Nathan Fillion

The Television Critics Association has arranged for a set tour of ABC’s CASTLE at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, and quite a set it is. Besides the realistic-looking police office sets, there are also the lavishly and uniquely decorated sets for bestselling mystery author Richard Castle’s bedroom and home office. Nathan Fillion, who plays the fictional Castle, seems very at home on the office set, holding forth from behind the desk as he expresses his delight that the series has been picked up for a second season.

“I can’t remember when I had a second season of anything,” Fillion notes. “I was on the fourth season of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, but it doesn’t really count, because it was still my first season.”

Er, wasn’t Fillion on several seasons of ONE LIFE TO LIVE? Fillion doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes. I guess now I remember,” he deadpans.

There was a gap between the end of CASTLE’s first season and the announcement that it was picked up for a second season.During his time off, Fillion says, “I did a lot of traveling. The first place I went was to New York to promote the series. I traveled to Hawaii, I went on a trip with my brother to Europe and the U.K. We had a really good time. Mostly pleasure – I did a little bit of work when I was in London. I’m involved in this project called The Complete Hero Project by an artist named Martin Firrell, who is saying we have to redefine what ‘hero’ is for the twenty-first century, that our culture has changed enough that we have to redefine the word. And he’s been kind enough to ask to project my face onto the side of the building with some really poetic words. It’s an art installation.”

Then word came that CASTLE had been renewed. “I can’t remember what the date was. I was in Vancouver and I was having dinner with Joss Whedon, as a matter of fact, and we both found out on the same day [that both Fillion’s CASTLE and Whedon’s DOLLHOUSE had been picked up]. We were both pleasantly surprised.”

Given that Fillion and Whedon last collaborated on Whedon’s Emmy-winning Internet musical hit DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-A-LONG BLOG, it’s natural to inquire whether Fillion will be once again playing Dr. Horrible’s nemesis Captain Hammer. “Not right now, I’m pretty busy with CASTLE,” Fillion points out sensibly, “but I know that there are plans in the works for a second DR. HORRIBLE.”

Now that CASTLE has a second season, what is Fillion looking forward to doing this year? It sounds like he’s open to whatever the writers provide. “You know what? We had a really good time and the show was really well-received and it’s nice to go to work – I’ve got a dream job, I enjoy my work, I enjoy the people I’m working with, I like my cast, I love my crew. These people are great. So I think we’ve got ninety-five percent of everyone we had last season is back this season, so it’s like old home week. We’re just picking up where we left off. It’s really nice. I hear tell that we’re going to bring my ex-wife-slash-publisher back, if you remember her from the pilot, played by Monet Mazur. We’re very excited to have her back as well.”

When CASTLE’s first season ended, Fillion’s character was on the outs with Beckett, played by Stana Katic, the police detective he’s using as the model for his new heroine and as the subject of his romantic interest. How do they get back on speaking terms? “What happens is,” Fillion explains without being too spoilery, “circumstances first force Beckett and Castle’s at least proximity to each other. So she’s put under a little bit of pressure to at least hang out close to him and Castle sees this as his opportunity to get in there and try to work his magic, as he would call it – ‘annoying,’ other people would call it.”

What’s it like to play Castle, who is so focused getting Beckett to like him? Castle – I don’t think his primary goals are other people,” Fillion replies. “I think his primary goals are selfish. He likes Beckett, he wants Beckett close to him. He admires her, he thinks she’s great and there’s no character that really has that control over Castle. I think Beckett is as close as he has to an authority figure, which he hasn’t really had in his life. You look at his mother, the absence of a father, his daughter is the closest thing he has to a parent. So he has no authority figure in his life and certainly, I think we look to fill these gaps and I think one of his character flaws is that Castle’s incredibly selfish. He’s incredibly selfish. And that’s what he wants. He wants to be happy for himself, and in a selfish way, he wants to be around Beckett. At the beginning, he does not [understand why she’s angry with him], and again, that is his flaw, that he doesn’t understand. He’s just a little too self-involved, a little too selfish, and he doesn’t get it.”

All of this makes Castle fun to play, Fillion adds. “I learned on TWO GUYS, A GIRL AND A PIZZA PLACE to embrace your character’s flaws. Flaws are what make people great and likable.”

The set for Castle’s office is so beautifully decorated that Fillion says, “What the heck, I could live in this place.” He reveals its one drawback. “I’ll tell you this much – this carpet that you’re standing on, it sheds like you can’t believe. It leaves a nice fine white haze on everything and makes it slippery. So this is the only thing I wouldn’t have for sure.” Stuff he wouldn’t mind bringing home: “Right behind you here is a touch-screen TV. This photograph I find mesmerizing. This desk is absolutely beautiful. I spend a lot of time here. You’ll probably see a lot of my scripts here.”

Fillion may add a few touches of his own. “I think I’m going to try to grab some stuff from previous seasons I’ve done of other television shows, take little bits that I’ve saved and put them on the shelves.” This won’t include the red button from FIREFLY. “I don’t have that – that’s Joss’s now – but I have some other bits. I would love to take more credit for the incredible [production design] work that’s done. We’ve got a wonderful man by the name of Alfred [Sole] who designs these things so incredibly well. There’s a lot of [taxidermied] bugs [in glass cases] – there’s bugs on the wall, there’s bugs on the desk here – and I just think that Castle bugs people a little bit. He’s just into that, the quirky, the odd, the interesting, because he is quirky and odd and interesting.”

The CASTLE writing staff and cast seem to have the same notions about where the characters and series should be headed, Fillion notes. “Yes, absolutely. We all know the flaws and we’ve all seen television series jump the shark – we’re not going to aim to fail.”

Molly Quinn is the young actress who plays Castle’s daughter. Fillion believes she’s got enough experience of her own not to need his advice on show business. “I’ve shared embarrassing stories with her, I’ve got tons of those, but she’s not a stranger to the industry by any means. If anything, until this season, she was a stranger to this schedule. It’s a heavy, heavy schedule. That’s the one major I think Kryptonite of one-hour dramas. It’s a long haul. I’m certainly busy, but it’s not constant. You have to be here the whole time, but it’s not like you’re completely taxed entirely all the time. It’s long days. It’s not rare that we do fourteen-hour days.”

Asked whether it’s harder to do thirteen episodes of fourteen-hour days or a schedule like the feature film SLITHER, which had a hurry-up-and-wait aspect due to the movie’s many practical effects (like on-set giant tentacles), Fillion replies, “After the film SLITHER, I’ll never read a script in the same way again, so I know if it says ‘Exterior Night Woods’ for half the script, it’s a month and a half, outside at night in the woods. So that’s going to be cold and wet and you’re going to be nocturnalized for a month and a half. Which is a difficult thing to do – to sleep all day to wake up at night and just not see the sun? That’s not easy.”

However, he adds, there’s no comparing the feature schedule with the TV series pace. “Apples and oranges. I mean, [on a feature], it’s a little more of a condensed atmosphere and a little more of a condensed experience, and then you’ve got three months and you’re done, whereas CASTLE’s a little bit longer, but we do things and it becomes very much a family here. Everybody here – we know each other, we know our families, we know what everybody’s up to here. It’s a good feeling when you come to work and you know everyone.”

In his moments of downtime, Fillion is known to make brief comments on Twitter. “Felicia Day put me on to Twitter when we did a promo thing for DR. HORRIBLE,” he relates. “We were sitting at dinner and she had me program it into my phone and start doing Twitter right there and then and it nearly crashed my server back home for all the immediate email notifications you get, so don’t start it on your phone, start it at home where you can say, ‘Make sure I don’t get notifications.’

As to the appeal of Twitter, Fillion says, “I like the brevity. It’s neat if someone has something to promote, they can say, ‘Here’s a website, go check it out, vote for this fan-made film,’ whatnot, that’s always a lot of fun to do. I only follow the people I actually know, to keep up with them and see what’s going on.”

One other thing that’s been going on with Fillion is his contribution to the newest version of the HALO videogame, HALO 3 ODST. “Not only can you play it with my voice, buy you can also play with my face on your character.” He did not do motion capture for the venture, but adds, “During the pilot for CASTLE, they came, sent a photographer down and took some snaps of my face and they just tricked it out.”

However, the pilot Fillion wrote for ABC is not happening. “Once you write it and they don’t do anything with it, it’s pretty much gone.”

Prior to CASTLE, Fillion spent a season on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES as the husband of Dana Delany’s character. Delany stayed with the series; Fillion didn’t. He’s philosophical. “As far as DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES goes, you know, drama dictates. You’re a slave to where the stories go and how things unfold and work out. There are a lot of cast members on there, I had a great time, it wasn’t my usual workload, but I got to work with fantastic actors telling great stories and working for wonderful people who’ve enjoyed a lot of well-deserved success.”

Being cast on CASTLE was not related to either the pilot script or the DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES gig, Fillion adds. “[ABC] did not say, ‘Hey, by the way,’ no. Things worked out the way they worked out.”

Although he loves the work, having CASTLE renewed doesn’t necessarily provide Fillion with a sense of rock-solid job security. “No guarantees in Hollywood. I learned that. I try not to fall in love with anything I do, and when something gets canceled, you think it ends and say, ‘Next.’ Because there’s more work. There’s more jobs to come. “

He acknowledges having fallen in love with FIREFLY. When it was canceled, “I locked myself in a room, ate chocolate ice cream and gained twenty pounds.” Then came the feature film SERENITY and the opportunity to revisit his FIREFLY character Malcolm Reynolds. “But I try not to fall in love with anything, because it’s the nature of the industry. Art is mating with finance and there are so many factors that are out of your control, I try not to worry about those factors.”

Fillion knows he’s not alone in his FIREFLY/SERENITY love, which he feels is all to the good. “I think any time you have a fan of one of your projects who follows you to your next projects – and I know I have those types of fans – absolutely. It’s just more fans.”

What are CASTLE fans like? Not that different from FIREFLY fans, it seems. Fillion can’t generalize, but he cites a specific example. “I’m always surprised by the strata of people who watch the show. The last time was this guy – he had sawdust all over him at Home Depot, we were in the big elevator at Home Depot and he turned and gave me the second glance. ‘Ah, my wife and I, we love your show!’ And every time he moved, sawdust was falling off him all over the place. It could be a guy in a suit, real clean-looking saying, ‘Your show is great, that new CASTLE show, I’m really into it.’ It’s a good feeling that they’re enjoying it.”

Any skills Fillion has learned on the job? “Quick draw I learned from SERENITY and I’m working on my three-finger typing here [on CASTLE].”

Being a scriptwriter himself, has Fillion pitched any ideas to the CASTLE show runners? “Yes, I have pitched a couple stories. We’ll see if they come to fruition. They’re a little too funny right now – I think I have to tone them down a little bit.”

As to upcoming plans for CASTLE’s hiatus, Fillion says, “I like to get to the hiatus before I start planning things, so right now, fourteen-hour days, five days a week, CASTLE, that’s it. I don’t have time for anything else. Someday I’ll plan ahead and say, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do with my time off,’ but my first thing is, I’m going to get out of here and I’m going to go relax.”