A new start for 'rookie' Nathan Fillion | TV
"It does not cost anything to say something kind." This is how he presents his more than three and a half million followers on Twitter that star of television something plated to the old that is Nathan Fillion. The good manners of this 47-year-old Canadian are one of his weapons, as well as that physicist with whom he has gained countless followers. It could be the new George Clooney, always with a kind phrase and a wink. Or also a Matt Damon, another old and educated soul, with whom he coincided in the cast of Save Private Ryan, the Steven Spielberg film that Damon starred in and in which Fillion was "the other" Ryan.
The interpreter now plays a rookie policeman in his forties The Rookie (TNT, 22.15). As novice as he claims to feel to produce and star in this fiction after 25 years of professional career and with great success as Castle behind their backs.
"It's a great luck to feel like that, like someone who starts. Each job is a luck, "he tells EL PAÍS. He seems sincere, although his popularity precedes him. It will not be George Clooney, but it's been years since Joss Whedon pulled him out of anonymity with the production of science fiction Firefly, released in 2002, and its cinematographic continuation, Serenity
His role as a writer turned detective into Castle it only confirmed his popularity. "Not only is it a luck to work, but to feel like the new one. Because, as it happens to my character, you do not know how many times I'm the oldest at work. Ask my knees! "He jokes.
The Rookie part of a real anecdote, that of a man in the crisis of the forties who sought a new career in the LAPD. That's where reality comes from, or maybe not even, because, as Fillion remembers, the age limit to enter that police force is 37 years "or well below my age."
Every time you see him running in The Rookie It is he who runs, he emphasizes. "And for every race a policeman takes, I've had to run like six times a shot, Hollywood Boulevard up, Hollywood Boulevard down. It does not matter if you are a policeman or an actor, the salt bath is waiting for you at the end of the day, "he describes.
To prepare this role he trained in the police academy along with other recruits and met the newcomer already in years in which his character is inspired. From that experience he says he has taken great respect for the personal sacrifice of the agents. But he knows that he uses all the tricks possible to cope better day to day, from using rubber replicas in the regulatory belt full of artifacts that each uniformed carries (regulation weapon, handcuffs and "a walkie talkie that weighs three kilos, when any mobile phone is lighter than a pen ") until quilting the uniform in some parts to avoid, for example, that the baton hit him when running. "In addition to using Paul as a double action when you do not see my face," he adds with humor.
The actor is satisfied with the series, but admits that if not for Alexi Hawley, creator of The Rookie and executive producer of Castle, I probably would not have agreed to tackle another television job so quickly. "I've had enough in this profession to be able to say no, but also to know that there are opportunities that should not be missed," he summarizes.
The cycle of working life
In addition to being an unrepentant bachelor, a geek sci-fi lover and a workaholic, Nathan Fillion is realistic. "It is the cycle of life. For many years he was the youngest set, the son. From there I became the uncle, and suddenly I was the father of growing children ", he describes about his career. But he has no complaints. His leap to cinema has never materialized, despite the opportunity it offered him Save Private Ryan, trampoline for a new batch of actors. "It would have been fantastic, but what followed was a year of unemployment," he laughs now. "As Spielberg told me recently, hiring me for that job was one thing, but to build a career like the one I built next is quite another."
