CASTLE: Seamus Dever Teases His ‘Action Movie’-Esque Episode, the Return to Mythology, and More

CASTLE’s Ryan is getting a big hour in the next new episode, “At Close Range.”

“It was like an action movie we shot,” CASTLE star Seamus Dever (Ryan) teased. “It was mostly Ryan; the rest of the cast had a lot of days off. I was literally sprinting nearly every day [during filming]. There was a chase scene that took several days to film, spread out, and it was running around in suits, with guns. That’s my biggest memory: being sweaty in a really nice suit. And really cool locations!”

I spoke with Dever about what’s in store for the episode, reuniting with GHOST WHISPERER’s David Conrad, where the show is headed, and his new Indiegogo project…

What can you say about the trouble Ryan finds himself in?
Seamus Dever: Basically, Ryan is moonlighting with his brother-in-law, who runs a private security firm, and they’re working a charity event. It seems like it’s a pretty normal charity event — it’s a campaign fundraiser/charity event for some wealthy donors — and then something goes awry, shots ring out. And he’s left trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what the truth is, figure out if he’s done anything wrong, figure out if there’s been a betrayal. And left to solve the case through kind of being really skeptical about what he thought he saw.

We did something we barely do on CASTLE — I think we’ve only done it once before — we did flashbacks. The moment of this thing happening, this thing that Ryan is remembering seeing [we’re getting flashbacks]. Our director, Bill Roe, handled it really well. The flashback thing is a pretty typical TV trope, and you see it on a lot of shows. So how do you do something different with that? It’s nice hour it was handled; the interior thoughts of my character.

It’s a great episode. I’ve been saying it’s more JACK RYAN than Kevin Ryan. [Laughs] It was like a political thriller we shot. I’m glad they wrote this script for me, because I had a great time on it.

Are there ramifications for his career? Or since this was a secondary job, is he not in as much potential trouble?
SD: It goes back into the precinct, and it dovetails into his normal job pretty quickly. It hits close to home, so there are ramifications for his family.

Will we be seeing Jenny and his daughter, or is he only speaking about them/to them offscreen?
SD: He talks about Jenny and the baby. We’re hoping to get Juliana [Dever, Seamus’ real-life wife] back on the show soon, because it would be great to see Jenny and the family [together].

Kids complicate things. In life, and in television. [Laughs] There’s lots of laws about how long you’re allowed to use babies, so you don’t see it happening too much on TV, because it’s complicated…hopefully we’ll get Julianna back on the show, because it would be great to see her make an appearance.

And [also to] see what kind of father he’s become. Hopefully he’s very relaxed at being a dad; less nervous than the last time we saw him.

Absolutely. And this episode has some really great guest stars with a lot of TVexperience: GHOST WHISPERER’s David Conrad, 24’s Reiko Aylesworth, and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES’ Ricardo Chavira. How was it working with them?
SD: We benefited from people being in town for pilot season. Ricardo lives in Texas, David lives in New York. They just happened to be in town at the same time, so we nabbed them. It was great.

David and I have a relationship from working on GHOST WHISPERER eight years ago. We got to hang out a lot during the filming of that. We played squash together on the show, so we took squash lessons together. It was fun. And I had a relationship with David, which was a lot easier to settle into, and [have the mindset of], let’s open up to each other, because we had done that before. That was a real gift I had that with David, because he was someone who I look up to in life. And I do, in real-life, look up to David very much. I thought that was pretty cool it worked out.

Richardo and Reiko as well, it was great. With Richardo, I could listen to him talk about his experiences on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES forever, because they’re good life lessons about being an actor and surviving on a long-running show, and the trials and tribulations that exist. I asked him a lot of questions! [Laughs]

And David’s playing your brother-in-law?
SD: David’s playing my brother-in-law, so that was pretty cool. Also, playing my sister is Heather Mazur, who I knew from Carnegie Mellon, so it was like, oh, these are all people I’ve met. And there’s a woman who plays a wealthy donor, Annie Little, and she was a flight attendant in ARGO, and I’ve known her for years, she’s friends with my wife. So it was really cool to have a group of people I already knew. It’s kind of rare in TV.

That’s really great. Last year, CASTLE had a really clear end-point for the season. This year, it’s a little murkier. What can you say about where the show is headed?
SD: That’s a super good question.There’s a two-pronged thing of where we’re headed.  We’re headed back into the mystery of what happened with Castle at the end of last season. And reinvestigating that and what the hell happened. Because that’s still really up in the air, and part of the audience is probably like, “When are we going to get back to that?” And I think we’re going to dive back into the Beckett mythology with her mother. I’m very curious how they’re going to do it, because it seemed pretty final with what they did last year. But our writers are super creative, and they always surprise me with what new wrinkle they unfold, and I go, “Oh, I didn’t think of that. So it’s going to be cool to see what it comes around to.

Outside of CASTLE, you also have a passion project in the works at Indiegogo. what can you say about why you felt so moved to be a part of THE EXTRAORDINARY FAREWELL?
SD: I think it’s because it’s friends of mine; it’s not like someone solicited a script for me and said, “Hey, we’re looking for financing.” It’s my friend Zach [Kranzler], whom I’ve known for years, he’s an actor out here for a long time, and now he’s become a producer/director. He wrote this really cool script, and wrote it in a way that’s feeling manageable.

I liked the idea of delving into producing, because you can really have an impact on the elements that come together with a film. For me, I wanted to be hands on with this — not only play the lead, but be a producer as well. Wrangling locations, getting crew together that I trust, making sure that my director is well taken care of. It’s funny, because most of the time I’m watching the clock when I’m a producer. It feels like I’m toe-tapping: “Why are we still doing this scene? We need to move on; we don’t have time for this. Come on guys.”

But it was a very manageable script, and I’ve never done the crowd-funding [avenue] before. I wanted to see if I could ask the fans of CASTLE — and Marsha Thomason has WHITE COLLAR, as well — and we wanted to see if people would want to see us in different roles in a feature film,in something that’s such a departure from the roles they’re used to seeing us in. The other cool thing is embracing the idea of crowd-funding and indiegogo is making it really transparent process. This is where the money is being spent, would you like to come see it being filmed? Would you like to be there at a table read? Would you like to come for a production meeting? For anyone that wants to get involved with film, we said, “Why don’t we embrace that and involve people in the process?” I think it’s been successful so far.

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