Matt Cohen Brings Together His ‘Supernatural’ Castmates for Adult Animated ‘Public Domain’

Ileane Rudolph July 27, 2025, 1:00 pm

A decade ago, actor/director Matt Cohen and his filmmaking partner Sean Flanagan had an idea to make an animated comedy series about a group of over-the-hill legendary characters hanging out in a Cheers-like bar called Public Domain. “The regulars at this Hollywood watering hole were all once famous characters that have fallen into the public domain,” says Cohen, who played young John Winchester on Supernatural and directed the final-season episode “Give Me Shelter.”

“They drink together and wait for the opportunity to be rediscovered, and rebooted by Tinseltown,” Cohen explains. “We’ve never asked the question, when life gets hard, where do they go and how do they deal with it? It’s essentially the look at every actor in Hollywood told by a favorite animated character. We’ll see what they’re doing in their 40s-60s, post their Hollywood careers.”

According to Cohen, there are about “200 public domain characters that audiences will recognize. It’s going to feel a lot like an animated Cheers, but with characters you know and love from your favorite shows and the shows that you share with your children.”

Nathan Milburn

To voice the characters, Cohen reached out “to the circle of talent that I know and love like siblings,” he says, “the Supernatural family.” Nearly every role is played by a former cast member. Among them: Jake Abel (voicing Hercules), Jim Beaver (Sidney Sam), Rob Benedict (Kaulu), Briana Buckmaster (Dorothy Gale), Ruth Connell (Peter Pan’s Wendy Darling), Adam Fergus (Sherlock Holmes), Gil McKinney (The Mad Hatter), and Richard Speight Jr. (Quasimodo). “Working together and offering feedback is how the Supernatural family always shined.”

“This is a funny comedy and it’s really a good time,” Cohen notes. (It’s also an adult comedy with risqué lines and scenarios.) “When you get up from the couch after finishing the pilot and Louden Swain band’s front man Rob Benedict’s song is heard over the credits, you’re going to feel wrapped in a warm hug and you’ll want to go smile at one of your friends and tell them about it.”

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Fans helped finance the pilot, which will be available free on YouTube in August. (A cut arrived on YouTube in July.) Hoping the show will get picked up by a streamer, the creators have 100-plus episodes ready to go — including ones in which Quasimodo and the Little Mermaid (voiced by Cohen’s wife, Mandy Musgrave) fall in love, and the Phantom of the Opera and Hercules “figure out to how to jump rope.”

Cohen voices the series’ only original character, Shep Salazar, “a washed-up child actor trying to run the bar and control all these hooligans,” he says. Bottoms up!

For a deep-dive into 20 years of Supernatural, from behind-the-scenes scoop to exclusive cast interviews, photos, and fan stories, pick up a copy of TV Guide Magazine’s Supernatural Afterlife: 20th Anniversary Special issue, available on newsstands and for order online at Supernatural.TVGM2025.com.