Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic as Castle and Beckett in CASTLE
If you’re not watching the increasingly addictive ABC series Castle, you are missing out. Not only is the sophomore show one of the most clever crime dramas with terrific twists and turns you’ll never see coming, it is also has one of the sharpest romantic duos in stars Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic as crime novelist Rick Castle and Detective Kate Beckett. To find out more about the inside workings of the series, I talked with Story Editor Elizabeth Davis over coffee in Los Angeles to get the ins and outs of her episode, “One Man’s Treasure,” which airs tonight.
Jim Halterman: You had an episode during the first season and now this is your second. What did you learn this time around?
Elizabeth Davis: I think part of it is that last season, mine was the one before the finale and then when post was starting on my episode, the writers were sent free so I wasn’t even around when they were doing post. I was on set and I think I saw the director’s cut and then I saw it on the air. All the fine-tuning happened when I was gone. This time, there really was something so valuable about being there for every second from start to finish and just seeing the evolution. Andrew [Marlowe, Castle ‘s creator] commented on how training all of us to be really hands-on even in post-production makes his job easier and he can check in on stuff when he can but he has so many other things and can’t be there every second.
The cast of CASTLE
JH: The twists and turns in the case are always great. How do you construct those? Do you start at the end and work back or how do you do it?
ED: I had been inspired by a 60 Minutes piece I had seen about recycling and the corrupt facets of that world where companies will take these big government contracts and then ship the stuff overseas. I thought, one, the social aspect I was attracted to and then, two, the corruption, which is such a great place to try to figure out the money, secrets and all that. For me, it just kind of started with that and the idea that there would be an Erin Brockovich type character in there. It was interesting because I came at it initially thinking that it would maybe be a reporter that gets embedded and through working with Andrew and René [Echevarria, Executive Producer], they were able to steer me more in a direction that it should be a corporate mole. I guess the kind of big breakthrough we had with this story was realizing that it had to have that big initial turn. We spent a part of the episode thinking it’s about a guy who’s cheating on his wife and has this crazy double life and then we find out he was doing that because of this. The turns are, I think, the really important second step to the process, which is once you have the crime and the world, then we do it where you start with the act-outs and then build up from there.
JH: There’s a cute bit with Castle at the coffee machine and Beckett is watching him with this whimsical look on her face. No dialogue until they start walking with the coffee but they just go into the case talk. Will these two ever get together?
Molly Quinn as Castle's daughter Alexis
ED: You’re getting to see their relationship being built. You’re seeing the moments and if it ends up there it’s where you’re slowly falling in love with someone and you respect them. There’s another bit in my episode I ended up really loving. It’s interesting because it was something in the script that I guess I recognized as a small relationship moment but then I think it was even elevated in terms of their performance and then how the editor cut it together. At the end, when Alexis [Castle’s daughter, played by Molly Quinn) is going to bring the photo album over to the victim’s daughter, she first says to Beckett, ‘I know it’s not as important as the things you do.’ Beckett says ‘When you’ve lost someone it is important.’ There’s this great look that Nathan gives and he’s looking at [Beckett] when she says it and he doesn’t say a word but it’s all in his look and I felt like ‘Wow! He is falling for her a little bit more in hearing her sort of talk to his daughter.’ The thing we do on our show a lot is they’ll have an emotional moment and then we can sort of lighten it with a joke but it’s one of those moments where the way it turned out it was another example of being pleasantly surprised by the performance and the editing.
JH: I’ve noticed how more often we’re seeing Castle’s home life being integrated into the case or the precinct.
ED: It’s great and it’s nice to have Alexis and Martha (Castle’s mother, played by Susan Sullivan) outside. We’ve joked that we didn’t want to turn it into a thing where they were prisoners in the loft. We like to do things at home but we just didn’t want it to be a pattern.
JH: And in having Alexis doing a little job at the precinct…you couldn’t exactly have a teenager playing with a bloody glove, huh?
ED: Right! Obviously, then, as I started to think about that more and more, it was just sort of a great light bulb moment about something that was not the evidence but the millions of other things they find at crime scenes. Through talking to Will [Beall, former LAPD detective and writer on the show] he was able to fill me in on all the specifics on what the room is and everything that is in the scene about where it goes and how they catalog it.
JH: I could see Alexis continuing doing that as her an after school job.
ED: Yeah, my hope with it is that now that we’ve established her there that there could be other work things that she could do.
Castle airs every Monday night at 10/9c on ABC.
Jim Halterman spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the television world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back often for giveaways!! 
