NEED TO KNOW
Nathan Fillion isn’t ready to leave The Rookie yet — or maybe ever.
The hit police drama is currently in production for its eighth season, and Fillion, 54, couldn’t love playing Officer John Nolan more. During a conversation with PEOPLE for his feature in this year’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, the actor explains what he thinks his life would look like without the show and why he doesn’t know if he’ll ever fully step away.
“I’d either teach acting — particularly how to act through distraction — or I would do, like, a sunset booze cruise where everybody would still have to call me captain,” he jokes, noting that he has more passion about the art of the job than the fame that comes with it. “I’m so fortunate to do what I love to do, which is acting and telling stories, and then there’s this whole other component to it that is so bizarre, the celebrity part of it.”
“I like to think that this whole industry is a bit wacky and zany,” he adds.
John Russo
For more Sexiest Man Alive content, including cover star Jonathan Bailey, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
But that doesn’t mean he foresees the rest of his life being just as “wacky” as it is now. At some point in the future, he admits he’d like to find a slower pace of life.
“I want to have a place on a beach, someplace tropical, where birds are always singing and I can hear the ocean,” he shares. “I don’t know if I’m going to live there full time, but I would like to have the option to go there all the time.”
While he has no specific timeline, the Superman star says he can see that dream becoming a reality a decade down the line.
“In 10 years, I would like to be just wrapping up The Rookie, maybe handing it off to someone else,” he reveals. “And then spend a soft retirement visiting The Rookie and dabbling in the four to seven Rookie spin-off series that are still going and very, very popular. In the meantime, when I’m not working on those, I would like to be in my beach house.”
Mike Taing/Disney via Getty
For now, Fillion is satisfied with where he is — including the sometimes-chaotic encounters that come with The Rookie’s massive success.
“I’ve been mistaken for a police officer,” he laughs. “When I’m on the job and I’m standing on the street corner, sometimes we’re filming something, and we can’t block the street. So someone will be walking to the sidewalk and I’ll say, ‘Can you just wait there just for one second?’ And the fellow says, ‘Yes, Officer.’ ‘Why would he call me … ? Oh, that’s right!’ So once or twice I’ve been mistaken — and I didn’t correct him.”
Interactions with fans (in or out of uniform) is one of his favorite parts of working on the long-running series.
“My favorite part is that they always tell me that they’re watching it with their family, that they get together with their friends and this is their show,” Fillion says. “It’s an event that they share. Bringing people together, I think that’s probably one of the best parts of my job.”
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All seven seasons of The Rookie are now streaming on Hulu.
