Castle Q&A: Seamus Dever Teases Ryan's Dangerous Past, Episode 100

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Last week's Castle featured Kevin Ryan balking at a possibly cursed DVD. But the stakes get considerably more dangerous for the detective in "The Wild Rover" when he goes undercover with the Staten Island mob.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Seamus Dever about the peril his alter ego will be facing, which of his coworkers can't keep their hands off his wife and what is in store on episode 100 of the ABC hit...

Kevin Ryan Photo

It sounds like Detective Ryan is doing some undercover work in the next episode. What can you tell us about that?
So basically, before Kevin Ryan was a homicide cop he was a narcotics cop and one of things that he did was go undercover. It was sort of one of these things were he spent 14 - 15 months in the Staten Island mob, gaining their trust. Getting to know people and getting people to trust him. Getting enough information so that he could help take them down.

What ends up happening is that he gets involved with a girl. This is way before he's in his present circumstances with his wife Jenny. But there was a girl named Siobhan that ran a bar that was associated with one of the big gangsters down there. Ryan was in a relationship with her. He felt like it was real. He was undercover, playing this role but it was real for him. Then he suddenly had to leave. It was like split town time, but the issue was that she didn't know what happened to him and the mob thinks he just skipped town because all of these indictments came down. But they only really half succeeded in the mission. There was a piece of information that they didn't get to take down the boss.

So there's a murder case in our present day circumstances and it turns out that one of the witnesses and someone that can provide information is this girl Siobhan. And she walks into the precinct one day and it just happens to be at the same time that Ryan's wife Jenny is there which is awesome and crazy. There's a big surprise that happens that throws everyone into a tailspin. It throws Ryan's relationship with his wife into a tailspin. It confuses everybody in the precinct. Beckett and Castle and Esposito are trying to figure out who is this guy that we thought we knew. It turns out he's full of surprises and there's a lot of stuff he doesn't talk about that's in his past. That's what this episode is about. All of the stuff that Ryan has never really shared about those dark days in narcotics.

This is the first time Ryan has been undercover since he and Jenny got married. How does she handle it?
It's very confusing and what I thought was interesting was that it's got to be like a real life thing. Ryan can't tell Jenny what he's going to do. Where he's going or any of his whereabouts and that's got to scare the hell out of somebody who's used to him coming home at night.  He could be in danger. He could be killed. It's got to be tremendously confusing for Jenny. We get to see a lot of that which is kind of cool.  I think it's a pretty true to life thing as far as I know. There are friends of mine who worked for the CIA or certain Army operations where they disappear and their wives are just confused but they have their support. So I know this is a real thing in life and we got to do some scenes based on that, which is pretty cool.

You've worked with your wife, Julianna several times now on Castle. What's it like to have her on the set?
It's great. It's wonderful and everyone loves Julie around the set. And Nathan's really sweet to her and so is Stana. Jon Huertas can't keep his hands off my wife. No really, we're all good friends after all of this time together. We've spent a lot of time together so it's great when Julie gets to come to the set and actually do some work. And it's nice because she had a lot of emotional scenes this time. I think it was some of her best work I've seen so I can't wait to see what happens in the episode.

Esposito and Ryan are quite the popular duo among fans. Have you had a favorite moment between the two?
Yeah. Probably one of my favorite scenes was when we got to fight each other. That was fun. I got some good hits in and he got some good hits in. That was way back in the end of the third season ("Knockout") I think we did that. That was a great scene. There have been so many. There was the really fun scene where I jump on his back because he's eating a donut. That was a lot of fun physically too. There was a really good one this season too where we got to drive in a car together. The mockumentary episode ("Swan Song") where we got to do this great driving scene together where we're both facing the camera. We're both trying to show off for the camera and it was really fun. That was one of my favorite scenes this season. And we actually have a really cool scene this episode coming up where Ryan's undercover and Esposito goes to meet him. We'll get to see Jon Huertas' pie eating skills because he ate a lot of pie that day. There's a lot of good scenes. A lot of history between us. 

Going back to this last episode "Scared to Death" were you as scared of the movie The Ring as Ryan was in this past episode?
It was creepy. Yeah, it was creepy. I think until I met the actual actress playing the little girl crawling out of the well, in real life. She's like a friend of a friend. Then I was like, oh OK. You're not so scary. It takes a lot to scare somebody so the movies that do it well and do something original with it, I applaud them. There are so many horror movies but the ones that genuinely sort of chill you or surprise you or strike some sort of chord that you haven't seen before whether it's supernatural or unknown, that was definitely one of them. I was a little frightened in The Ring, for sure.

If you couldn't be an actor, what other career would you have chosen?
I'd probably be a scientist. I watch a lot of Nova and I find just the amount of pure curiosity that I have with be it anthropology or archeology or particle physics. I'm really quite nerdy on that. I can read Scientific American for hours. It's my favorite magazine on a plane because you can just sit there and by the time you've finished with that last article that you've had to reread a couple of times because you wanted to make sure you understood everything, there landing. And you're like, OK where did the time go? So, yeah I'd probably be a scientist. Either that or I'd be a point guard in the NBA.  One of those two things.

Can you tease us at all about the upcoming 100th episode or the season finale?
I can tease you a lot. It's a really boring episode. It's just an every day thing and we don't want to make a big deal of it because we expect to go to 200 so it's a really boring 100th episode. No, it's a really interesting episode. We're calling it our Rear Window episode. It's a little different in that Castle is stuck. He hurt his patella. I think it was his patella or his knee cap. He's stuck in his apartment and he's going a little stir crazy and starts imagining crimes being committed around him and he sends us on a bunch of wild goose chases. Should it be geese chases?  Anyway, so he calls us and annoys us about some things. It turns out that the murder is a lot more curious and hits a little closer to home than we thought. So that's your tease on episode 100.

Anything you can tease us about the finale?
I don't know anything about the finale. I wish I could tease you. I don't even know where we're headed. It's funny, we've had so many big episodes this season particularly in this back nine that we've had this year. The two-parter was big. Oh they're going to kidnap Alexis. Holy crap! And then comes around this episode for me, "The Wild Rover" where there's so much big stuff and I'm put in peril and all of these things. What can we do now? I don't know. I assume we're going to go back to Beckett's mother's murder and maybe the stakes are higher now that they're together. I don't know. We'll see. It's pure speculation. Usually I'm much more curious about this. I'm like, where are we headed? Where is this going? But I'm sure Andrew Marlowe has a great idea about where this is headed and probably has something shocking and surprising in store for our audience…and for the cast because we don't know yet. 

C. Orlando was a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow her on Twitter.

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Castle Season 5 Episode 18 Quotes

Talk about death by chocolate.

Castle

Beckett: Do you want to grab a bite to eat?
Castle: Actually, it's not food I'm craving.

Castle Season 5 Episode 18 Music

  Song Artist
Angels & Devils The Mahones iTunes
Express Yourself Stray Palace iTunes
Changed Stray Palace iTunes