As we learned last month, to the surprise of no one with even a passing interest in TV gossip, Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion absolutely loathe each other. The two actors are the leads on ABC’s Castle, which has slogged through eight seasons full of off-camera tensions. In April, Stana Katic announced that this season, the eighth, would be her last. She was not going to sign on to anything else. The rumor going around was the Fillion had pushed her out at long last, and that he was on board with doing a ninth season solo, Castle-without-Beckett. There was also a ton of gossip about just how bad it had gotten between Katic and Fillion – so bad that ABC had basically sent them to couples counseling, which ended up failing anyway.
Anyway, the last I heard was that ABC was seriously considering signing on for a ninth season of Castle where Fillion would basically be the only returning cast member. There were also some stories earlier this week about how writers had decided to kill Beckett in this season’s finale. But now ABC has had a change of heart. Castle is no more.
There’s even worse news for Castle fans shocked by Stana Katic’s departure from the show. ABC has canceled Castle after eight seasons, PEOPLE has confirmed. The series finale will air Monday. The Castle team filmed two different versions of the finale, depending on if the show was was cancelled or renewed. The cancelation news comes as rumors of tension between Katic and fellow lead Nathan Fillion have surfaced.
“The two were basically not speaking to each other if it wasn’t in character,” a source tells PEOPLE.
I’m including Katic and Fillion’s reactions below. Katic seems over it and Fillion might have just now realized that he severely overplayed his hand. While I know there are a lot of Fillion fan-girls, in all of the stories over the years, Fillion sounded like an egotistic a—hole who took issue with sharing his screen time with a strong female lead. I’m really glad ABC decided to put this show out of its misery.
To the fans: thank you for your support. I love you. 💋✌🏽️
— Stana Katic (@Stana_Katic) April 19, 2016
— Nathan Fillion (@NathanFillion) April 19, 2016
Photos courtesy of WENN.
This show really need to end with Castle and Beckett together, no matter how the actors feel about each other. The whole show was built around that relationship!
yes, they need to PLEASE not do another Battlestar Galactica (which I am still bitter about, seven years later)
I still get infuriated when I think about that horrid finale and, coming to think of it, the entire storyline with “Angel Kara”.
Urgh.
And also their on screen chemistry was really good, I’d never had known they hated each other in real life. I hope everyone involved is mature enough to separate life from fiction, so that their characters can end together
Well according to People or US Weekly (I don’t remember which), they do speak to each other in character so I know they are professional despite the tension.
I can’t believe they cancelled Nashville
That’s what I was going to say. I’m way more concerned about that. 🙁 I had read that they were planning a fifth season or half-season to wrap everything up, and apparently they had already started writing. Deadline says that they are shopping it around to streaming services. I hope that is the case. I could see Hulu picking it up. I don’t need a thousand more seasons or anything, but how could they leave these characters hanging??
🙁
Also, it seems like the Nashville actors were still hoping for renewal up to a few days ago (I checked Claire Bowen’s instagram). You’d think ABC might have given the showrunners a heads up on this so that they could conclude unfinished storylines etc.
And they JUST hired new showrunners! I wish they would have given them a chance.
I know! I was so pissed that Nashville was cancelled. Especially after hearing that the season finale will be ending on a “cliff hanger”.
I just read that they filmed an alternate ending in case of cancellation. So at least there’s that.
I’m wondering if ABC cancelled it because Hayden Panitiere went back into treatment for PPD. There was another announcement last night.
Wtf is she wearing…a shower curtain?!
I know! When I first saw that it immediately reminded me of Carol Burnett as Scarlett O’Hara wearing the mansion’s draperies like a dress on her shoulders, curtain rod included. If you’re going to steal material, it doesn’t get much better than Carol Burnett.
I would have probably watched it as I loved the connection Fillon had with his go-to bromance, Kevin and Javi, as well as Lanie.
OH well.
They canceled The Muppets too which makes me very sad. Loved that show.
I know, Beckett actually annoyed me, but I loved the supporting cast!
ABC had no chill with the cancellations!
ABC has the worst shows IMO. In fact all the networks do. I wish they could develop shows that are as good as the ones shown on cable channels. I know they can’t show nudity, or use curse words, but why couldn’t Mad Men been on ABC (yes, I’m sure Matthew Weiner wouldn’t want to relinquish creative control but other show creators might)? or do a youngish Sherlock Holmes similar to the BBC version?
It’s time to go. Probably past time…. I’ll still watch the re-runs, though.
I’m just going to say it again: there were far more rumors of Katic being the one that was difficult to deal with. Was it a problem working with a “strong female lead” or just a problem working with Katic?
And the show ran 8 seasons, it’s been a successful run by pretty much any standards. But it was just done. You can only have so many episodes of a formula show like this. There wasn’t really anything left to do. When they did the weird stuff with Castle’s long lost dad? To me that was the sign that they’d completely run out of ideas.
Agree – Fillion’s being made the scapegoat when Katic has been the problem for years. Fillion’s been in the business for years with not one problem. One show with Katic and all of this drama happens. Katic, not Fillion is to blame for this mess.
Yep, I remember stories about her going back to the tv movies The Librarian. When Noah Wyle is not willing to work with you, something needs to be evaluated.
Well, I hope that’s true because I’ve been a fan of Fillion since Buffy, Firefly & playing Capt Hammer and I don’t want to hear he’s an arse.
I could only handle two seasons of Castle though.
Re-runs for me.
Nathan in “Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place” was funny. He was supposed to be written out at the end of one season so the two main characters could get back together, but was so popular they had to change the plan and keep him in for the rest of the show.
I stopped watching Castle after the first season because that woman can’t act. I couldn’t bear it. Even back then there were rumours of trouble and the fact that she was such a diva and he wanted her to smarten up.
That’s definitely not the case.
Stana was not widely rumored to be difficult to work with.
Even now, you’d expect media coverage of this story to include a steady leak of comments from “sources” about how she was a diva & disliked on set. Especially given how much backlash the network was getting since letting her go, you couldn’t blame them for doing damage control. And yet….we’re not getting that at all. You also would not expect current & former cast, crew, writers, etc. to be so publicly supportive of her.
Rightly or wrongly, Nathan is the one who was most often cast as the problem and quite frankly, that’s largely his fault due to his apparent resistance to feigning cordiality or even just acknowledging Stana in public situations that called for it. You can get away with that on some TV shows, but on shows that revolve around a couple, that kind of behavior will definitely get noticed by the fandom and will eventually spread to gossip sites/mags.
I thought that Stana had made it clear last year when she was the only hold out to sign in 2015 that season 8 would be her last?
I have found the recent few seasons annoying as they moved away from the pair solving crimes together to improbale storylines focussed on Becket as super cop/super fed solving great conspiracies where Castle himself was reduced to bumbling sidekick
Danas assessment is probably the correct one although the Fillion fangirls will never admit it. If she were the problem the show would have made it known very quickly to save itself. When cast members put their own jobs on the line to express allegiance to her without even using qualifiers like “we love him too”, then the problem is him.
I read on one of the Gawker sites that he would arrive and leave early whenever he was unhappy with the storylines; a power move that forces the writers room to consider your opinion when creating the stories. That suggests that he thought he was the star and not a part of an ensemble. I can see the producers humoring this and her being upset at being shoved to the back to accomodate the bigger stars ego.
Well, that might explain the off the rails separation so soon after the marriage. It was just flat and not a good plot.
It was time. I loved the first few seasons and never missed an episode, but the last few years have just been painful.
I watched the first three seasons and then I was over it. And it wasn’t because they finally got together at the end of the third season either. It was the draaaaggggging out of the mystery surrounding Kate’s mother’s killer. I still don’t know what happened with that because I don’t care enough to google it. I think Stana is all class. She probably wanted to get paid what she was due and Fillion wasn’t having it. I totally believe that Nathan Fillion is a raging egomaniac and that tweet? FB post? is laced with sarcasm. I’m glad they pulled the plug on this instead of giving him his solo show, which he so wanted. Both of them are pretty B-list; Nathan teeters on A-list, but I’m sure they’ll both find work elsewehere, although nothing like Castle.
Oh you should see the conclusion of Kate’s mother’s murder. That was actually a really good episode. It was painful that they rehashed it this year with some stupid Locksat crap.
I lost interest at the beginning of this season. Thanks Alexi Hawley – show killer.
Yes – I was really looking forward to the show getting back on track to a partnership solving crimes together after all the Kate-centred drama over her mother’s murder. However this new season with the crappy Locksat conspiracy nonsense and Kate as a police captain by day and super-spy by night was rubbish.
Also the equality of the characters diappeared when the main storylines were so Kate-focussed. The Castle character has been seriously downgraded in recent seasons from a smart and out-of-the box thinker to a bumbling joke character
Wasn’t this show “on the bubble” for the last season or two anyhow? Probably not the best time to ask for a raise.
more importantly, abc canceled my precious galavant!
Eh, I’m no Fillion fan girl, but no one has ever complained about him, her on the hand…. I want to be team woman too, but it doesn’t pay to do blindly.
I loved Castle,but I lost my interest when they got together
Oh, hey, isn’t Nathan Fillion looking handsome in that last photo? Normally, I don’t find him attractive, but his smize and that curvy lock of hair are doing it for me.
Those tweets are from last month after Katic announced her departure. They have new tweets about the cancellation. All very sad but it was time to end the show. It wasn’t fun anymore.