "Oh, I think we might have something here." I really remember that very vividly.
Though Kripke hardly felt bulletproof after the success of Supernatural, he found some validation when he was able to team up with J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau for Revolution. The post-apocalyptic series followed the aftermath of a worldwide electrical shutdown and ran on NBC for two season before it was canceled.
The idea [came from] hooking up with [Abrams' production company] Bad Robot just out of a general meeting. They had a short story about all the world's power coming off. Meanwhile, I wanted to do a story [that was] dystopian, post-apocalyptic, like deep into civilization ending. I had been reading The Stand at the time. That was what was jazzing me. And so it was a little chocolate and peanut butter because, I'm like, 'Well, why don't we combine both ideas?' Which we did. And then we just started making it. And then we wrote the pilot and got the green light from NBC and Jon came into the office and was like, 'Hey, I would like to [direct] this pilot.' And I'm like, 'What are Jon Favreau and J.J. Abrams doing sitting in front of me in a room?' Like, that would be great. So then it all kind of came together.
And that was my memory of that show outside of losing all the sleep in the world because it was such a hard show. The best parts of that show were sitting in a writer's room with J.J. Abrams and Jon Favreau and watching them bounce ideas off each other. That was just a really fun front row seat.
Any time a show gets canceled, you shed a tear just because you put so much effort into it. I would say looking back, I feel like my primary emotion was relief. It was such a hard show, and I forgot every lesson I learned with Supernatural. It was completely serialized. There was no engine. There was no clean path. But it was still a network show. Like, had that show been an eight-episode streaming show with a bigger budget? It would have been called The Last of Us [laughs]. It would have been good! Like, people ask me there, "What do you think of The Last of Us? I'm like, 'Oh, it's like if Revolution was good." But trying to do 20 episodes of Revolution was just so, so hard and took two years out of my life. So as much as I love those actors and missed that show, I didn't miss the feeling that I was slowly dying every day.
As someone who was making a career out of mining supernatural stories, time travel almost felt like a rite of passage for Kripke. The NBC series starred Abigail Breslin, Matt Lanter, and Malcolm Barrett as a trio of disparate professionals attempting to stop a nefarious organization from altering the course of history through time travel. Like Revolution, however, it only lasted two seasons.
I love genre, but I also am really proud of the fact that I really haven't gone to the same genre twice. And I've always thought that time travel was a really great concept for a series. And obviously we didn't invent it. I mean, Quantum Leap probably did it the best, but there was Time Tunnel and there were a bunch of them. … Again, [it's] back to an engine, really. You understand that every week you go to a different historical period and there's some adventure interacting with famous, or not so famous, historical figures. And it gives you a structure when you're in the writers' room.
I was calling it 'Bourne Identity through time.' But I didn't want to do it alone because I think I was still shellshocked from Revolution. So I brought the idea — I didn't have much more than that — but I brought the idea to Shawn Ryan, and we really got along, and we started kicking it around together and developing it. And then it became Timeless.
I am proud of that one. One it was a genuinely great experience. I'm still close with Shawn and going through that battle with Shawn was really nice. I mean, we ended up getting canceled, but that show did find itself when it started telling stories in history about women or disenfranchised minorities or these amazing stories in history that were true but most people didn't know about, once we got off stuff like the Lincoln assassination and we got into [other factual events]. With pride, I will say that we were the first ones to talk about [legendary slave-turned-lawman] Bass Reeves and Colman Domingo was our Bass Reeves. And the fact that we were able to find and tell those stories, and were a lot of times the first time anyone was telling them, is something that I'm proud of. I think it was a very inclusive show, and it was during the first Trump presidency. And so this notion that history is for everyone was, as I saw it, a really important message.
Versus all his other major television shows, The Boys represented a shift for Kripke in multiple ways. One, it was based on existing IP, the adult comic book series created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. And two, the R-rated superhero ensemble costarring Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, and Erin Moriarty is far darker and more violent than any of Kripke's previous network television work. The series has received eight Emmy nominations to date, including Best Drama Series in 2021, and won for its stunt work in 2023.
I was passionate about Garth Ennis comics and was a huge fan of The Boys. I took a meeting with a producer named Ori Marmar, who worked for Neil Moritz, basically just to say to him, "I can't believe you gave Preacher to somebody else." Because Preacher was my all-time favorite comic. And he's like, "Well, we have The Boys." I'm like, "Oh, I'll just take that then."
But no, I think anyone who really knows me and even works with me in the writers' room, they know that my humor skews really dark and I have a pretty filthy mouth. And I love profane humor … and so suddenly I was able to make this show that is by far the most like my personality than anything I've been able to do up to this point. So the fact that it hit as big as it did was very gratifying because [with] most everything else I had to pretend to be more innocent than I was. Like, I love Sam Raimi and super gory horror and really profane comedy and emotion and satire, I'm a huge satire nut, and being able mix all that up into one stew was the best. It's the best job I've ever had.
We never really worried about ['superhero fatigue']. Just the opposite, actually. We saw that as an opportunity. I mean, when we were pitching the show, we were pitching it almost 10 years ago. I think Deadpool had just come out, and our whole pitch was 'There's a tidal wave that's about to crash, and someone's going to do this for TV, and it might as well be us.' The balloon is gonna be too big and someone has to take the piss out of it because it's a piss balloon. … I'm a comic book nerd, and comics went through the same evolution. There were straight superhero comics, and then guys like Garth Ennis came along and they started subverting the form. And that was overdue in the feature space and television space. So we kind of knew it was coming, and we wanted to be at the head of it. So we never felt like, we've got the counterprogramming that people are going to want.
And then as the show continued, I think we stayed fresh by always making sure that it was never about the superheroes. The superheroes are the slick packaging on the outside of the cereal box. But what it's really about is late stage capitalism and politics. And how do you hold on to hope, and the corrosive aspects of revenge. So the superhero thing is just a metaphor to get to a lot of deeper issues that are really going on in the world, both politically and emotionally. I think that's what early Marvel did well. And once your superhero stuff is just about superheros, yeah it's probably pretty boring. But when your superhero stuff is about anything but, I think people see that and appreciate it.
We realized it very early, but I don't think we started with just the metaphor of, "It'll be fun to use superheroes to satirize celebrities." That was the idea. But once you dig a little deeper you say, "Well, these aren't just celebrities, these are authoritarians and fascists." And once you realize these are authoritarians who present as celebrities, you realize we're telling a metaphor that is more like the present moment we're living in than almost anybody else right now. … And so we felt an obligation to run with that ball as far as we could. So, very quickly there, I gave the directive in the room that we're all going to be news junkies. We're all going to know every single thing about every single political issue. And then we're going to make a show that's a satire of that. And I take a lot of pride in for as bananas as this show is, we're also one of, if not the most, current show on television. Which, you know, doesn't say great things about the world or reality, but we're able to talk about issues that a lot of shows can't talk about, and even less now that there's this cooling effect of people are scared about being political. But someone's got to be the kid in the back of the classroom throwing spitballs and, and we're proud that that's us, right up until the moment they vanish me. Then I'll be like, "I didn't mean it." Like I won't be brave about.
While The Boys has made an art form of subverting the superhero genre, it's also done what every other successful crimefighter inevitably does as well: franchise. In 2022 came the animated series The Boys Presents: Diabolical and the Audible podcast The Boys: Deeper and Deeper. The next-gen streaming series spin-off Gen V launched in 2023, and two more shows are on the way, The Boys: Mexico and Vought Rising.
I think it's been really fun and challenging to find that sweet spot where each show has its own reason for existing. And so it's not just like a cash grab sell out, but it's like each one is a story. A you're like, "Oh, that's an interesting story. I would like to hear that story. And I'm interested in those characters." And so how each one becomes its own animal with its own creative vibe and rhythm and look, while still being a part of this sort of larger tone that we're creating. That's a really fun and hard challenge. But I really enjoy that. I'm interested in not just like, "Well, how do they all become one long story you have to f--king watch? And how do I just create more homework for the audience?" It's more like, how do you make each one exist on its own and as great as you possibly can? And I hope the audience somehow senses that in between the lines, that we're not just doing it just because we like money. We're doing it because we actually think those are interesting stories to tell.
Like, we have this prequel [Vought Rising] coming up. And it's superheroes in the 1950s, but it's like the grittiest, most real version of the '50s. I've just never seen that before. I've seen it in like six or seven minutes of Watchmen, but that's it. And so to do a whole world that lives there, I'm just really intrigued to see what that looks like. And I would watch that, whether I knew about The Boys or not.
Best of GoldDerby
Tina Fey on 'The Four Seasons': 'It was a challenge to be restrained about where we put jokes'
'Cross' star Aldis Hodge on building an aspirational hero — who's not a superhero
Jonathan Pryce on the 'great responsibility' of playing a character with dementia in 'Slow Horses'
Click here to read the full article.