Before you knew Aimee Garcia as forensic scientist Ella Lopez on Lucifer and neuropsychiatrist Dr. Julia Ochoa on Criminal Minds: Evolution, she guest starred on Supernatural — the show that starred Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as brothers who hunted monsters turns 20 this year! — in its third season in 2008.
“I had the best time with those guys. My parents came on set, and I do remember my mom flirting with Jensen shamelessly in front of my father, and she’s like — She’s Mexican, so English is her second language. She’s like, ‘Oh, Jensen, you are chewing gum before they start the scene. And then they call action. And then where does the gum go? I [don’t] see it while you shoot the scene.’ I’m like, ‘Mom, you cannot flirt with Jensen!’” Garcia recalled when TV Insider spoke with her about her Criminal Minds: Evolution character recently.
“It was so much fun to play a virgin that needs to be sacrificed to save the world. I wish she would’ve gotten to have some fun before she did. But I do remember those guys just being so welcoming to my family, and it was just a blast,” she added.
Garcia appeared in Season 3 Episode 12 “Jus in Bello.” In that episode, Sam (Padalecki) and Dean (Ackles) ended up in a police station when Agent Henriksen (guest star Charles Malik Whitfield) was alerted of their whereabouts and arrested them. Garcia’s Nancy was the secretary from whom Sam stole a rosary to use to exorcise a demon from Henriksen.
Nancy was also the one they needed (a virgin) to complete a spell to take out all the demons surrounding the station. Sam and Dean refused to sacrifice Nancy, but the young woman (and everyone else in the station) still ended up dead, at the hands of Lilith.
Now, Garcia’s Julia on Criminal Minds: Evolution also believes in religion, as she shared with JJ (A.J. Cook) in the Thursday, June 5, episode. The doctor is seemingly the only one on serial killer Voit’s (Zach Gilford) side as the BAU reckons with the revelation that he’s no longer a psychopath according to his brain scans following a prison attack and subsequent coma. Julia also told JJ about losing her father at a young age. Since we can’t help but think there could be more to the doctor than meets the eye, we had to ask her if she was being truthful in that conversation.
“I played it very honestly, because while I do think when you’re trying to be emotionally supportive to someone, you try to find common ground. If someone says, ‘Oh, I had a bad day at work,’ you’re like, ‘Oh, so did I, you’re not alone.’ I think our empathetic nature is to make the person we’re trying to help feel less alone and feel supported,” Garcia told us. “I do feel like she is a master of the brain. She’s a brain doctor. She knows how to trigger people. She knows how to calm people down. She knows what medicines to give people. So I think there is an aspect of her professionalism coming into play. But I personally, as an actor did play it as if she did lose her dad and she does carry a crucifix. She is a woman of faith. And I think that it was really beautiful seeing these two professional women bond over loss, which is such a universal concept that we all could relate to.”
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