DJ Qualls (Z Nation, The Man in the High Castle) played recurring character Garth Fitzerald IV on Supernatural. Garth had been a ward of Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) who mentored him as a demon hunter. Garth eventually turned into a kindly, dentist, family man, and werewolf. In real life he’s been an avid SPN convention attendee, keeping in touch with his former castmates — and even finding his life partner at a con.
Below, DJ Qualls reflects on Supernatural, his convention experience, and more.
Do you remember your first SPN convention?
DJ Qualls: Even though we were both on Supernatural, I met my partner Ty Olsson [who played vampire Benny Lafitte] in 2012 at the Birmingham, England, convention. I was walking past the place where all the actors’ headshots were up, and I’m like, “Who’s that?” And it was Ty dressed up as Benny. He invited himself on my trip to Prague, and I was there with my buddy and he was like, “Where are you guys going after this?” I’m like, “Prague.” And he said , “Can I come?”
I had worked mostly with Jared [Padalecki] and Jensen [Ackles] and Alex Calvert and Misha [Collins], so many of us who recurred know each other through conventions. Samantha Smith had been saying, “Hey, what’s up?” at different shows over the years. Then we had our friendship breakthrough moment, and now we talk every day. The beauty of this is when you have such a large cast, these are our meeting points; this is where we forged real friendship.
What’s your favorite con memory?
We celebrated Ty’s birthday at our show in Indianapolis last year. It was really special because I got to bring him out a cake. And it was a nice moment that the fans were there for. They were stoked.
What do you love about SPN cons?
My deal with Creation [the owners of many fan conventions] is that I work from 9am until midnight on Friday. On Saturday nights, I always get off at 5, and I take some staff and fans out to see the city we’re in. If we’re going to a bar, I’ll say, “Please don’t tell a thousand people!”
What do you hear most from fans? “
Every single person who meets me in the whole world says how tall I am. I hear it 50 times a day. I’m 6-feet, 2-and-a-half inches, but a lot of my characters are meek, which projects small. But aside from that, I’ve worked for so many years outside of Supernatural, I hear with pride, “I knew you before Supernatural.” The good things about the early teen comedies I did is that kids who watch the series get introduced to those movies by their parents. It’s like, “If you like him in Supernatural, let me show you The New Guy.”
Do you have a favorite episode?
“Party on, Garth” [Season 7, Episode 18]. To have your name on an episode is a pretty cool thing. But the episode was all fun The monster was amazing, kind of looked like the monsters from The Ring, and I got to do a stunt where they pulled me out of a sugar glass window, which was really great. That’s when I realized our hunter coats’ interior pockets are cut out and people hand you all that stuff because there’s no way you can pull the stuff that we pull out of those coats. [Laughs]
You’re one of the few people in Supernatural who didn’t die for real.
I did not die.
Is that something special?
It’s really special. It’s a badge of honor. I mean, if you died on Supernatural, there’s a high chance you were going to be revived, go back to life. But I didn’t have to even go through any of that. Garth, I think, was so beloved, it would’ve been a hard sell to kill him. And also I think his function in the later years of the series was to show a life beyond hunting. I was really not happy when they made me a werewolf because I thought they were trying to kill me. The lore of the show is that Dean is going to have to kill me or at least ostracize me. But they wrote a beautiful dinner party scene where he got to see that we werewolves were normal monsters or normal people living as monsters or …
How about a dentist!
Yeah. Garth’s first kill was the tooth fairy, and the dentist was a great callback to that.
Did you take home anything from the set?
So Supernatural is notoriously stingy about giving away props. I tried to take a silver bullet necklace, and they asked for it back, and I got it out of a bucket of like 20 of them ’cause everybody in the scene had to have one. They gave me Mr. Fizzles, though, the little puppet that I used to talk to and scare children with. My dog was special needs — he was born with too much water on his brain and he could only walk in a circle — so the voice that I used to talk to him was the voice that I gave to Mr. Fizzles. My dog passed, and two days before Christmas, [the show] sent a messenger to my house with the puppet and I cried in my entryway. But then they sold my hunter coat at a yard sale for $10 without asking me, and I’m still mad about it. If anybody out there has my hunter coat, I want it back! I’ll give you a thousand dollars for it right now. [Laughs]
DJ Qualls as Garth, Jensen Ackles as Dean — ‘Supernatural’ Season 9 Episode 12
Diyah Pera / ©The CW Network / courtesy Everett Collection
That was mean.
I know.
If there’s ever a reunion movie or some kind of limited series, what do you think Garth would be doing?
I think that Garth in his retirement is going to get restless and go back to hunting. In the last episodes, it was called a hero’s journey. Garth got to hunt one last time. And I can’t imagine as time goes on and his children grow up that he wouldn’t want to go back to doing what he has done since childhood. Bobby sort of taught him how to hunt and set him on that path. I think as an older man, maybe when he is Bobby’s age, there would be a callback to that. Also, who knows what’s going to happen in the monster world. Maybe things will get rough, and some vampires or some werewolves have to be taken out. Garth would be the guy to do it. He has super werewolf strength. Here’s a little inside note: The reason I became a werewolf is because I was supposed to do a lot more episodes, but I booked The Man in the High Castle, which was a great show.
You were great in it.
Thank you. So they had to explain where I was; I was in a werewolf commune.
Why do you think Supernatural became one of the biggest cult shows?
At one point Baywatch was one of the biggest shows in the world. And it’s because the optics. No matter what language you speak and what culture you’re from, hot people chasing bad people or monsters is universal. On the most superficial level, I think that’s a really good reason. I mean, also, the storytelling’s great, but it’s the whole thing of beautiful people doing good and evil, right? You’re always going to be on the side of the hot people.
Supernatural seemed to be like catnip to actors. So many of them have told me how much they loved working on the series. What made it special to you?
On my second episode, they gave me a chair back with my name on it. When you guest star on a show, you usually feel like you’re playing in somebody else’s yard the whole time you’re there. To give me a chair back with my name on it — that’s what they do for series regulars! It was a way of saying, “Hey, welcome back. You’re one of us.” And that carries a lot of weight. Not just the sense of belonging, but the execution of the work. Usually when you guest star, you have so much pressure to know every single line and every single word. If you falter, you feel like you’ve made a giant mistake. But when they basically said, “Hey, this is your backyard, too,” it frees you up and it makes the work better, too. And also on Fridays, a woman brought hot sandwiches. Every actor asked about the hot sandwiches on Friday.
What would you write in a letter to fans?
First, I would tell them how important it is how much love we get back from them. They tell us what the show means to them, but what they don’t realize is loving the [cons] and coming to see us when we appear allows the actors to be present in each other’s lives, more than just texting. That’s a really cool thing. Tell me another cast that gets to see each other over and over again on a regular basis. It’s a reunion for us that we get to have many times a year. When Jared had his accident, we all knew about it before anybody did.
Supernatural, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Netflix
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