{"id":2017199,"date":"2025-09-12T18:12:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T18:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2017199"},"modified":"2025-09-12T18:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T18:12:05","slug":"dj-qualls-reflects-on-playing-one-of-the-few-characters-who-didnt-die-on-supernatural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/dj-qualls-reflects-on-playing-one-of-the-few-characters-who-didnt-die-on-supernatural\/","title":{"rendered":"DJ Qualls Reflects on Playing One of the Few Characters Who Didn\u2019t Die on \u2018Supernatural\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DJ Qualls<\/a> (Z Nation<\/a>, The Man in the High Castle<\/a><\/em>) played recurring character Garth Fitzerald IV on Supernatural<\/a>.<\/em> Garth had been a ward of Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver<\/a>) who mentored him as a demon hunter. Garth eventually turned into a kindly, dentist, family man, and werewolf. In real life he\u2019s been an avid SPN<\/em> convention attendee, keeping in touch with his former castmates \u2014 and even finding his life partner at a con.<\/p>\n

Below, DJ Qualls reflects on\u00a0Supernatural<\/em>, his convention experience, and more.<\/p>\n

Do you remember your first SPN<\/em> convention?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DJ Qualls:<\/strong> Even though we were both on Supernatural<\/em>, I met my partner Ty Olsson<\/a> [who played vampire Benny Lafitte] in 2012 at the Birmingham, England, convention. I was walking past the place where all the actors\u2019 headshots were up, and I\u2019m like, \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d And it was Ty dressed up as Benny. He invited\u00a0 himself on my trip to Prague, and I was there with my buddy and he was like, \u201cWhere are you guys going after this?\u201d \u00a0I\u2019m like, \u201cPrague.\u201d And he said , \u201cCan I come?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had worked mostly with Jared [Padalecki]<\/a> and Jensen [Ackles]<\/a> and Alex Calvert<\/a> and Misha [Collins]<\/a>, so many of us who recurred know each other through conventions. Samantha Smith<\/a> had been saying, \u201cHey, what\u2019s up?\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your favorite con memory?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We celebrated Ty\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

What do you love about SPN<\/em> cons?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019re in. If we\u2019re going to a bar, I\u2019ll say, \u201cPlease don\u2019t tell a thousand people!\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you hear most from fans<\/strong>? \u201c<\/p>\n

Every single person who meets me in the whole world says how tall I am. I hear it 50 times a day. I\u2019m 6-feet, 2-and-a-half inches, but a lot of my characters are meek, which projects small. But aside from that, I\u2019ve worked for so many years outside of Supernatural,<\/em> I hear with pride, \u201cI knew you before Supernatural<\/em>.\u201d The\u00a0 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\u2019s like, \u201cIf you like him in Supernatural,<\/em> let me show you The New Guy<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you have a favorite episode?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cParty on, Garth\u201d [Season 7, Episode 18]. To have your name on an episode is a pretty cool thing. But the episode was all fun \u00a0The monster was amazing, kind of looked like the monsters from The Ring<\/a><\/em>, and I got to do a stunt where they pulled me out of a sugar glass window, which was really great. That\u2019s when I\u00a0 realized our hunter coats\u2019 interior pockets are cut out and people hand you all that stuff because there\u2019s no way you can pull the stuff that we pull out of those coats. [Laughs<\/em>]<\/p>\n

You\u2019re one of the few people in Supernatural<\/em> who didn\u2019t die for real.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did not die.<\/p>\n

Is that something special?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s really special. It\u2019s a badge of honor. I mean, if you died on Supernatural<\/em>, there\u2019s a high chance you were going to be revived, go back to life. But I didn\u2019t have to even go through any of that. Garth, I think, was so beloved, it would\u2019ve 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 \u2026<\/p>\n

How about a dentist!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. Garth\u2019s first kill was the tooth fairy, and the dentist was a great callback to that.<\/p>\n

Did you take home anything from the set?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So Supernatural<\/em> 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 \u00a0them \u2019cause 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 \u2014 he was born with too much water on his brain and he could only walk in a circle \u2014 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\u2019m still mad about it. If anybody out there has my hunter coat, I want it back! I\u2019ll give you a thousand dollars for it right now. [Laughs<\/em>]<\/p>\n

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