On Oct. 4, during the third-season premiere of the CW’s horror drama “Supernatural,” fans got their first look at knife-wielding Ruby (Katie Cassidy), the new rival in the demon-hunting biz to the Winchester brothers, Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles).
It wasn’t a friendly meeting, with Ruby taking down a few demons with her magic blade and then informing Sam that “I’m the girl who just saved your (butt).” The irony in this statement will become more evident in future scenes, as the 5-foot, 7-inch Cassidy squares off with the 6-foot, 4-inch Padalecki.
“Most of my scenes are with Jared,” says the blond Cassidy (daughter of ’70s pop idol David Cassidy) over lunch in Santa Monica, Calif. “I’m pretty close to him. I’ll be like this.” She cranes her neck back to look upward.
“I’m supposed to be very intimidating and bad-a-,” she continues, “this bad-a- chick, and when I walk up to him, I feel like a shrimp. But I’m five- seven, and they give me huge heels.” And yes, she’ll be running and fighting in them.
“I’ve been kickboxing for about six weeks now,” Cassidy says. She sticks out her hand and shows a good-sized scrape on one knuckle.
“This is actually my first boxing injury,” she says. “It’s healed a lot. It’s kind of exciting. I’m eventually going to be kickboxing in heels.” Remember that old line about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels? Such is the fate of the female action hero, even when fighting is not involved.
“It’s funny,” Cassidy says. “I had a scene, like, a week ago or two weeks ago, where we were by the water. I was in these super-high heels, and they’re spiky heels, not chunky or anything. We’re on sand, and I’m walking like this. …” She mimes losing her balance and wobbling.
“I’m like, ‘Really, can anybody see my feet in this shot? I look like I can’t walk.’ So they ended up working it out so I could be in regular shoes.”
Ruby is one of two female characters introduced in “Supernatural” this year, along with mercenary Bela, played by Lauren Cohan. Fans who feel very protective of their boys apparently aren’t too happy about the new women in their lives and the prospect of romance.
But fear not, says “Supernatural” executive producer Eric Kripke, who reveals, “Honestly, I have episodes broken through 14 at this point, and there isn’t so much as a friendly hug between them. We’d rather keep tension in the air. The girls are actually pretty antagonistic to the boys.
“They’re not really introduced as allies. They have their own motives, and they actually provide a lot more obstacles to the boys than they do assistance.
“So the boys spend a lot more time discussing how they want to kill then than how they want to kiss them.”
Down the line, though, things could change.
Kripke says, “If the audience screams out for it after we’ve tortured them for years, then yeah, maybe we’ll do it. But we thought we had a much better chance of successfully introducing these characters if they were just introduced as characters in their own right, with their own interests and their own motives, and not introduce them as accessories to the boys.”
