Before Nathan Fillion became a rookie cop in The Rookie, he earned his money with the crime series Castle. Behind the scenes, things are said to have been less harmonious
Do you remember Castle? The crime series with The Rookie title star Nathan Fillion, in which he solved cases for eight seasons as crime writer Richard Castle? Since the sudden end of the series eight years ago, the once successful format on the ABC channel seems to have been somewhat forgotten. People almost remember the supposed drama behind the scenes that is said to have taken place with co-star and investigator Stana Katic aka Kate Beckett.
But what was really behind the Castle feud between Caskett, as the series regular is known to fans? And who was really to blame for the premature end of the series? We get to the bottom of the matter!
Also interesting: Nathan Fillion thought nasty things about his The Rookie brother
Was Castle charmer Nathan Fillion less charming on set?
In April 2016, industry publication Deadline exclusively reported that ABC was planning a ninth season of Castle with Fillion, but would not renew the contract of either Katic or cast member Tamala Jones aka Dr. Parish.
About the same time, US Weekly reported on Fillion’s long-standing misbehavior on the Castle set. “Nathan was mean to Stana for a long time,” an anonymous source is said to have revealed. It even went so far that the two co-stars had couples therapy to smooth things over.
The shocker came on May 12 of the same year: ABC canceled the series completely, which meant that the season finale, which aired just four days later, inevitably became the series finale. This was despite the fact that showrunners Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter already had plans for season 9 and had assumed that they still had work to do
What was the reason for the alleged tensions behind the scenes?
Rumor has it that Fillion and Katic dated for a while at the beginning of series production, which led to tensions after the break. However, this gossip was never clearly confirmed. While Katic’s management said at the time that there were no problems on set, the actress told Entertainment Weekly two years later that it was a “rough ending”.
According to TVLine, the two Castle co-leads were paid $12 million each for the eighth and final season, making them the 7th highest paid men and women in the series business. Did ABC simply want to halve the costs and did their exit ultimately have nothing to do with a dispute? We will probably never know for sure, because to this day they are discreetly keeping a low profile.
“You have to weigh a lot of different things,” ABC president Channing Dungey said in August 2016 on the TCA Press Tour (via US Weekly ) about canceling both Castle and Nashville. “And at the end of the day, I didn’t feel like our future was necessarily in those two shows – even though Castle and Nashville were good shows with good actors for us for a long time. “