For eight seasons, Stana Katic made Castle a must-see for crime TV fans.
The actress stole the show as detective Kate Beckett. And alongside her co-star, Nathan Fillion, she turned the series into one of the best shows on TV.
Which is why it came as a complete shock when the star was released from her contract ahead of the show’s ninth season.
Unsurprisingly, Castle was cancelled shortly after.
Luckily for us, the 39-year-old is back on the small screen. Catching up with TV WEEK, Stana chats about her role in Amazon Prime’s latest drama, Absentia.
What is Absentia about?
We start the story six years after my character, Emily, has been kidnapped. She was an FBI agent who was on the hunt for one of Boston’s biggest serial killers. Emily is believed to be dead and is declared so.
At the beginning of the story, we’re in court with the person who is believed to have killed her.
But we find out that she’s actually alive. She has been in what is the equivalent of a torture situation for these past six years.
Will Emily find whoever is responsible?
Why did you think this was the right role to bring you back to television?
When I spoke to my agents about what we should be on the lookout for, I told them I didn’t want to play a mum, and I didn’t want to play someone’s girlfriend.
Traditionally, from what I’ve seen, those characters are tools in the story. They’re not actually driving the story.
Then, when I read for Emily, I was really surprised to find a character who happened to be, in so many ways, all of those things.
She held all of those titles, but was very much driving this story forward.
The actress starred alongside Nathan Fillion in Castle for eight years.
How is it different to Castle?
Castle was beautiful because it was a romantic-comedy procedural. It was charming. This story is challenging.
Filming Absentia was also challenging because we cross boarded the entire series. That means, we shot any episode at any point in time throughout the series. So I had days where I was shooting episode one in the morning, then episode five in the afternoon and episode three in the evening.
Have you made peace with how Castle handled your exit?
I was confused by the entire experience, and I was hurt. But that was two years ago. Since then, I genuinely look back on that experience and am thankful to have been part of that project.
It’d be a disservice to the work I did to be anything but grateful for an awesome run.
