Nathan Fillion Felt ‘The Rookie’ Gave Him a New Career Breakthrough
Actor Nathan Fillion’s career breakthroughs didn’t stop after being cast in Firefly. It seemed Fillion kept finding new opportunities in the entertainment industry to maintain his passion for acting.
Nathan Fillion was still finding new career breakthroughs in his 50s
The Rookie‘s premise and the concept of a person redoing their life later in middle age helped draw Fillion to the show. It’s a concept that might apply to Fillion’s career as well. Each show he’s been on has required a bit of a redo. Fillion has often had to acquaint himself with different characters, new crew members, and new audiences jumping from show to show. And although Fillion credited the sci-fi series Firefly for being his breakthrough show, the actor felt he’d had several other breakthroughs, too. Including and especially with The Rookie.
“It’s something I ask people in the industry all the time, because I’m interested,” Fillion once told Toronto Sun. “I always want to know when people thought, ‘I made it.’ For me, it seems like each project I do I’m saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, I finally made it.’ Here I am, I’m about to turn 52 and I’ve been in this business for 30 years. I’m still experiencing firsts. This is my first time on a prime-time, 8 o’clock show of my very own. This is my first time with a spinoff show. This is my first time where they are really building out an evening with the kinds of entertainment we’re trying to bring.”
Nathan Fillion considered John Nolan the most real character he’s played in a while
Fillion isn’t a stranger to grounded characters. But he felt The Rookie’s John Nolan was the most grounded character he’d played in a while. John Nolan lived a fairly normal life before dedicating it to fighting crime. H may have had his fair share of troubles, but they were the types of problems most people could relate to. It was far different from the sci-fi adventures that Malcolm Reynolds would experience in Firefly. Or the mysteries Fillion’s superstar writer Richard Castle would try to solve with the FBI. Fillion felt it was a nice change of pace.
“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,” he once told Assignment X.
Fillion also pointed out that John Nolan represented an evolution of his career that started from his first acting job.
“It is a natural progression of anyone’s career. You get older. That’s what it is. I’m just grateful at this point in my career I’m still somewhat relevant and still gainfully employed,” he said.
Nathan Fillion knew ‘The Rookie’ had everything he wanted without reading the script
Some actors need to see a script before committing to a project. But Fillion had a good feeling about The Rookie as soon as he heard about it. Not only was he intrigued by the premise, but he was even more reassured by its show-runner Alexi Hawley. Hawley was a writer and producer on Fillion’s previous show Castle, where his work fostered a lot of faith with the actor. So The Suicide Squad star already saw all the pieces that would make The Rookie great.
“I use the sandwich analogy,” Fillion said. “If I tell you I’m going to make you a sandwich, it’s going to have the freshest bread, the best deli meats, Dijon mustard – you haven’t tasted it yet, but you know it’s going to be a great sandwich. The Rookie kind of came to me like that. It was all the ingredients. We didn’t have the sandwich yet. It was really neat to be a part of it, and watching it evolve, and watching it develop, and because we did it early, we had everybody that we wanted. We had our pick of all the actors in L.A. There was nobody casting at that time. Everybody we wanted, we got. And that’s rare, that’s very rare.”
