Buds on and off set. The Rookie‘s Nathan Fillion and Eric Winter may butt heads as Officers Nolan and Bradford, but their relationship in real life couldn’t be different. Still, that doesn’t mean they don’t like to tease each other once in a while.
The Rookie is ABC’s crime drama series that follows John Nolan, a 45-year-old newly divorced man from Pennsylvania, who, after helping police officers during a bank robbery in his hometown of Foxburg, moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Mid-Wilshire Division. Fillion plays Nolan, while Winter plays Tim Bradford, a training officer with the LAPD.
On June 22, 2023, The Rookie‘s Instagram account posted a video of Fillion explaining what he writes in Nolan’s notepad while filming as the character. “So some of you are wondering when you see me writing in my notepad as John Nolan in the rookie room, where we are right now, what am I writing? Well, that’s an excellent question. Let’s take a look right now,” Fillion said as he showed his notepad, which had Nolan’s full name and the words “Police Notepad” on the cover.
Fillion went on to show what was in Nolan’s notepad. “Here we are. Sometimes notes. Sometimes just scribbles. Sometimes little doodles. You can actually see, sometimes I’m writing my lines just to remember a line or two,” Fillion said. “That’s just mostly scribbles. You can kind of tell what episode we were on by what I was actually scribbling.”
When Fillion got to the last page of the notepad, he showed a note that read, “Have Eric winter fired for making that joke about my hair.” He then panned the camera back to his face as he said, “Maybe don’t tell Eric that you saw that.” The Rookie’s Instagram account confirmed the note was a joke in its caption. “@nathanfillion sees a notepad, we see piping hot tea. All jokes aside, we love you @ebwinter!” the caption read.
While Winter hasn’t responded to the video, many of The Rookie‘s followers took to the comments to laugh over Fillion’s joke. “The way I love to see the shenanigans of the cast, they make me laugh! So much fun on the set,real family!” commented Instagram user @rainyblue_76. Instagram user @reshme_24 wrote, “Eric, spill the tea now, we need to know!” “do not fire Eric, but put him in time out!!” commented Instagram user @darcieroxx.
While Fillion and Winter seem to be friends, the same reportedly can’t be said about all of Fillion’s co-stars. Before The Rookie, Fillion starred on ABC’s Castle for eight seasons from 2009 to 2006. He played Richard Castle, best-selling mystery writer who assists New York Police Department homicide detective Katherine “Kate” Beckett (played by Stana Katic) on murder investigations.
Katic announced she was leaving Castle after eight seasons in April 2016. ABC announced the series was canceled a month later. A source told Us Weekly at the time that Fillion and Katic’s relationship was among the reasons she left the show. “Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion completely despise each other,” the insider said. “They will not speak when they are off set, and this has been going on for seasons now.”
The source continued, “This season, it got so out of hand they made Stana and Nathan go to couples counseling together,” adds the insider, who says that the actress has been in tears on the set because of the tension. A representative for Katic, however, denied the reports to Us Weekly, telling the magazine that she “had absolutely no issues” with he co-star.
In a Twitter statement after Katic announced her exit from Castle, Fillion thanked her for co-starring with him on Castle. “Castle has been one of the greatest joys of my creative life… Stana has been my partner all this time, and I thank her for creating the character of Beckett who will live on for all of us as one of the greatest police officers on television,” he wrote. “I wish her well and have no doubt she will succeed in everything she pursues. She will be missed.”
In an interview with News Corp in May 2020, Katic hinted that she didn’t choose to leave Castle on her own. “I was confused by the entire experience. I was hurt,” she said. “But look, time has passed and I am so thankful to have been a part of that project, for it to have affected as many people as it did. People loved that couple and loved the story we told, loved all of those characters.”
She continued, “It would be a disservice to the work that I did, which I feel partly contributed to the success of the show, if I looked back on it and was anything but grateful for the awesome run.”
Katic also hinted that she was fired from Castle in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2018. “I’m actually still not clear on the thought process behind the way that it went down. It hurt and it was a harsh ending,” she said. “But now, nearly two years later… I met so many beautiful people on that project, and we collaborated on something really unique in that it’s not every day that you get a show, or a series, that has eight seasons and that it was a hit for the network.”
She continued, “It would be a disservice to those people, to the work that we did together, and to my work, which I feel contributed, in part, to the success of the show, to be anything but grateful because, at the end of the day, that was a fantastic platform. It was a formative experience, and we told a love story that I feel moved people, touched people, and I can’t be anything but glad that I was a part of something like that. I hope it remains something special in viewers’ minds forever.”
The Rookie is available to stream on Hulu.
