CW "Hotties" Talk New Season

Some of the cutest, ab-fab hotness on the CW gathered recently in Pasadena to give reporters the insider info on their bad-ass characters and more. Pull up your cyber-chair and get frisky with Ed Westwick of “Gossip Girl”, Jared Padalecki of “Supernatural”, Joseph Morgan of “The Vampire Diaries”, Shane West of “Nikita”, Wilson Bethel of “Hart of Dixie” and Kristoffer Polaha of “Ringer”.

Q: Ed, last we saw of Chuck, he had sort of mellowed out a little bit.  Can you talk about if that's going to continue?  We really liked him when he was a bad boy.

Ed Westwick:  So did I.  So for the moment, yes.  He has tunnel vision, a one‑track mind to get his girl, Blair Waldorf, but, I mean, that's really kind of the only thing that's happening right now.  Hopefully we do see a little bit more of the devious side, the devil within, rear its head again. 

Q: Jared, "Supernatural" has been on the air for seven years now, where your character has been extremely bad‑ass.  Where would you say he is on the scale of his bad‑ass‑dom from most extreme to least extreme right now? 

Jared: I think Sam this year is trying to keep his wheels aligned with the road, so he's not in charge of his own faculties enough to really be as bad‑ass as he was when I had a lot of fun.  Like Ed was saying, I kinda like doing the bad‑ass bit.  That's more bad‑ass. That means I eat meat and that means I lick blood.  He's less bad‑ass, but it’s not shirtless, but I'll take it. 

Q: Kris, are you as “bad” on your show “Ringer” as the rest of these guys?

Kris:  I was shocked I’m on this panel. My wife this morning woke me up with my email that I was included. I was sure they had the wrong guy, but there's only one Polaha west of the Mississippi, and you know, on my show, you've got Ioan, you've got Nestor and you've got me.  I guess of those three ‑‑ Henry is a little bit of a bad‑ass.  Let's be honest.  He cleaned up blood. 

Jared: That’s cool. That’s bad-ass.

Q: Joseph, your character on “Vampire Diaries” is probably, out of all of these guys, the most, legit evil.  To keep a character like you on the show, can he stay that evil or must he be softened up a bit?

Joseph:  Yes.  I worry about them making him softer. I think they can make him more human and more relatable without necessarily taking away any of his bad‑ass‑ism.  I think that it's possible to sort of have someone who is sort of an antihero who does tear hearts out and break necks and still you can kind of relate to him on a certain level.  I do worry but I trust [the show runners] and I think they'll keep him as bad‑ass as possible, I hope.

Q: Jared, when you were talking about having more fun, was that when you were soulless Sam? 

Jared:  Yeah. That was a lot more fun. I was really just trying to look cool.  I'm just kidding.  For those who don't know, a couple seasons ago, I played a soulless version of myself, literally soulless.  So I tried to just think of pure reason, pure logic, and totally cut out emotion. I tried to not be swayed by the emotions in the room, the emotion of the characters, which was difficult having a personal relationship with Jensen, and Sam with Dean, because you look at him and he's a buddy, and you want to go, "Hey, man.  How’s it going?"  But you have to kind of shut it off.  So it was a lot of patient directors and some great writers and a lot of logic.

Q: Shane, how much physical training do you have to do for your job on “Nikita”?  Is it a constant thing? 

Shane: I'm faking it.  No.  We had absolutely none when the season started, but Maggie is, you know, kind of a phenom, and it's embarrassing how good she is at what she does.  You kind of have to live up to those expectations.  She's gotten us into a bit of yoga.  I can't stretch worth a damn, but I try.  And you spend a little bit of time in the gym, a lot of time on the gun range, and thankfully everyone that was cast on the show has some kind of athletic background so there's something that we can pull from, but we're still answering to Maggie, and that's always pretty difficult. 

Q: Wilson, do you just assume every week they're going to make you take your shirt off so you have to stay in shape? 

Wilson:  Well, I'm pretty confident it will be a bad sign for my career when they tell me to stop taking my shirt off.  I'll take that as an indication that my time on The CW is short‑lived. 

Jared: And I'll stop watching. 

Wilson:  Thankfully they told me to take the cowboy hat off because I don't think that was my look. 

Q: Joseph, you've got two new original brothers coming in in a couple of episodes.  Can you talk about how tough they rank compared to Klaus? 

Joseph: Um, I mean, you know, they're bad‑asses in training, I would say.  They are doing well.  They've started to master the heart‑pulling‑out and the neck‑breaking and all that stuff.  One of them has been around for a good few hundred years and the other one's no spring chicken either.  So they've got a lot to learn coming into the modern world.  I think one of the differences they say is my character is hybrid, so he's part werewolf and part vampire, so that boosts me up the bad‑ass scale a little bit as well.  At the moment, I'm looking back over my shoulder, and they're still way behind me, but I don't know.  We'll see if they catch up. 

Q: Can each of you say what is your favorite thing about your character?

Shane: The depth of the character of Michael, also the history of Michael in Luc Besson’s film, the original series with "La Femme Nikita,” “Point of No Return," there's been a lot of great actors that have come through to play that.  So for me, it was kind of an honor to have this shot at giving my take on Michael in that lore.  I think it's just the fact that he's just consistently confused, and it's something that is always fun to play as an actor because there's a lot of places you can go with that. 

Joseph: For me it's the sociopathic nature of the character, for sure, the idea that you can be in a room with him and you never know what he's going to do.  I said it before, he could kiss you or kill you, and it's all the same to him.  There's no clear line.  It's all completely blurred. That's really where the danger comes from.  That's the interesting thing for me as an actor playing that, is from one moment to the next he can completely switch moods and emotions and not be aware that he's done it or not be aware that that is anything abnormal, you know.  That's really the part that fascinates me.

Ed:  The money. My character is incredibly wealthy, and money can get you into a lot of trouble, which makes for some interesting storylines.  That's it.

Jared: It’s your hair. I guess with "Supernatural" it's more intense for me. We kind of have no boundaries.  I've died.  I've been to hell.  I've been Lucifer.  I've been ‑‑ yeah, pretty fun. But we also have a very forgiving fan base, so we've done everything.  We've played ourselves.  We've played a version of ourselves.  And our fans are the best, and they stick alongside us and forgive us and support us.

Wilson: My character has so much fun that it's kind of hard not to love and appreciate that part of it.

Kris: I read the script, and I was drawn to the writing.  I was compelled to play Henry. "Ringer" seems like one of those shows that it almost demands you to watch it live because there's so many little twists and turns that, if you miss it, you kind of fall behind.  So it was just fun to be a part of that. I feel compelled to create a graph of bad‑ass‑ness [laughter].

Q:  Outside of actors, who would you consider to be bad‑asses in real life today? 

Jared: I hope it doesn't sound like a pat answer, but I've got to say our soldiers keeping us safe around the world are pretty bad‑ass in my book.

Shane: Growing up, one of the bad‑asses that I looked up to was Michael Biehn from playing Reese in "Terminator" to being Hicks in "Aliens" to "The Abyss."  That guy was the man back in the '80s.

Q: Jared, where is Jensen?

Jared: I actually flew down from Vancouver today.  The reason I could make it today is because Jensen was working.  Last night we were awarded two People's Choice Awards and couldn't make it because we were filming.  But that's what we do.  We're actors.  We work.  We make our show.  We carry on.  So I'm here representing the both of us.  But I totally think he should be here.

Q: Joseph, right now Stefan is beating you in a sense because he has your family.

Joseph: Yeah, yeah.  I mean, probably Stefan at the moment, probably Paul at the moment, although Daniel Gillies is a bit of a bad‑ass with that whole "throwing coins through windows, making them explode" thing.  That was a neat trick.  Or my sister, Claire Holt, she could be here.  She's pretty bad‑ass.

Q: What have you guys done in real life that was pretty bad ass?

Jared:  I think a lot of us played sports, huh, growing up?  Did you?

Ed: Yeah and my criminal records are available online.

Kris: The last time I was bad-ass was when I was a kid. There were seven of us.  And we used to get into a lot of trouble.  And one day we found fireworks, and we undid them in an empty field and had piles of gunpowder and lit the gunpowder up and watched this fire burn through this field.  And that wasn't enough, so we got a rag and tried to light the rag on fire.  But it was just smoldering, so we pitched it over a fence into someone's backyard.  And throughout the course of the night, the fence and their pool house caught on fire.

Ed:  Oh, my God. The sheriff was waiting by the pool.  

Kris:  The fire marshal took us to the fire station and showed us pictures of people who had been caught up in fires. I'm a reformed bad‑ass.