iF Magazine talks to Nathan Fillion
Posted on October 11, 2009 | No Comments
To read the full article go to www.ifmagazine.com
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.”
To read the full article go to www.ifmagazine.com
Posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 6:30 am in category Interviews. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.