Richard Castle
Richard Edgar "Rick" Castle is a fictional character on the ABC crime series Castle. He is portrayed by Nathan Fillion.
The name Richard Castle is also used as a pseudonym under which a set of real books about the characters Derrick Storm and Nikki Heat, based on the books mentioned in the television series, are written. These books have achieved success, becoming New York Times bestsellers. Actor Nathan Fillion appears as the face of Richard Castle on the books and on the official website, and participates in book signings. The Castle book series was actually written/ghost-written by screenwriter Tom Straw.
Creation and development
According to Fillion, the character's name "Rick Castle" was noted by the show creator as sounding like "Rich Asshole" and says that this reflects his character. He describes Castle as being "a bit of a douche" with a Peter Pan syndrome stemming from a lack of a "real male adult role model in his life".Andrew Marlowe explained that he designed Castle's character as one that presents a "storytelling point of view" as a counterpoint to Beckett's evidence-based police work. On casting Fillion to fill the role, Marlowe described Castle as "the right vehicle for the right personality". He also acknowledged the similarity between the Castle/Beckett relationship and the Booth/Brennan relationship of Bones.
Character overview
Family life
Castle is the father of Alexis Castle and the son of Martha Rodgers, both of whom live with him. His father is a CIA operative who has used the aliases "Jackson Hunt" and "Anderson Cross". Castle's birth name is Richard Alexander Rodgers; he uses Richard Edgar Castle as his nom de plume,. Fillion describes the family dynamic as unconventional because "Castle is very much mothered by his 15-year-old daughter, and at the same time he turns around and mothers his own mother."As a child, he never knew who his father was. He reasoned that he never missed having a father as he never had anything to miss, and it allowed him to imagine that his father could be anyone he wished. He was looked after by a nanny who spent most of her time watching daytime television. One Life to Live was the inspiration to write his first novel. He was further inspired to become a writer when a man handed him a copy of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale at the New York Public Library when he was ten years old. He also claims to have been kicked out of all of New York's finer academic institutions at least once, and to have picked up speed reading while spending his days as a child in the New York Public Library.
Castle has been married and divorced twice. His first wife was Alexis's mother, Meredith, an impulsive, free-spirited actress, and red-haired like her daughter. She and Richard occasionally meet for a sexual liaison, causing Richard to refer to her metaphorically as a "deep-fried twinkie" when she contemplated moving back to New York. His second wife was Gina Cowell, his publisher, a role she continues after their divorce. Castle and Gina became involved again, briefly, when she spent a summer with him in the Hamptons supervising his second Nikki Heat novel, but they soon ended their relationship.
Castle has sole custody of his daughter, Alexis. As a result of his own experiences being raised by a nanny, he insisted on raising her himself, made easier by the fact that he works from his large loft apartment shared with his mother. Alexis sometimes seems more mature and responsible than her father, parenting him. Richard takes great care of her, but also likes to play with her.
Castle also plays regular poker games with fellow authors James Patterson, Stephen J. Cannell, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane. When Cannell died in 2010, a fictional mystery writer was invited by Castle to the game, but a seat was left empty in their friend's honor. He also mentions being friends with Jonathan Kellerman, Wes Craven, and Stephen King.
In the fifth season, Castle finally meets his father, whom he learns is a spy when he helps him rescue Alexis when she was kidnapped. A Russian enemy of Castle's father seeks revenge for the Russian's murdered wife, so he kidnaps Alexis to lure him out. His father has been checking in on him, his mom, and Alexis their whole lives.
At the end of the final fifth-season episode, Castle proposes marriage to Beckett just as she prepares to reveal her decision on a Washington, DC job offer. The episode ends before she answers. At the beginning of the first sixth-season episode, "Valkyrie", Kate accepts.
They are finally married during the seventh season in a private wedding with their family, taking place at Castle's house in the Hamptons.
In the eighth and final season, Beckett estranges herself from Castle in order to protect him from LokSat, a deadly mastermind whom she's after, although they are married still and very much in love. Beckett starts living elsewhere, not letting Castle know about LokSat. After the events of "Mr. And Mrs. Castle" they get back together. Alexis becomes Castle's main helping hand in his P.I. agency. In the series finale, a flash forward to seven years later shows Castle and Beckett are the parents of three children.
Writing career
Early episodes of the series had Castle voicing over the introductory credits beginning with Season 2.There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking how to kill people: Psychopaths, and mystery writers. I'm the kind that pays better. Who am I? I'm Rick Castle... Every writer needs inspiration, and I found mine." "And thanks to my friendship with the mayor, I get to be on her case... And together, we catch killers."
Castle is an author of mystery fiction, with 26 bestsellers. His first novel, In a Hail of Bullets, accrued at least 21 rejections before being accepted by a publisher and winning the Nom DePlume Society's Tom Straw Award for Mystery Literature. The books have made Castle wealthy; when Alexis is kidnapped he can pay a $3 million ransom. Castle has a large multi-floor Manhattan apartment, a beachfront house in the Hamptons, and luxury cars.
His most popular works are a series starring "Derrick Storm"; A Calm Before The Storm, Gathering Storm, Unholy Storm, Storm's Last Stand, Storm Season, Storm Rising, Storm Warning, and Storm's Break and in the pilot episode, Castle attends a party for the release of the final book in the Storm series, Stormfall, which ends with the surprise death of Derrick Storm, Castle having become bored with the character. He later reads from the novel before a book-signing. Patterson and Cannell both disagree with the decision to kill off Storm, with Cannell commenting that he could have retired or crippled Storm instead, so that he could revisit the character if he changed his mind.
His other books include Death of a Prom Queen, Flowers For Your Grave, Hell Hath No Fury, A Skull at Springtime, At Dusk We Die, When It Comes to Slaughter, and A Rose for Everafter. By his own admission, his early works—Death of a Prom Queen, Flowers For Your Grave, and Hell Hath No Fury—are of poor quality; he points to Hell Hath No Fury in particular, with its plotline of "angry Wiccans out for blood" as being a low point in his career.
After using his friendship with the Mayor to get partnered with NYPD detective Kate Beckett under the pretense of conducting research for a new character, Castle plans a new series of novels starring a new character, a detective based on Beckett. He soon names Beckett's literary alter-ego "Nikki Heat", much to her embarrassment. Beckett takes umbrage at the name, regarding it a "stripper name", and insists that Castle change it, despite his proposing the book titles Summer Heat, Heat Wave, and In Heat. Ultimately, he sticks with the name, and the first novel in the series, Heat Wave, is released to much critical acclaim and financial success. Castle is offered a lucrative contract for three more Nikki Heat novels, with talk in the third season of a movie adaptation. The title of his second Nikki Heat novel, Naked Heat, once again displeases Beckett.
It has been suggested that Castle's interest in death, murder, and the macabre may be the result of a childhood trauma. When Beckett confronts him about it, Castle avoids the question. However, as soon as he tells the story, he admits it is fictional and that it's " job to make stuff up". Later, he admits to his daughter that one of the reasons he writes is to try to understand how criminals could do the things they do. He was under consideration for a deal to write three novels revolving around an unnamed British spy but rejected the offer, allegedly because his publisher wanted three more Nikki Heat novels and offered him more money, but secretly because accepting would have ended his collaboration with Beckett. In "Hollander's Woods", the source of Castle's interest in murder writing is revealed: in 1983, when he was 11, he found a murdered girl and was confronted by her killer who let him go. The girl's body was never found and she was never identified so no one believed his story. According to Castle, this encounter is what causes him to do what he does: he never was able to solve the mystery of what happened to him in the woods that day so he's driven to solve all the other mysteries he can. In the present of the episode, Castle is confronted by a similar case and finally gets to learn the truth of what happened that day and personally stop a serial killer of an unknown, but presumably large, number of murdered women.
Castle is something of a "method writer", endlessly researching his subjects and acquiring new skills to put himself in the mind of his characters. Amongst the useful skills Castle have acquired are lock picking, safe cracking, fencing, and a basic grounding in forensic science and criminal psychology. Because he's a writer, although he notoriously shirks "boring paperwork," his ability to speed-read allows him to sift through information faster than most of the precinct and he retains almost everything he reads, especially when it comes to case files. He also has researched crimes and serial killers, such as the original crime spree of serial killer Jerry Tyson aka The Triple Killer or 3XK for When It Comes to Slaughter. In the pilot episode, "Flowers For Your Grave", Castle displays an uncanny knack for behavioral observation when he observes Beckett and is able to accurately profile her, to which a visibly shaken Beckett responds, "Cute trick."
Kyra Blaine, an ex-girlfriend of Castle to whom he dedicated A Rose for Everafter, told Beckett that Castle only dedicates his books to people he truly cares about.
In "Hollander's Woods", Castle is awarded the Poe's Pen Achievement Award which he says is the highest award a mystery writer can receive. Although shaken by an encounter with the serial killer who inspired his writing interest, Castle accepts the award and dedicates it to his family and friends as he recognizes that, without them, he wouldn't have won it.