Despite Rumors, Jensen Ackles Didn't Actually Audition For Captain America
A lot of false rumors spread quickly because, while they may not have any supporting evidence, we can all kind of see the reasoning behind them. For instance, people believe the rumor that the killers in "Scream 2" were changed at the last second because that's the impression the movie itself gives. More recently, people believed that viral story of Jerry Seinfeld chastising Jimmy Fallon for being rude to his employee because, well, it sounded like the sort of thing both guys would do.
On the same note, it's easy to see how people believed that Jensen Ackles, the beloved actor who played Dean Winchester on "Supernatural" and Soldier Boy on "The Boys," once auditioned for the role of Captain America. The role, which would instead be taken up by Chris Evans, is exactly the sort of character we know Ackles could play: He's a strong, noble super-soldier, one without any flashy superpowers except his unflinching courage and his impressive physical strength. Like Evans, Ackles is a tall, muscular, clean-cut guy, the very image of what people have come to expect from Captain America.
And yet, the rumors are false. "Did I audition for Captain America? No, I did not," Ackles said in an interview last year. "I don't necessarily know, was that an auditioning kind of a thing? I feel like they just met with people on that." This makes a lot of sense considering that Ackles' schedule must've certainly been filled at the time. Evans was cast in 2010, when Ackles was in the middle of filming season 6 of "Supernatural," a show that he would stay on as a main lead for nine more years. "I was not available, anyway," Ackles confirmed. "So, I don't think they [Marvel] were going to work around my schedule."
Evans v. Ackles
"I would've loved to have been in the mix on that because Chris [Evans] and I used to go against each other for quite a bit on a lot of different things back in the day," Ackles continued. "But, unfortunately, I didn't get to fight him on that one." He didn't clarify which roles the two of them had both auditioned for, but the claim that they'd frequently auditioned against each other is easy to believe. It's not hard to imagine Ackles playing Evans' character in "Scott Pilgrim," just as there's probably a parallel universe out there where Evans got to play Dean Winchester in "Supernatural." The two actors have similar vibes, after all.
On the bright side, Ackles' light-hearted rivalry with Evans has been rekindled with Ackles' role as Soldier Boy, a character on "The Boys" who is basically just a parody of Captain America. Whereas the family-friendly Marvel superhero got frozen in World War II and was awoken in the modern world, Soldier Boy was knocked out in the '80s. Whereas the MCU has tip-toed around how the old-fashioned Steve Rodgers would react to a far more diverse modern world, "The Boys" mined a ton of humor out of the reactionary Soldier Boy's inability to get with the times. It may have been a far more depraved version of the character, but Jenson Ackles did sort of get to play Captain America after all.