Jared Padalecki Slams CW’s ‘Cheap Content’ Strategy After ‘Walker’ Cancellation

Jared Padalecki did not mince words in criticizing the CW’s “cheap content” strategy.

The 41-year-old actor, who has long been present in the channel’s prime time slot, starred in the detective series. Walker for four seasons until its cancellation in May. The CW aired the show Last episode on Wednesday June 26. The same day, Variety published an interview with Padalecki in which he reveals his true feelings towards his former employer.

“I feel like the CW I was a part of last year is not the CW I was a part of under (former chairman and CEO) Marc Pedowitz for this whole period of almost 20 years,” Padalecki told the outlet. “They’re just changing the network, where it won’t really be a television network as much as it will be, ‘Here’s something fun for an hour that you’ll never watch again, but I hope you watch. And it’s cheap!’ And I hate to say this, but I’m just being honest. I mean, shit. They can’t fire me anymore. I’m just being brutally honest. I think I felt like they were looking for really simple, cheap content that they could spend time with.”

Late last month, Padalecki revealed in an emotional social media post that Walker had been canceled.

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“Hello everyone,” he wrote on May 21. “It is with a heavy heart that I share this news with you. #Walker will not be airing on #CW for a fifth season. This is difficult news to accept of course, but we are SO grateful for the #WalkerFamily which was built, both on and off set.

Walker – a reboot of the 1990s drama Walker, Texas Ranger premiered on The CW in January 2021 with Padalecki in the lead role of Cordell Walker and also serving as the show’s executive producer. He followed Cordell’s return home after a two-year undercover mission investigating the death of his wife, Emily Walker, played by Padalecki’s real wife, Genevieve Padalecki. (Married since 2010, the couple shares three children: Thomas, 12, Shepherd, 10, and Odette, 7.)

“We are barely a month (removed) from the announcement that we were”“I haven’t taken it back, so it’s kind of funny how life imitates art, or how art imitates life,” Padalecki said. Variety. “What Cordell experienced in the finale and what I’m experiencing now are mirrors. I’ll be 42 next month. Do I wait until I’m 60 and have 800 episodes of television or something? I have to live my life now…I think, ironically, in trying to tell someone else’s story for so long, I realized that my story had some meaning too. the value.