Nathan Fillion Feels ‘The Rookie’ Is More Real Than Other Cop Shows
For actor Nathan Fillion, The Rookie is a show that keeps earning its title and its popularity after every season. And despite its initial promise, Fillion believed The Rookie might’ve been one of the most authentic cop shows on air.
Nathan Fillion felt ‘The Rookie’ leans into the harsh reality of policing
As unbelievable as its premise might sound on the surface, The Rookie is actually based on a true story. The Rookie is based on the life of William Norcross, who left his family’s business at the age of 44 to join the LAPD. Speaking with The New York Post, Norcross revealed the steps he took to change his life.
“[Law enforcement] was something I had always thought about in the back of my mind … then, all of the sudden, I wake up and I’m 40-something years old and I figured if I was ever going to make a change, that now was the time to do it,” he said. “I looked around; I always thought about LA — the LAPD has no age limit, as long as you can pass the requirements — and I saw they had expedited testing where you can cram a couple of months of testing into one week, and that’s how it started.”
Fillion’s character in The Rookie, John Nolan, has the same epiphany when he decides to embark on a Law enforcement career. Seeing as the show started off grounded in some truth, Fillion felt the series managed to maintain its authenticity throughout its first season. Fillion even considered it the most accurate cop show on television.
“I really enjoy the idea of the accuracy of our show” Fillion said in an interview with Local Syr. “We’ve been sold television shows before, cop shows before, but they’re always that heroic trope that we know of bending the rules to get the bad guy, but the reality is a little bit different, and we try to lean towards the reality of policing.”
The show’s creator, Alexi Hawley, echoed the sentiments of his rare leading man. Hawley felt his series presented a type of cop show that hadn’t been seen in a long time.
“Network television is full of investigative shows, but there hasn’t been a big, fun patrol show in a long time. The Rookie stands out because it tells diverse stories about our uniformed cops as they patrol the streets of Los Angeles — going from intense situations to comedic or emotional ones,” Hawley told TV Bizz.
Nathan Fillion was happy to play a character that was more down to Earth for a change in ‘The Rookie’
Fillion’s John Nolan couldn’t have been further away from some of the character he’s played in the past. Before The Rookie, he was coming off eight seasons of the television show Castle. The show may have taken place in a real-world setting, but its premise of a millionaire author investigating gruesome crimes was different from Rookie’s grounded approach. It might’ve been one of the many reasons he preferred his Rookie character over his Castle counterpart.
Similarly, other roles he was most famous for like Firefly were sci-fi adventures that weren’t rooted in the real world at all. At one point, Fillion even had a reputation for being a sci-fi actor, which he strongly disagreed with.
For the most part, The Rookie was about a regular guy, a role Fillion gravitated to after years of playing extraordinary characters.
“You know what’s nice is that John Nolan is more reality-based than what I’ve been playing for awhile. It’s nice to get back to a little bit of drama, yeah,” Fillion once said in an interview with Assignment X.
