Leading up to his recurring role on “Modern Family” in 2016, Nathan Fillion was all too familiar with the inner workings of a TV studio. He had, for eight seasons, starred as cocky mystery writer Richard Castle on ABC’s “Castle.” When the series was abruptly canceled in May of 2016, Fillion was taken aback, though he wasn’t exactly devastated.
“It wasn’t the beautiful send-off that I think maybe you could hope for, but it’s the entertainment industry, it’s a business, I get it,” the actor said in the same interview with the New York Post. Cancellation, he joked, wasn’t a new experience for him, with the premature cancelation of “Firefly” perhaps the most famous example. Fillion went on to say that he doesn’t take it personally when a show he stars in gets canceled, noting that he has starred in several shows that have faced that fate.
For Fillion, “Modern Family” was a welcome distraction from the fate of “Castle.” It also gave him an opportunity to distance himself from Richard Castle. “It’s kind of a niche for me to play characters who are vain but don’t know that they’re vain. It’s something I’m practiced at,” he said. “It’s very easy to laugh at a character who’s that stupid. He’s kind, he’s nice, he’s sort of charming, but he’s just so cheesy and so flawed.”
