Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic Disagreed on Becoming a Couple in ‘Castle’
Actors Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic were once reportedly at odds with each other on the set of Castle. Neither have corroborated the reports. But if there’s one thing the two actors didn’t see eye-to-eye on, it was the relationship between the characters.
Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic had opposite views of their ‘Castle’ characters getting together
Back in the earlier years of Castle, the series was known to play up the romantic tension between Fillion’s and Katic’s characters. The two led completely different lives before crossing paths. Fillion’s Richard Castle was a crime novelist, whereas Katic’s Kate Beckett was a real-life officer. When Castle started investigating crimes alongside Kate, he sometimes proved to be a valuable asset to the police. This led to Castle gradually earning both the character’s respect and attention over time.
The show wasn’t shy about teasing a potential romance between the two. But both Fillion and Katic had opposing views on the two actually getting together. The Rookie star believed that making Castle and Beckett a couple would only hurt the show.
“When you get people together, [viewers] stop with the yearning, they stop with the wanting,” Fillion once told Entertainment Weekly. “They go, ‘Ah, finally. They’re together. All right, what else is on?’ I know as an audience member, I enjoy knowing more than the characters I watch on TV know. [With our show it’s] looking at these two, saying, ‘Just turn around! She’s making the face right now! She’s making the face! You’ll see it! Ah, you missed it.’ The lack of resolution is what keeps people coming back. I think the challenge is how do you serve that so it’s not repetitive.”
Meanwhile, Katic believed it was possible to initiate a romance between the two while keeping fans engaged.
“I might be naively romantic, but I believe that a relationship can be just as spicy when people get together as it was in the chase,” Katic said. “The complications that happen when characters like Beckett and Castle get together can make for interesting viewing. They have ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, he has a certain kind of lifestyle and she has a certain kind of lifestyle — and then on top of all that, they actually really care for each other. It would be neat to see how these two people attract each other and drive each other crazy. I’d love to see what happens when Beckett actually touches on a couple of his pet peeves. It would be fun to see her torture him a little bit, you know, in a fun way.”
How Nathan Fillion felt about what happened with Richard Castle and Kate Beckett
The show’s creator Andrew Marlowe seemed caught between Fillion’s and Katic’s opinions at the time. Although he agreed they couldn’t get together too soon, waiting too long to pair Fillion with Katic came with a few issues as well.
“Fans wanting them together, network keeping them apart? Sure, there’s a dance to be done there. Look, I know from other shows that if you get the characters together too early, you can lose the audience’s interest,” Marlowe said. “But I also know there is a certain point which, if you go beyond it, you’re just jerking fans around, and the characters on-screen become more like bickering brother and sister. They act like that, and the romantic spark goes away. I think there are real-life obstacles that get in the way of a relationship, which we’ll get into. And I do feel there’s storytelling to be had, once the two of them get together, because there’s stuff to figure out there — but I don’t think we’re at that point yet. I feel like my job is to keep the audience invested in the relationship without them feeling they’re getting jerked around.”
Fillion and Katic would eventually play a couple in season 4 of Castle. Much of that season was spent developing and exploring the romantic feelings between the two. This led to Fillion’s Castle eventually proposing to Kate, which she accepted.
In an interview with TV Line, The Suicide Squad actor asserted that he had no personal feelings towards Castle’s relationship with Kate. Rather, his mind was focused on how this new plot development benefited the show as a whole.
“I mean, I come to work every day and I don’t really think, ‘What’s in it for me?’ This is a real team effort, and when you’re here every day, when there’s 60 guys here and we’re all doing the same thing, and we’re all plugging away — and a lot of people here are working a lot harder than I am — I tend to think of it in terms of the well-being of the show,” Fillion said.
Nathan Fillion asked the showrunners if they were high after what happened to Richard Castle and Kate Beckett
The pair’s onscreen relationship was short-lived. Katic’s Kate Beckett would end up calling off the marriage to tend to a personal situation. The Firefly alum quipped that he didn’t have a great reaction to what happened.
“First of all, I asked them if they were high,” Fillion said in a separate interview with TV Line. “Second, they reassured me that what was going was they wanted to get back to a time when people were rooting for the couple, rooting for them to get together, to do something.”
