Supernatural: Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster to launch The Wayward Podcast

Long before Supernatural aired the backdoor pilot for Wayward Sisters, the potential spin-off that followed Claire Novak’s (Kathryn Newton) return home to join Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) and an all-female monster-fighting force, fans had created the Wayward movement. In fact, the concept of a separate show following the women of Supernatural first came about in 2015, when fans shared an idea on social media called Wayward Daughters Academy. According to the fans, the new show would follow Jody Mills and Donna Hanscum (Briana Buckmaster) as they took in orphaned girls in the same way Mills had taken in Alex (Katherine Ramdeen) and Claire on Supernatural. In other words, the 2018 backdoor pilot for Wayward Sisters was not the beginning of Wayward, but rather, it was one chapter of something that had begun years earlier. And when the CW decided not to move forward with the spin-off in May, fans and stars of the shows rallied to save it. When that didn’t work, Buckmaster had another idea.

“It was the middle of July, so it was about two weeks after we were officially out of our Warner Bros. contract and I just didn’t feel sad anymore,” Buckmaster tells EW. “I just felt like I wanted to move, and the only thing that had changed was that we didn’t have the opportunity for our own show anymore. We still had one of the biggest fan bases in the world, and they were still amped and ready.” Rhodes adds, “It felt like what the fans wanted was to be aimed, and we thought that the spin-off was going to be a place to aim this energy and passion and love, and then when we didn’t get the show, we didn’t want to abandon them.” So Buckmaster had another idea…

EW can exclusively report that Buckmaster and Rhodes are joining forces to launch The Wayward Podcast. “This podcast is not about Supernatural, it’s not about the fandom, it’s about our perspective on life as two friends and two women moving through this world,” Rhodes says. “We’re inviting the fans to stop being fans and start being fellows. I really love the fact that this has been inspired by not having a TV show, and we actually don’t see it as our consolation prize; we see it as more than a TV show because humanity and connection is so much bigger than a television show, and now we have an opportunity to do that. We have the opportunity to increase what we are, not out of ego, but out of passion for connection and authenticity.”

In terms of what fans can expect from the podcast, Rhodes and Buckmaster warn that they’ve decided to handle everything themselves, which means there will be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to production. “We googled where to plug things in,” Rhodes says with a laugh. But when it comes to content, they’ve already begun recording and tackling important topics. “We looked at things that we enjoy learning from each other, so like: What does it mean to be pretty? What does it mean to be angry? What does it mean to be a mom,” Rhodes says. “It’s things that we get recurring questions about in our [fan] Q&As, but we can spend a little bit more time expanding on them.”

The Wayward Podcast will have a weekly release schedule, and thus far, most episodes of the podcast that they’ve recorded have been shorter than 20 minutes. “Our hope was for people to be able to listen to these episodes while they’re getting ready for school or on the drive to work,” Buckmaster says. “It’s something that can make them feel like they’re not alone, make them feel driven, inspired, ready to take on whatever challenges they feel like they’re going to face throughout the day. We want to be a part of people’s life, really.”

And yes, a familiar face — or voice, rather — could pop up for Supernatural fans. (After all, both Buckmaster and Rhodes will still appear on Supernatural, even though Wayward Sisters didn’t move forward.) Buckmaster says, “What we can do is we can bring our friends who may or may not be on Supernatural or Supernatural-adjacent and ask them similar things: What is it like being a dad? How do you fear? What is your biggest fear about being a dad?” (Louden Swain guitarist Billy Moran already wrote the title song for the podcast.)

Altogether, the podcast boils down to keeping the Wayward movement alive, which is why Rhodes and Buckmaster simply couldn’t name their podcast anything else. “It’s just become who we are,” Buckmaster says, with Rhodes adding, “Turning it into the Kim and Briana show is exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do. What we’re trying to do is give life to this idea that we didn’t originate. This isn’t ours. We feed it and we love it and we cherish it, but this is owned by something a lot bigger than we are. So we didn’t feel right trying to change it or alter it.”

Speaking to the movement itself, Buckmaster says, “We want to keep it going because it’s something that’s so much bigger than a spin-off. We loved the idea of having our own show because we are actors and we love to entertain and we love our characters and all the things that Supernatural has given us, but the Wayward movement has become something so gigantic that we just felt a responsibility to water it.”

A teaser is already up for The Wayward Podcast, which will launch Monday, Oct. 29.

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Supernatural stars Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster to launch The Wayward Podcast

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