8:26 pm - Weds 4.21.2010
\"Castle\" Redux

Nothing on TV tonight (The ABC comedy block is all repeats, and Human Target's first season ended last week).

So it seems a perfect time to do my Diaryland thing...

Well clearly the big news of the day/week/month is "I shot my episode of Castle yesterday"...

And I actually did shoot it this time!

If things had gone exactly the way I'd wanted yesterday, I would have had a mid-morning call at the studio...and Stana Katic would have been waiting in my trailer when I got there.

But my call was 7:15 am at the Santa Monica Pier...and I didn't meet SK till I was on the set (Around 8:30 or so), though she was actually getting made up in the chair next to me when I went in for make-up - didn't realize it was her at first because my view was obstructed by her make-up people.

But other than those few deviations from my "imaginary" Castle experience, it was a pretty perfect day (Or to be more accurate, a pretty perfect half-day).

I played a hotel clerk, with "Castle" and "Beckett" (Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic) interviewing me about some doings at the hotel.

I don't want to over-sell the scene, or my importance in the episode, but I'll just say it's more than I got to do on Mad Men or The Mentalist last year - That is, if it doesn't get edited down (Or - horror of horrors! - cut).

(I've got eight lines, and there was enough there - I thought - for me to make a definite impression as a character. The scene's just exposition...but it's fairly punchy, fun exposition, in my opinion. But I guess we'll see if that's actually the case when the episode airs next month...)

I was surprised a number of the crew remembered me from my first time on the set, expressing their happiness that "they kept their promise" and brought me back (One guy thought he remembered me from Men Of A Certain Age...which is another show I'd love to do, and think I'd be perfect for).

Nathan and Stana - we're on a first-name basis now - were very nice; when camera set-ups were...being set up, we mostly went our separate ways, but I did get to have a few moments with each of them at different points, and they were both very down-to-earth.

And happily, while we were shooting, it felt like the most natural thing in the world - I mean, I was eager to "get it right" and do a good job and all, but it mostly just felt like the three of us were just three actors doing a scene, not like "What the heck am I doing in a scene with two big- time tv stars...?".

Before we started shooting, I told Nathan "I need to get this out of the way - All the women I know say 'hi'" (And of course, he had the perfect, charmingly self-deprecating response - "Tell them I was a big disappointment...").

It took, all told, about three hours to shoot the page-and-a-third of dialogue - which was mostly about changing camera set-ups, addressing little technical matters and what-not (and not, near as I could tell, anything to do with the acting).

The only times John, the Director, said anything about the acting was to give Stana a direction on one word in a line, and to give me an alternate line to say at the end on a take (I was also given a throw away line as I was exiting, and improvised a line that made NF laugh, which was fun) - So if the scene stays in the final cut, what you'll see me do is pretty much what I went in with, along with what was occurring to me "in the moment".

(...which, when I think about it, is a big sign of progress. I remember that when I did House, my first co-star, I was so nervous, I did my line exactly the same, take after take, cause I was too afraid to relax and "play with it", like I was going to get in trouble for "not doing it right".)

Well, I may write more about this later, if I feel like I haven't "squeezed all the juice out of it", but long story short, I had fun, it felt like it went well, and now I'm just hoping that, 1) It'll stay in the show, and 2) It'll lead to other, bigger-and-better "Guest Star" roles in the future.

Stay tuned...

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