‘Gilmore Girls’: Jared Padalecki Shares 2 Similarities, 1 Difference From Dean
Gilmore Girls was the first time many viewers saw Jared Padalecki. His prior role in the movie A Little Inside was harder to come by. So Gilmore Girls fans saw Padalecki as Dean. Now they’ve also seen him as Sam Winchester, Cordell Walker and many other roles, but it’s natural to associate him with Dean. In some ways, he’s still a lot like Dean, but in other ways they’re quite different.
Padalecki appeared on Scott Patterson’s I Am All In podcast on Oct. 5. Patterson asked his costar the same question he gets all the time: How are you similar to Dean?
The 1 difference between Jared Padalecki and Dean on ‘Gilmore Girls’
Padalecki was a teenager when he played Dean on Gilmore Girls. Dean was already wiser beyond his years than Padalecki was in real life.
“In high school, no, I didn’t have the confidence,” Padalecki said on I Am All In. “Dean had a quiet confidence from the get that I think Jared learned from. I was still 17, I was a kid in every way, shape, and form. I’d never left the country. I think I’d maybe left the state twice in my life, once to drive to Disneyland with my family and once to drive to Florida to Disney[World] with my family.”
Jared Padalecki had a similar childhood to Dean
Both Dean and the real Padalecki hailed from big cities. However, both gravitated towards a smaller town atmosphere.
“Even though San Antonio was not a small town, it’s a pretty large city, a couple million, I was kind of a small town kid,” Padalecki said. “My life was the three mile radius around my house. That was our grocery store, that was my middle school and elementary school and high school, that was where I would ride my bike to my friend’s house. Maybe similar to Dean because he grew up in Chicago but he felt at home in a smaller microcosm. So I think that was similar.”
1 more similarity
As teen dramas go, Gilmore Girls was a bit milder than the likes of Dawson’s Creek or The O.C. Dean didn’t get into any major trouble, and neither did Padalecki.
I certainly had similarities. I feel like I learned a lot from Dean. [Gilmore Girls creator] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] and the gang wrote this character who was really lovable. He certainly had some hiccups along the way through five seasons but he started out, he was just a good kid. He was a kid. There was a scene that I was talking about the other day with maybe one of our directors on Walker. She was like, ‘Yeah, my family was always team Dean.’ I was like really? She goes, ‘Yeah, that scene with you and Lorelai where you’re all eating pizza and she’s talking about your motorcycle and you’re saying I don’t have a motorcycle, fine, she won’t ride on my motorcycle. It just seemed sweet. It was wholesome.’ So I think we shared that.
Jared Padalecki, I Am All In, 10/5/22
