‘Gen V’: Eric Kripke Reveals How Jensen Ackles Shaped His Soldier Boy Cameo
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Gen V Season 1 Episode 6, “Jumanji.”]
Gen V got a little trippy with its latest entry, aptly titled, “Jumanji,” as Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Andre (Chance Perdomo), and Jordan (Derek Luh/London Thor) found themselves trapped in Cate’s (Maddie Phillips) mind.
After their minds were erased by their Supe classmate, she finally filled in the missing gaps as they were sucked into her subconsciousness. Walking around the dreamscape, the college students run into Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), or at least, a version of him who claims to be Cate’s imaginary boyfriend.
What follows is a graphic, yet hilarious account of Cate’s sexual awakening through this version of Soldier Boy’s eyes. Explaining how he was pivotal for her coming-of-age, Soldier Boy gets in Andre’s face, noting that no matter what Cate always comes back to him. It’s a scene played for laughs with all of the attitude Ackles played the character with in Season 3 of The Boys.
(Credit: Prime Video)
So how did his cameo come together? “Jensen and I are friends, and as the room was banging through which character could show up in the dream sequence, I think in the very first draft it was Taylor Lautner, which makes sense because she would masturbate to Taylor Lautner,” executive producer Eric Kripke tells TV Insider. “That was the joke. But I think very wisely, [Lautner] was unavailable.”
The Twilight franchise star’s lack of availability then led Kripke to Ackles. “We said, ‘Well, Soldier Boy has such a following, let’s get Soldier Boy in.’ So I called Jensen, and I’m like, ‘I need you to suit up, and next weekend, I need you to fly to Toronto.'”
Showrunner Michele Fazekas adds, “He was working on something else, and he really bent over backward to accommodate. It was great!”
“Yeah, I think he was shooting the Big Sky show and so had to get a couple of days off to fly out to Toronto, shoot it, and come back,” Kripke reveals. “In terms of what he was saying, the exposition was there, but one thing about Jensen is he’s obviously got impeccable timing, but he’s just a really naturally funny ad-libber. So I basically just stood beside the camera and we just rolled and let him ad-lib and come up with a thousand different euphemisms for masturbating, and he just kept hitting ’em.”
Ackles was so good at the ad-libbing that when Kripke and Fazekas hit post-production, “We were like, ‘Which one should we choose?’ And then they were all so good. We were like, ‘Why don’t we just do all of them?’ So that’s how that scene became what it became,” Kripke says. In other words, fans can thank Ackles for the hilarious cameo, which is sure to be a Season 1 highlight from Gen V.
What did you think about Ackles’ appearance as Soldier Boy? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Gen V, New Episodes, Fridays, Prime Video
