"Pro-soap" Nathan Fillion discusses his time as OLTL's Joey and being king of the Castle

Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009

In an exclusive interview with soapcentral.com, Nathan Fillion talks about his time as Joey Buchanan on One Life to Live. In part one of our interview, Fillion proudly claims his daytime roots and shares memories of his former co-stars, the late Clint Richie and Phil Carey. In the second part, he discusses his primetime projects: Desperate Housewives, Castle and more.

A career as a professional actor wasn't something that was supposed to be on the cards for Nathan Fillion. The Edmonton native wanted to be a high school teacher and was studying at the University of Alberta when he received a call that turned out to be his first big break. It was a call telling him that ABC wanted him to audition for one of its soaps, One Life to Live.

"It's hard for me to believe that I got that job," Fillion recalls. "I was going to school to be a teacher. I came from a family of teachers. It's a very noble profession. A reel that I had done somehow went from Edmonton to Vancouver to L.A. to New York and I got a call to ask if I wanted to audition for One Life to Live. Three weeks later I was on that show."

It wasn't as though Fillion had no previous acting experience. In fact, he'd done a lot of theater acting. But transitioning from the stage to television isn't as easy as you'd think. The biggest difference, he soon learned, was that acting on television lacked the immediacy of reaction he'd gotten used to as a theater performer.

"I always thought that was a thrill," Fillion says of performing on stage. "The audience is right there. You hear them gasp, or the laugh, or clap. Acting for television... it's a bit of a machine. The difference is that it became about the acting challenges that were present. Taking away the audience allowed for just the cameras, the lighting, and the actors -- it's really a team effort."

Though it's been 15 years since he first stepped foot in Llanview, Fillion still vividly reclls his first day on the set.

AVC: When did you get to the point in your career where you realized you wanted to seek out parts like that?

"They told me, you come in at this point, then you walk over to this point, then you're just going to hold here while there's a voiceover: 'The part of Joey Buchanan is now being played by Nathan Fillion.'" Fillion says with a laugh. "I was nervous -- I'm not going to lie. Everyone was looking at me like who is this new guy? While I was there, there were four Kevin Buchananas -- and one lasted just two weeks."

In 2009, it seems every television show has a storyline featuring what is now playfully called "a cougar," or an older woman who is romantically involved with a younger man. When Fillion's Joey Buchanan was involved with Emmy winner Robin Strasser's Dorian Lord in 1994, it created quite a bit of controversy among the viewers. Maybe it was because Dorian initially sought to use Joey as a pawn in her never-ending rivalry with Joey's mother, Victoria Buchanan -- but the two did eventually fall in love.

"Yes, it was somewhat controversial," Fillion cedes, "but at the same time, it was really well handled. Working with Robin Strasser was one of the smoothest times I had on the show. Here I was, the brand new guy, but working beside Robin made it very hard for me to fail. Not every I've spoken to has had as positive an experience working on the soaps."

Unlike some stars who've gone on to fame outside of daytime, Fillion makes no attempts to hide the fact that he appeared on a soap opera. In fact, he considers himself "pro-soap -- especially pro-One Life to Live.

"If yo want to see hard work done by professinals who know what they're doing, watch the soaps," Fillion says with conviction. "Anyone who says different has never watched a soap opera. I learned a lot of things both professional and personally from that show."

In having been on a soap opera for several years, Fillion is also able to see the challenges that soaps face. One of the biggest, he says, is the fact that soap operas have to put out a new episoden five days a week.

"You can't put out a solid gold show every day of the week," the actor admits.

Fillion has fond memories of his former co-stars, two of whom recently passed away -- Clint Ritchie, who played Joey's adoptive father, Clint, and Phil Carey, who played his adoptive grandfather, Asa.

"Having known these guys for a long time," Fillion starts, his voice trailing off. "If you just knew them personally, they were strong as steel. When I met Clint Ritche he was recovering from an accident where he had somehow run himself over with a tractor and walked [to the next farm over] with a broken back to get [help from] his neighbor."

he first encounter with Carey was a little more intimidating.

"I ws getting a doughnut and he was getting a cup of coffee. I said hello to him, and in his gruff voice he said, 'Yeah, how are you?' I replied, 'I'm living in New York, I'm on a soap -- things couldn't be better.' Then Phil said, 'That's what the last Joey said.'"

Fillion says that Carey must have realized that his comments sounded a little harsh, but after his initial meeting Fillion and Carey became close.

"Phil always had a chair on the set and no one was allowed to sit in it. One day I was stretching on the set and Phil told me to sit in his chair. I told him that no one was supposed to sit in his chair and he said, 'I'm Phil Carey! You can sit in my chair!' So I sat down and he said, 'What the hell are you doing sitting in my chair?'"

During a stint last season as Dr. Adam Mayfair on ABC's Desparate Housewives, Fillion had a second chance to work with one of his former co-stars again. It had been over ten years since Fillion and Tuc Watkins (David Vickers) had shared a scene together on One Life to Live, but the two men found themselves together again on Wisteria Lane. They didn't get to interact on camera, but considering some of the comical mischief that transpired during their days in Llanview, that may not have been a bad thing.

"Tuc Watkins and I would challenge each other," Fillion fondly recalled of his scenes with his then-One Life to Live co-star. "I would say something like, 'Today I challenge you to openly drool on camera.'"

"I remember a dreanm sequence that we filmed and [Kevin} stabbed [David] with a sword. Tuc looked into the camera and said 'You killed me!'" Fillion says with a chuckle, his voice trailing off like one of the Munchkin's falling into a bottomless cavern.

With an obviously well-developed sense of humor, it was easy for Fillion to transition from the seriousness of daytime to primetime's Castle, a detective show with an edgy sense of humor.

"ABC hates it when I say this, but Castle is kind of like Moonlighting meets Murder, She Wrote." Fillion says in explaining his new series. "If you lived around or knew Jessica Fletcher, you would never invite her anywhere or someone would die -- and it could be you!"

Murders donb't follow Castle, though. He follows them. Popular mystery novelist Richard Castle finds himself becoming bored with life as a successful writer. When he learns that a real-world copycat killer has started staging murders that played in his novels, Castle finds himself stepping in to help track down the killer. Some of the murders are downright odd.

"While we were filming the pilot for Castle I was trying to track down unusual cases. There was this one story from British Columbia, where a woman was jogging and found a shoe with a foot still in it. And then they started finding all these left shoes with their feet in them, but no one knew any missing people or people who'd lost their feet," Fillion reflects. "These are cases that obviously have a story. Castle would never invest time in an armed robbery where someone got shot and the robber got away and had to be tracked down. He loves story, he loves to read, he's got tons of books -- he's into it."

For his part, Fillion says that he's very much in love with his job -- as are his co-stars. No one shows up at work unhappy to be there -- and that translates well to what viewers see on-screen. What viewers won't see -- at least until the first season of Castle is released on DVD later this year -- are the bloopers and outtakes from the show.

In the episode tht airs this week, Seamus Dever (Detective Kevin Ryan) was to have had the last line. This week's murder case involves a woman who is found dead in a bathtub ful of motor oil. Dever's character is asked what he learned from the investigation, to which he replies, "Reduce, reuse, recyle."

"It didn't quite work, so someone said, 'how about this?' and started pitching out lines and he's say the line," Fillion explains. "Then from behind the wall, the producer yells, how about 'Oil's well that ends well...' Seamus said the line and I slapped him. 'That's for the pun,' I said."

Fllion doesn't know which line made the final cut, so viewers will have to tune in to see. Anyone who's missed an episode of Castle can watch them for free at ABC.com or pick up the complete first season on DVD when it's released in September. It's still too soon to know if Castle will be back for a second season, but Fillion isn't stressed out over the waiting.

"I've learned on my years of experience to just kick back. Everything that I have control over I worry about. Everything else is out of my hands," Fillion offers sagely.