Interview: Matt Cohen on ‘Supernatural’ Conventions and ‘Public Domain’ Project

Matt Cohen has been a staple on this year’s The Road So Far… The Road Ahead Tour from Creation Entertainment, comprised of members from the cast of Supernatural. The tour, which visits several cities around the country, will close out its 2024 tour in Nashville, Tennessee this upcoming weekend.

The shows boast three full days of Q&A panels with cast members, plus the chance to purchase autographs, photo-ops, and meet and greets with the stars. There are also some other fun events like a free Friday night karaoke hosted by DJ Qualls, and a Saturday Night Special concert (included in most passes or available for a la carte tickets) headlined by house band Louden Swain.

Matt Cohen, who played young John Winchester on the hit series, is on-stage multiple times throughout the weekend, and for karaoke — as well as his balancing act event that will take place Saturday morning in Nashville. He’s also promoting his upcoming animated project, Public Domain, which is currently raising money on IndieGoGo. The project also boasts characters that will be voiced by Supernatural cast members. You can see the IndieGoGo campaign, here.

Editor’s note: this interview was edited for length and clarity.

Nerds & Beyond: You’ve been on the Creation Entertainment ‘Road So Far’ Tour this year with your fellow Supernatural co-stars. Can you talk more about the tour and why you love doing conventions and seeing fans?

Matt Cohen: That is so easy for me to talk about, because it’s my happiness, and it’s like other than my wife and kid, who I have to be with all the time, and luckily, they bring me a great deal of joy, your chosen family is the only place you want to be. And for me, that’s become all of the people that I don’t know by name, but I certainly know by smile and I feel comfortable there, and I feel that in that crowd, it’s the one place that I’m the most me. I think it’s a lot, and I think I’m a lot, and I think I can be overwhelming to some people, but to find a place where you’re accepted for your silly self and truly comfortable as a 42-year-old man, to be the very childlike personality that you are on the inside is a beautiful thing. It’s more than an escape. It’s a coming home. It’s the same feeling that I get when I hug my wife and son when I come home after a convention. So rather than who I used to be, who was the guy who hid in his room until he had to do something, now, I just want to be with everybody. I want to be with the people. I need that sense of community, and I need to know that I fit in somewhere in the world.

I think, honestly, Supernatural has given that to so many, and I never thought I’d be part of it or need it so badly. But, it’s absolutely prevalent in my life, and I experienced it through the pandemic when I wasn’t able to go to about two years’ worth of shows, and I was spending all this money on therapy and trying to figure out how to not be on medication to be happy. I realized I missed my friend circle, which is just this group of Supernatural people, and I miss my chosen family, which doesn’t have to be blood, and it can just be the people that are there with an ear and a bad joke and somebody willing to jab you in the ribs when life is hard. I want to be around those people. I don’t want to be around the people that are going to not want to talk about the difficult thing. The Supernatural fandom has given me that since probably the second or third convention I’ve ever done, when I realized that the Supernatural universe has created a nest for people to come to. What’s beautiful now is we’re getting a whole new generation of young folks, and it’s reignited my excitement and weirdness to bring back all the other things that have existed before. I love it.

Nerds and Beyond: What has been your reaction seeing how many new people are coming to the show that are now discovering conventions?

Matt: I feel lucky for them. I used to feel lucky for myself, that people would show up, and then Creation would continue to give us money to come to these things. And now, I feel lucky for them, because I see that these fans have found a place, and it’s like the idea of the bar at the end of Supernatural. Obviously, spoiler alert, if you haven’t finished the show. But there was a world where the end of Supernatural was going to be a little different. And without me speaking out of pocket here, there was going to be a bar where those past and those present all reunited and met up. And I think the comfort in that bar is the comfort that Supernatural has created with Creation and the fans and The Road So Far conventions. This is the safest place for you to come and you’re probably going to make a friend, and you might meet a lover, you might need a partner. You might meet the person that you die next to, just as a buddy or a girlfriend, or, you know, whatever it is. But there’s a really good chance you’re going to have some support that you didn’t have walking in the door. And at this day and age, if we can give anything to each other, is just the time of day and support in a moment for whatever it is they believe, whether it’s opposing beliefs, politically, religiously, relationship-wise… doesn’t matter.

Under the house of Sam and Dean… under the house of Big John, Sam and Dean [are] a safe haven. And we are. We want to be the kind of voices for the voiceless, and the people that kind of get pushed aside. We want everybody to have their place in the universe, and for the fans that are young, that are too young, getting into the show. I just tried to show my son at nine and a half, and it didn’t work out, it was too early. But, for the 10, 11, and 12-year-olds just breaking into it. I know monsters are scary, but look past that. Look at the love and the support of those two brothers, and let that carry on into the friends and family you make within the fan base. And when I look out into that audience and I tell my stupid dad jokes and I talk about stripping my clothes off to raise money to keep a career alive in Hollywood, I look out there with a smile, and I go, “Man, these people are part of something special, and whether they realize it yet or not, they will, and they will inevitably be grateful.” And there’s no other way around it. We’ve created something pure here. And of course, there are duds within every group of human beings on earth, but man, our dud count is really low in the Supernatural fandom. I mean, we got a good group, and we’re just lucky to have each other. We just are.

Nerds & Beyond: There are so many fun events that you participate in, like karaoke. What’s your favorite part about doing karaoke?

Matt: I love that it’s a free event. I love that it really sets the tone. I love that people can come that are outsiders just for a karaoke event. I love the idea that you could be driving home on a Friday night from your day job or whatever it is you do, and there’s a free karaoke event over here. Maybe that free karaoke event gets you to stay for the weekend and hear some stories. There’s that hope that I love about karaoke.

Then there’s what karaoke gave me, which is my mentor, my director, my guidance through every kind of circumstance in life. It gave me Richard Speight, Jr., and it allowed us to build a relationship that required us to give to each other, take from each other, and build upon each other, and without karaoke, Rich and I would not have what we have. Rich and I have a relationship where we don’t have to talk for a year, and when we pick up the phone, it’s like we talked yesterday. And whatever his wife and his children need, and my wife and my children need, we show up for each other, and [there’s] just an understanding. 15 years ago, when Rich and I were doing karaoke for 11 people, and they were sitting in their chairs… it’s beautiful to see what it turned into. It turned into all the things I was preaching about before, this beautiful, safe place for people who get up and do the most uncomfortable thing in the world, which is perform in front of a group of people, and do it and dance and be happy and sing horribly and not care. And that is the thing. Karaoke is meant to be a party that influences how you feel rolling into Saturday and Sunday, and I think we’ve done it. It’s become just a fun event. And the Friday people are so crucially important to what Creation does. So it’s our job to show up for them, give them the best karaoke, lose our fucking voices, get tired, do it for them, and then they do it for us. They showed up on Friday for us, we show up on Friday for them, and that is the exchange that we’re looking for. We always put on a persona at a convention, but our Supernatural convention personas are so very, very reflective of who we actually are and the audience giving us the space to turn it up for them, right? Let us be these silly, rambunctious creatures.

You’ve heard me say it 100 times when I say to a new person coming in, “Welcome to the circus. Look out for all the wild animals.” And often fans look at me like, “How could you talk about the fans like that?” And I have to quickly follow up and say the Supernatural animals, because we are the circus act. You know what I’m saying? Like we are on the trapeze. We’re the bear riding the bike, we’re the monkey catching the football. We are all those things, and we like being it for this group of people, because they allow it, and they allow our silly jokes, and they allow us to test content that’s offensive and
doesn’t always land as funny, but we don’t know until they react to it, and it’s just it’s the safest house in the universe.

We’re so lucky. You and I are so lucky. Those fans are lucky. Fucking Jared and Jensen are lucky, even though it started with them, they’re still lucky, and they know it, and that’s why this exists still, because those guys keep showing up, not just for the fans — for Mandy Cohen, for Macklin Cohen, for Rich’s children… those guys show up for us to be able to continue to have a way to earn a living and perform. When I say earn a living, it’s not just money for actors and entertainers. If you’re not performing, you’re miserable. You’re a miserable person, and your performance could be horrible. You got to try to perform. We’ve had a stage to perform on for 15 years when there’s a lull in work. And that in itself, is an extraordinary gift of artistic therapy that Creation provides. It’s almost crazy to talk to you about this because I can go on a three-hour tangent at what it all means to me. And you know it more than anybody else because I voice it to you so openly. I mean, it’s real. I can’t lie about it. I can’t make it up. If I was making it up, these several interviews that I’ve done recently wouldn’t mirror each other so much. These are my thoughts, this is exactly what I feel.

All I can think about is when we get to that stage in Nashville, and it’s our final show of the year, and maybe my final show with Creation — we don’t know what the next year looks like — but all I can think about is showing up Thursday night for Rich’s concert and all the boys giving it my all, being there with the fans, enjoying making core memories that these people are going to take home, and I’m going to be able to take home and brag about over Christmas, and then send them off into the holidays with a smile and a full heart, and hopefully to the best jump off they can have for the new year. That’s all I can think about. I can’t wait to get to Nashville. It’s the shot, the two-and-a-half ounce liquor shot of adrenaline that those fans provide me. That shot lasts more than one night. It’s going to last me to January 1, when I roll into the production of my very first movie that I’m producing, directing, writing, and starring in as the Supernatural fans, the fans in Nashville, will be present on my set in January. That’s how serious it is.

Nerds and Beyond: I wanted to ask about Public Domain, which you have an IndieGoGo campaign running for. Can you talk more about the project and how it started?

Matt: Yes, Public Domain basically started out of my love as my wife was pregnant, and we would sit on the couch and watch Family Guy and Archer and The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers and just all these extraordinary cartoons that had an adult edge and an adult comedy to them. I grew up in Florida, and spent a lot of time at Disney World, and that’s always around you. And it’s always perfect. Disney is always perfect. It’s kind of why we love it. We kind of love Disney because when we go to Disney or we watch a Disney movie, we’re transferred into a realm of, “It’s gonna work out. It’s gonna feel good. I’m gonna get sad for a moment, but then that beautiful song is gonna come on. It’s gonna lift me out of the moment.” And I thought about all the princesses that don’t get the job.

You know, 10 girls try out to be The Little Mermaid. What’s the story of the other nine? Where do they go? Do they go back to waiting tables and bartending and auditioning for commercials? Where do they go? And so I sat down with my buddy, Sean Flanagan, who’s a tremendous writer, and I said, “Hey, dude, I have this idea. I don’t know where it goes. I’ve been sitting on it for about 10 years.” We put it in a bar, and we said, “Look, everybody loved the show Cheers. It was so comfortable for so many reasons. How do we mix the two together?” And we go, “Holy shit, our bar is called Public Domain.” It’s such a great name for a bar. It’s such a Hollywood name for a bar. You could see a real bar named Public Domain existing on Hollywood Boulevard. Then you just put all of the characters that all of the audiences in the world have grown up on, have known, have been comfortable with, and we tell their real story, other than the story we know. What’s the story of the struggle of these people that mirrors American society? We go to a bar to celebrate our triumphs, to drown our sorrows, to deal with our defeats, to make a new love, to let go of an old love… there’s every reason you go to a bar. It’s a great landscape to feel comfortable to have these conversations and now have all those Disney characters, but they’re aged with it, right? They’ve been recreated, rebooted, and prequeled 1000 times. So here they are waiting for their next chance to exist in Hollywood, and during that time, they deal with all the regular things that people deal with like romance, relationships, jobs, how to stay afloat, and how to pay their bills on top of being somewhat intoxicated and dealing with their alterations in real-time.

I make this kind of metaphor all the time. When you first sat down to watch Game of Thrones, you knew you were going to love it, because everybody loves it, but it took three episodes for you even to understand the language, to learn the characters. Now, when you sit down on the pilot episode of Public Domain, you’ve known these characters for 30, 40, some, 50 years. You know them, and they’re telling you the side of the story you’ve never heard before. Trust me, you’re going to want to hear it. You’re going to want to celebrate it, and more than anything, you will relate to it. And that’s the fascinating part. How can we relate to these iconic animated characters? Well, their stories are just like our stories. And we’re going to just highlight all of that and make it a big joke. You know, it’s really going to be beautiful, because doing a voiceover really gives an actor the ability to stretch themselves in any direction. And the group of people that I’m working with, some of the names we’ve already announced, like Kim Rhodes, Briana Buckmaster, Ruth, Connell, Adam Fergus, Rob Benedict, Richard Speight, Jr.,… these guys have profound sounds. They’re going to play numerous characters, and that’s just the beginning. We’re talking hundreds of characters, and every year adding new characters from the public domain, everything from, you know, Winnie the Pooh to Sherlock Holmes. There’s endless, endless amounts of creativity. And these characters are dressed in different clothes, but they’re the same. They’re the same character plus 10 or 20 years, their faces have five o’clock shadows, and their eyes have some crow’s feet. But thy still are characters you love, wide-eyed and hopeful and being played by the most iconic CW cast of all times, Supernatural people. How can you go wrong?

Nerds and Beyond: I’m excited for it.

Matt: I could sit on it for the next year and go out and try to raise money from financiers, or we go to IndieGoGo and we say, “Hey, fans, we’re gonna make a 30-minute, two-part episode with everything that I promised you. I’m gonna release it for free on YouTube, and you guys will decide if it’s good or not, if it’s successful or not, and if I should take it to the execs or not.” And with success on YouTube, you take it to the execs and they’ll see it. The proof is in the pudding. If the view count is there, if the comments are there, if the people want to see this show, they’ll see this show. That’s how Hollywood works. Check out the IndieGoGo campaign, here.

You can see the full list of tour dates for 2025 on Creation Entertainment’s website, here.

Editor’s note disclaimer: the author of this article has a working contract with Creation Entertainment.