Nathan Fillion has worked in Hollywood for decades, but his star really started to rise when he played Captain Malcolm Reynolds in the short-lived sci-fi series Firefly back in 2002. Since then he’s become a proper TV institution, holding down series like Castle and The Rookie, not to mention returning to the role of Mal in the Firefly movie Serenity.
Firefly and Serenity were both created by Joss Whedon, the guy behind stuff like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the first two Avengers movies. At one point, Whedon was one of the biggest movers and shakers in Hollywood, but his career now seems all but over following accusations of harassment and toxicity from actors on several of his projects, most notably Ray Fisher from Justice League and Charisma Carpenter from Buffy and Angel. Whedon resigned from his job as showrunner on the HBO show The Nevers amidst the controversy.
Fillion, who took the cancellation of Firefly hard back in the day, discussed the issue on an episode of Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum when Rosenbaum asked if he would ever do a Firefly sequel without Joss Whedon. “That would be heartbreak,” Fillion said. “Those are his … how can you?”
Nathan Fillion talks working with Joss Whedon
Fillion is very open that how he is treated on set is different from how others are treated. “[T]here’s not much people will do in front of me,” he said. “That’s what I’ve learned. My experience at work is different from other people’s experiences at work. I have learned this much.”
That said, he notes that the article that spread the news about the Whedon allegations “never mentioned Firefly. I had an entirely … that was not my experience with that man.”
He was funny, self-deprecating, and incredibly talented. Maybe a little haunted. By his own admission, that guy is a work in progress. And I appreciate that. I would work with Joss again in a second. I would work with him in a second.
There’s no guarantee anything like that will ever happen, of course. “We talk. We joke. We fantasize. But if I say anything too solid, it’ll go crazy, and I hate being responsible for that crap,” Fillion said.
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