Supernatural star Jensen Ackles is back on the small screen with the launch of Countdown, his new action series on Prime Video. The first three episodes dropped on June 25, and from the start, fans were treated to a surprise when TV legend Milo Ventimiglia was featured for a surprise role in the premiere.
Per Entertainment Weekly, Ackles joined series creator Derek Haas to discuss the unexpected cameo from Ventimiglia, who’s known for his roles in TV shows like Gilmore Girls, Heroes, and This Is Us. To keep Ventimiglia’s appearance a surprise, the actor was intentionally kept out of all of the press releases, teasers, and other marketing materials. Ackles also noted how he personally suggested Ventimiglia for the role, while Haas shared how the cameo made his mother, a big This Is Us fan, rather upset.
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“We purposefully left him out of all the ads and the promo. And then he was great,” Haas explained. “I felt like he was doing us a favor. I didn’t know him, but I was delighted when he said he wanted to meet about it and I thought, ‘There’s no way he’s going to do this.’ And then he was like, ‘I think this would be really cool.’ I don’t think he’s ever done something like that before.”
Jensen Ackles Pushed for Milo’s Cameo
Ackles also said of the casting, “Derek came to me and threw out a couple of names and Milo was one of them, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, get Milo.’ […] I spoke to him after I saw it. I was like, ‘Sequence looks amazing, you crushed it, you’ve got to be sore, that was a lot of running. We’re not as young as we used to be.'”
“My mom’s mad at me: ‘How could you kill Jack from This Is Us?'” Haas added.
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Ackles is also a TV legend, celebrated for his long-running role on the hit series Supernatural. He has played a more dastardly character on The Boys, a role he will reprise for an upcoming prequel series. Ackles previously spoke with CBR about how he approaches the different characters he plays, leading to his own casting in Countdown.
You’ve got to come up with other characteristics. But all the characters that I’ve played in these kinds of genre roles? They’re all humanistic. They all have human qualities. They all hurt. They all have emotional reactions to things that are humanistic. So, I always try to approach it [that way] as much as I can. So it wasn’t that great of a departure as maybe one might think to go and play in the real world, which is what Countdown is, because I’ve been doing that.
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Countdown is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes premiering on Wednesdays.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
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Release Date June 25, 2025
Network Prime Video
Showrunner Derek Haas
Cast
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Jensen Ackles
Mark Meachum
Jessica Camacho
Amber Oliveras
Creator(s) Derek Haas
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