Actor Nathan Fillion had just completed his run as Castle when he was cast in The Rookie. But he admitted he sometimes found it hard to leave his Castle character behind when doing the hit ABC series.
Nathan Fillion’s ‘Castle’ habits died hard
It might’ve taken a while for Fillion to truly shake off Richard Castle for The Rookie. In the ABC series, Fillion found himself in somewhat familiar territory. Like Castle, The Rookie saw Fillion’s character, John Nolan, solving crimes. So it might’ve been easy to channel Rick Castle from time to time, even after the show’s end.
But personality-wise, Castle and Nolan couldn’t have been any more different. Rick Castle was a mystery writer who tagged along with police officers, many times unwelcomed, for his own amusement at first. The character also didn’t always take the brutality and horrors of crime all that seriously, which allowed for a lot of humor.
“He kind of started off as this womanizing playboy, but I think that success just comes easy to him,” Fillion once said in an interview with Oprah. “He’s well-liked; he’s very playful — even women come easy to him. It’s because he’s joyful in life. He’s very childlike, maybe even has a bit of Peter Pan syndrome; he’s never really quite grown up — I think for a lack of a male adult role model in his life. He’s always surrounded by women, and he doesn’t really know how to behave like a grown-up.”
Fillion’s John Nolan was the opposite of this. John Nolan was simply a normal middle-aged man who wanted to make a difference in his life and others by becoming a police officer. This would also lead to him having a passion for solving crimes and helping people, which required him to take his job seriously. Given how different the characters were, it seems clear why the showrunners didn’t want Fillion acting like Rick Castle when playing Nolan.
“There are times when my exec producer, he’d say, ‘That was great, it’s a little too Castle, you might want to pull it back.’ I’ve learned a lot about habits in eight years, it’s hard not to be Castle sometimes,” Fillion one told Entertainment Tonight.
Nathan Fillion felt his ‘Castle’ character needed to grow up
Other than its premise, Fillion felt what made Castle different from other police procedurals was its lighthearted approach to crime.
“If people are like me and watch a crime drama, and they say, ‘Oh, that would have been a really good joke there if he only went for it,’” Fillion once told MytakeonTV. “There was a callback; all you have to do is say that would have been a good joke. On Castle, we go for it. The humor in life. On Castle, we try to find the life. We’re not all dark, driven, and haunted. It’s people doing their job, going out there. There’s comedy in life. On Castle, we find it.”
This had a lot to do with the character’s own affable nature. But this didn’t mean the show shied away from its darker side. With a series centered around crimes and heinous murders, Castle was bound to go into some uncomfortable places sooner or later. The Firefly star felt this wasn’t any different from real life, which had a mix of humor and tragedy.
“In a lot of ways, yes, it’s a TV show, and we have to suspend disbelief allowing for a murder mystery writer to actually tail police and put on a bulletproof vest and enter very dangerous and illegal situations, but in a lot of ways, it’s very realistic, in that I met a lot of homicide cops when we were in New York filming the pilot for Castle,” Fillion once told Hitflix (via Hypable). “These guys came around and we got to chat with them, hang out with them, spend the day. They’re not brooding, haunted people, tortured by their job and murder. They are very funny. They’re very funny, very relaxed, very light-hearted. It’s just that all of their stories start with, ‘So this guy gets killed…’”
But the show’s darkness allowed for much-needed growth that The Suicide Squad actor felt Rick Castle needed.
“Like anybody, I think people have to grow up a little. Some very serious things happened. Castle is very much a child at heart, but he is an adult. He’s a full-grown man, and he has to deal with adult things occasionally, and that’s real life,” Fillion said.
