‘Supernatural’ season 12: Jensen Ackles not directing early episode this year

While it has been a little bit of a recent tradition to Jensen Ackles to direct an early episode of “Supernatural,” sometimes a tradition needs a little bit of a break.

Speaking to TVLine, Ackles confirms that he decided that he wanted to take a little bit of a break this time from directing in the early going, explaining that the overall workload is a big part of the reason why:

“I just decided to take the first part of the season easy. Twenty-three episodes [per season] is a long, long shoot, and I usually would direct the first episode that we would film… so it’s basically like sprinting the first several miles of a marathon, which doesn’t really work if you’re a good runner. You want to pace yourself, so I’m going to pace myself this year.”

One of the reasons why Jensen has done this in the past is because it allows him a better opportunity to prepare for it as opposed to trying to pick up and work through it during the season, given that directing is such a large commitment to go along with the large commitment of starring on the show. (This show does, after all, have a very small cast of regulars. That means more work for all of them.) Just as you would expect, we’ll have some more news if and when he does decide to direct one for the coming season.

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