The 46-year old actor got his start in the late 1990s, first joining the cast of the NBC soap Days of Our Lives in 1997. The role earned him three consecutive Daytime Emmy nominations. By 2003, he’d made it to primetime: Ackles appeared in the final season of the WB’s Dawson’s Creek in a guest role as the love interest to Michelle Williams’ Jen Lindley; in 2004, he joined the ensemble of another WB hit, Smallville. Then Ackles got his definitive shot at stardom in 2005, when he and Jared Padalecki were cast as the leads of what would become the massive fantasy hit Supernatural, as the monster-hunting Winchester brothers. Ackles played the mischievous-but-understanding, shirt-jacket-loving Dean Winchester for a full 15 seasons, right up until the show aired its series finale in 2020. He’s reprising the role as the narrator on The Winchesters, an upcoming prequel series that will follow the story of character’s parents. (Which he’s also producing with his wife Danneel Ackles under their Chaos Machine production company.)

Ackles was being hyperbolic, of course. He is aware of his current location: Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he’s shooting his latest role in the ABC mystery series Big Sky. It’s just that he’s spent the past few months promoting the third season of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys across the globe, and it’s become hard to keep up with his latitude and longitude. “They pushed it big time,” Ackles says of the press campaign behind the season, speculating that maybe the pandemic had limited the promotion of the show’s second season, which in turn left them with more scratch when the time came for his entrée into the series. “I think the publicity department probably had a little extra money in the coffers and just decided to blow it out a little bigger than normal,” he says.

In Season 3 of The Boys, Ackles plays Soldier Boy, an All-American, superpowered soldier who was deployed by the CIA during the Cold War. Picture Captain America, except by the time he’d thawed out from decades on ice, he’d gone bad. Soldier Boy is the kind of guy who calls women “broads” and men “sissies” and would happily light up a few Cuban cigars in a maternity ward. And when he wakes up in the present, he isn’t exactly eager to get with the times. This is, of course, a far departure from the warm, emotionally intelligent Dean Winchester. But as it happens, The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke also created Supernatural, and Ackles learned about the role during a personal call with his onetime collaborator. After sending in an audition tape and having a little back and forth with Kripke, Ackles got the part.

“There were some names that the network was considering [for Soldier Boy]. I was like, ‘Oh, well, there’s no way. I don’t have a shot at this. Those are movie stars.'”

“Usually you’re going through casting directors and network studio execs, and all that stuff,” he says, “but I had a direct line to the showrunner.” Still, there’s a hint of self-consciousness in how Ackles recounts the story. He tells me I wouldn’t believe the shortlist of actors—whom he refers to as “movie stars”—being considered to play Soldier Boy before he got in the mix. But he can’t reveal those names. “If we ever meet in private,” he jokes, “I’ll whisper in your ear.”

As fans continue to dissect the end of show’s latest season, Ackles spoke to Men’s Health about how The Boys explored the evolution of toxic masculinity through Soldier Boy, how it let him to grapple with his own relationship to masculinity, how he bulked up to play the character (whose first appearance on screen is in the buff), and whether he would appear in a Marvel or DC movie after his season on a scathing superhero satire.

I’ve read that you had to fight to get the role of Soldier Boy on The Boys. It sounds like it was originally meant for an older actor, more of a John Wayne type. What was it like fighting to get the role?

I was calling [The Boys creator Eric Kripke] in regards to something completely unrelated. It was a different project. I wanted his take on a few things. Just as we were wrapping up the conversation, I said, “So what’s going on over there at The Boys?” We were just about to finish up Supernatural, and I was like, “You know, I’m about to be unemployed.” Just kind of threw it out there jokingly. He immediately said, “Look, man, if you want to come over to The Boys, I’ll get you over here no problem. I’d love to have you.” And I was like, “Sign me up!”

Were you aware of anyone else auditioning for the role?

I do know that there were some names that I think the network was considering. There was a short list of names. And when [Kripke] read off a few of those names to me, I was like, “Oh, well, there’s no way. I don’t have a shot at this. Those are movie stars.”