Nathan Fillion has played a number of memorable characters on television, but they didn’t always come easily. In fact, he lost out on a major role in a Chuck Lorre sitcom early in his career.
Fillion started out as the love interest for the titular “girl” on ABC’s “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.” Then, as Captain Malcolm Reynolds on “Firefly,” he and the ragtag crew of the spaceship Serenity flew across the universe and into the hearts of Browncoats around the world. And thanks to “Castle” and “The Rookie,” the beloved actor has remained steadily on our screens in some pretty solid gigs since 2009.
Just before Fillion joined Ryan Reynolds, Richard Ruccolo, and Traylor Howard on ABC for the second season of “Two Guys and a Girl” in 1998 as Johnny Donnelly, he auditioned for the lead role in another ABC sitcom — “Dharma & Greg,” one of many forgotten ’90s sitcoms still worth watching.
The show, from super producer Lorre, features a couple who gets married on their first date despite being polar opposites of each other. Jenna Elfman plays Dharma Finkelstein, a care-free yoga instructor and dog trainer raised by hippie Jewish parents in San Francisco, and according to Fillion in a “Castle” retrospective from The Hollywood Reporter, he would have played Greg Montgomery, a straight-laced lawyer from a well-to-do background who graduated with degrees from Harvard and Stanford.
The role of Greg ultimately went to future “Criminal Minds” star Thomas Gibson, but Fillion would later find another connection to the Golden Globe-nominated series.
Nathan Fillion later appeared opposite a Dharma & Greg star on Castle
On “Castle,” Nathan Fillion plays best-selling mystery novelist Richard Castle. Along with homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), he helps the New York Police Department catch criminals, starting with a copycat murderer who was inspired by one of Castle’s books. A good portion of the show follows the case of the week and the journey to solving said case.
However, the audience also gets to know Castle and the other people in his life. This includes his mother, the Tony Award-nominated actress and life coach Martha Rodgers. In addition to raising her son as a single parent, she is also helping to care for her granddaughter Alexis (Molly C. Quinn), who is also being raised by a single parent.
Martha is played by the acclaimed daytime drama performer Susan Sullivan. She started her career on “A World Apart” in 1970, then went on to star in “Another World” and “Falcon Crest” while appearing in various film and television roles. Interestingly enough, one of those roles was the snooty Kitty Montgomery, the mother of Greg from “Dharma & Greg.”
If Fillion had nailed that audition and landed that role, he and Sullivan would have played mother and son much earlier in their careers. Thankfully, while it wasn’t meant to be on one of the best forgotten ’90s sitcoms that are still worth watching, the timing was perfect for them to collaborate from 2009 to 2016.
