‘Castle’ exclusive: Seamus Dever on Ryan’s future, fun moments ahead, and potential season 9

“Castle” is finally returning to ABC on Monday, February 8 with “Tone Death,” and trust us when we say there’ll be plenty of singing. Unfortunately, none of it will be coming from Kevin Ryan, which is one of many things that we chatted about with Seamus Dever today.

In addition to talking about upcoming episodes, Dever took us through adapting to some of the changes on the show, some of the struggles with seeing his character successful versus staying at the precinct, and also his current outlook on the future beyond this season.

CarterMatt – So let’s start with this: How are things for you? There’s obviously been a lot of change with new showrunners, new characters coming in. How’s that been working for you?

Seamus Dever – It’s been an interesting year because we’ve have to transition so much into kind of this new show, whatever this version of ‘Castle’ is with Beckett being a Captain. It’s been an interesting ride. I think a lot of the fun that we had in the second and third season has come back, which is great to see. Particularly I’m getting a lot of stuff with Nathan [Fillion] now, which is a lot of fun since we haven’t had that one-on-one time for a while. There’s been some fun things for Esposito and Castle, as well.

I think [showrunners] Terence [Paul Winter] and Alex [Hawley] have done a good job of freshening things up and we’ve had some fun guest stars this year. I particularly liked ‘The Nose,’ it was fun to see that, and the L.A. episode that’s coming up with Gerald McRaney is [great]. We’ve had a lot of guest stars who have wanted to come on the show, which is nice to keep things fresh, especially after all these years.

Through this time, has your perception or feeling on Ryan changed at all? People inevitably change over eight years, so Ryan obviously has, as well.

It’s been kind of tricky for Ryan; we haven’t seen as much development for him this season as opposed to years past. I know he’s had another baby and things like that, but it’s like ‘you know, I already had one of those.’ I don’t know! It’s tricky. I want there to be some more things for Ryan to do, so hopefully some more things will come about, some developments. It’s been a tricky year for Ryan. (Laughs.) I still think there’s a ton of stuff we could do with him.

Something I’ve found very interesting is this relationship between how we want to see Ryan the character succeed, and start getting some better opportunities and not having to work a billion hours all the time. Yet, at the same time you almost don’t want him to do too well, since that means he could be leaving the precinct and he’s off the show. What has that been like for you to play and figure out?

Yeah, it is funny because as much as I want Ryan to go do something else in life, then it’s like ‘oh wait, that means Seamus is doing something else in life.’ (Laughs.) The one thing that Ryan has sort of developed this season is that he’s got a little more responsibility. I’ve been in the interrogation room way more than in any other season, and that’s actually been kind of fun to see him taking lead on a lot of stuff or being a part of that, taking his own initiative. That’s kind of one thing; there’s been more burden on him as a cop, which is kind of cool.

You mentioned this a little bit ago when you talked about getting to work with Nathan more, but do you sort of think about where some of these characters tend to go or what they do after work? Do you think about Ryan and Esposito hanging out with Castle more outside of work now, or some [other things like this] while you’re waiting to get your scripts?

Sometimes, yeah. There’s a lot of lusting after his Ferrari, and wanting to go for a ride. To be honest I still have never been in that Ferrari! There’s a lot of talk about the Old Haunts. I imagine that we’ve sort of taken over the Old Haunts now as like a cop bar (laughs), and it’s a place where we hang out. In my fantasy it’s all like ‘hey, do you want to go to the old haunt? Okay, cool.’ I’m not sure Castle likes that or not, but I like to imagine that now that he’s invited us, we go a lot.

There’s all those things. There was something fun that we got to do on this past episode we just finished shooting, where we got to know a little bit about Esposito’s past. I show up at his mom’s house, and I get to have some mofongo, this Puerto Rico dish that his mom serves me. I made sure that we had a nice little scene in there where Mom gives me some food and tells me I’m too skinny and everything. That’s kind of fun, since it shows something outside [the job]. We try to show those things as much as possible, and not distract from the mystery because there’s always a case to solve. It’d be great to do the Judd Apatow type scripts where they do an entire scene that has nothing to do with the mystery or the main narrative, but we can’t do that because there’s no flab in our show. There’s a little bit of relationship [stuff] to mine, and then it’s back to the case.

It’s tricky. We bounce off things and the writers do, as well. As an actor you have to understand that ‘it’s great if you want to add some lines and tell a joke, but we have a case to solve.’ You can’t get too far away from that.

So you’re telling me I’m going to have to wait for the spin-off all about Ryan and Esposito eating mofongo?

Yes. (Laughs.) Maybe we’ll make it like a cooking show, Cooking with Esposito and Ma!

Anyway, we have ‘Tone Death’ coming up [Monday], and people would be very upset if I didn’t ask if there was some singing in there?

There is some singing coming up, but not from Ryan. I don’t know if Ryan sings, that’s the thing. Seamus sings, but I don’t know if Ryan does. This is such a weird actor thing to say, but while Seamus sings, Ryan might be tone deaf. I don’t know. So there’s going to be some singing, but not from me.

You’ll get some of the musical stylings of Jon Huertas, which is funny because I hear Jon sing a lot because we have a musical group together called Shay-Jean. There is more material coming up. Jon and I are working on an album coming out. We’ve already recorded it, but we’re waiting on different mixes and getting it correct and getting it right. We recorded 11 songs for the album, so it’ll hopefully be coming out this spring … It’s basically comedy, R&B, and rap. That’s kind of our gig. Writing R&B songs that nobody would expect to hear an R&B song about, and rap that nobody would ever rap about.

So Esposito gets to sing, and there’s a really fun thing that he gets to do with Corbin Bleu that gets pretty creative, the way they do it.

So are there any Ryan episodes coming up that you’ve filmed, or at least heard a whisper about?

Unfortunately no, and I’m a little bummed about it. I think Ryan has fallen a little between the cracks this season. There’s nothing planned insofar as a Ryan episode to see something like we’ve done in years past. Nothing’s on the books yet, but we still have I think five more episodes to see, so there may still be something coming our way.

I think part of the fun of being on such a long-running show is that you get to see so many interesting character dynamics and pairings. Are there any that you’d want to explore that maybe you haven’t gotten a chance to do much of yet?

I like stuff with Sunkrish [Bala]. I’d like to have a little bit more. We’ve been using him as this tech guy, and saying stuff like ‘I just talked with Vikram,’ and I’m like coming out of a room saying ‘thanks, Vikram’ and he’s not actually there. (Laughs.) I want more scenes with him because he’s a really funny guy and it’d be a lot of fun. And it’s always fun to do stuff with Susan Sullivan. I’d definitely throw that on the fire, because we’ve definitely had some fun stuff in the past.

Everyone always loves to speculate on the future, and while we don’t really know what’s going on with season 9 just yet, is that something you’re open to?

Oh, absolutely! I have a good time with the people I work with. That’s what it all boils down to with anything. There’s a lot [to be said] about the challenges of ‘if I was on a different show and I was a lead of that different show, that would be enticing,’ but there’s also a lot [to be said] of the fact that I still have fun with a lot of the cast and crew. As long as I’m still having fun, the answer’s always going to be yes. There’s whispers of what next season could be like, but they’re just whispers. Our network seems to be behind us, and certainly our fan base is behind us, as well. I think the interest level is there. We’re still just figuring out what that show would be like.

[And elsewhere], you’ve got Shay-Jean coming out soon.

It’s one of those things that is frustrating when it comes to the gestation process. We recorded in like July! (Laughs.) We spent all summer writing and recording, and now it’s a matter of the mix, boosting up the vocals on this one part, be a little more techno here. It’s like little stuff; it’s like waiting for a film to come out, since there’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that I can’t help with. I think the fans are going to be excited about it. It’s fun stuff.

—

Thanks to Seamus for all of his time!