jfc, I've finally reached the point where I'm looking forward to no Castle-related news coming out. What was NF supposed to say? Where did he go wrong? Is he supposed to have a canned answer on hand for a favourite scene? Throw in a "S9 would have sucked!" at every opportunity? Name each and every cast member when acknowledging them in a three-minute video? Either he hated everything to do with Castle, or he wanted to hold onto it at the expense of the story, y'all can't have it both ways.
It just comes down to one basic point: there are people in this fandom who are gonna hate Nathan no matter what he says. If he had immediately had something in mind for a favorite scene/memory, people would complain because it didn’t mesh with what they thought it should be. If he had taken the time to name every single member of the cast, someone would complain because he wasn’t sincere enough. If he had said that he wasn’t sure that season nine would have been a good idea, that same group would accuse him of being a liar and just trying to get on the fans good side.
And you know what? Screw em. If all you can do with your life is sit around and drum up ways to hate a guy for living his life and wanting to keep his job, you have a problem. I doubt that Nathan Fillion has done anything to personally hurt any of them, and it’s hilarious to me that people who claim to love Castle as a television show as much as they do can’t realize in the constant haterade that they put out there that, if not for Nathan, there would be no show. You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to like him, but I think you do have to respect that this guy wanted to sign up to become Richard Castle and, for eight years, he led the charge in making the show what it is and, one way or another, keeping it on the air.
You wanna know why he talks about Firefly and has very specific go to memories of the show? There are 13 episodes and a two hour movie. That’s about a year of his life, and a very limited pool of talking points. I’ve watched a pretty significant number of his panels over the years, and indeed he’s talked about the same dozen or so memories over and over. I can’t think of a time when people have asked him about Castle where he’s given the same answer twice. But, you know, he’s got eight years worth of stuff to draw from and, like it or not, the show’s structure is very basic: there is a murder, there is a b-plot, they solve the murder by the end of an episode. Lather, rinse, repeat.
People want him to snap his fingers and be able to tell you exactly what he loved about this particular episode, or that particular episode and that’s some bullshit. These actors haven’t watched these episode over and over and over like we have; they’ve seen them once, if at all. They don’t have time or the inclination to dwell on their work, usually because they’re already onto the next script and the next episode and there just isn’t enough room in a brain to keep track of eight years of work.
People like to claim that means he doesn’t care, which is also some bullshit. You know what Nathan Fillion cares about? The people on the set with him. For every story he tells, it comes with some behind the scenes anecdote. He remembers interactions with people more than he remembers what line he has to recite that day, and what that particular storyline was in that one episode in season three. And you know what? Good for him. It means that he doesn’t dwell on his work, that he puts more stock in interacting with the people that he saw for sixty hours a week for nine months a year, eight years in a row. Remembering the time he walked onto the loft set and saw a crew member playing a piano concerto when he thought no one was around is far more important and far more meaningful than being able to tell you what line he said in the opening scene of the season five premiere or what the most significant moment was for him between Castle and Beckett.
You know who else might have trouble coming up with a favorite memory from the set? The fandom saint, Stana Katic. Eight years and 171 episodes (we aren’t counting XX and Cool Boys since she wasn’t onscreen) is a lot of material, and indeed I can remember back when she did interviews that if someone asked her a favorite memory she gave rather generic answers, but no one raked her over the coals for those. Instead it was fangirl feels and flailing about how much she understands the character and appreciates the storyline and the fans, etc, etc, etc. Likewise, Seamus Dever and Jon Huertas have been very honest in interviews that they have trouble recalling specific storylines or scenes, and usually if they talk about something, it’s because they remember something that happened between scenes or that messed up a take and they had to start over.
But here’s the other thing, the show is over. I have no idea what people think they’re going to accomplish with continuing to yammer on about making Nathan the bad guy. Hate him or not, he’s gonna work again in the industry and there’s absolutely nothing that a fan is gonna say or do to change that so I legitimately don’t understand the point of it all, nor do I understand attacking people who don’t necessarily have a problem with him. It’s not going to change anything, and really it only serves to give the fans who follow and adore Stana a bad reputation, which is unfortunate because not all of them are crazy and take every opportunity to hate on Nathan.
Plus, another important point, is that you really can like the both of them at the same time. Contrary to the belief of others, you can be fans of them both. I’m not really sure when it became a thing in this fandom that you had to choose one or the other, but that’s complete nonsense and, honestly, it says far more about the fan that it ever could about the actor.
