Tonight’s the night, folks!  Tonight, Kevin Ryan and Jennifer Scout Duffy-O’Malley are tying the knot on CASTLE!  The official description goes a little something like, “When Castle and Beckett investigate the death of a ladies’ man, a twist in the case may disrupt Ryan’s wedding.”  I wouldn’t expect it any other way on this show!

To celebrate tonight’s all new, and what sounds like fun-filled, episode of CASTLE (called “Till Death Do Us Part” of course), I spent some time chatting with the man behind Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever) about how this wedding differs from his real life wedding to “Jenny” (his wife Juliana plays his gal on the show), how the wedding impacts Esposito and Lanie, Castle and Beckett, and what else is coming up on the show!

I’m looking forward to the return of CASTLE.  We’ve been without it for too long [laughs]!
It’s that gap time where people are like, “Did they cancel the show?”  And no, we’re just on hiatus [laughs]!

Things on CASTLE don’t always seem to go off without issue, and we have the wedding episode tonight for your character – how is this not just a typical wedding episode?  How is this typical CASTLE?
First of all, with any classic CASTLE episode, it’s got a really good writer and a really good director.  David Grae, who’s been with us from the very beginning and has written some of my favorite episodes.  He wrote the episode, and Jeff Bleckner, who has directed a bunch of our episodes now, he was the director for it.  It was that team back together.  They were the same team who did “Nikki Heat” last year; the Laura Prepon episode where she came on.  There was so much fun things that were there.  David writes these great scripts. They’re funny.  He always gives actors things to do because he used to be an actor himself, and Jeff Bleckner is a nice sort of actor’s director.  I think it’s got the elements of a good classic CASTLE episode because there’s fun that happens.  I think a lot of people like to watch our show because of that fun.  There’s a lot of places, there’s a lot of romance and comedy with this episode.  This isn’t one of our darker episodes [laughs].  This is sort of the romance and comedy aspect of I think something that we do very well on the show.  This episode is going to satisfy that.  I don’t know that we’ve had a real fun, fun episode for a while.  I think the audience is going to like it.  There’s some physical comedy stuff that happens and it’s nice to do that every once in a while, and shift gears.  I think the audience is going to like it.

"Jenny and Kevin" aka Juliana and Seamus Dever

You mentioned the show has the darker episodes, and the lighter episodes.  CASTLE is definitely a show that handles both well, and can often put both in an episode, but I’m glad that the wedding episode is not going to be one of the darker ones [laughs].
[Laughs] It’s nice isn’t it?  It’s one of those things with murder.  It can be serious or it can be…funny?  I guess [laughs].  I’m amazed constantly at the flexibility that our show has been allowed and that the audience has been willing to make that leap with us.  You know, on a procedural, they can either be straightforward dry procedurals with comedy here and there, but very seldom are they something that combines three or four different genres into one show.  I’m constantly amazed how we’re able to go back and forth with that.

I bet it’s fun for you and Juliana to get to play at going through this again.  How different is this wedding of Kevin and Jenny for you versus the real life one?
Well, there’s not a murder involved in my wedding, or there wasn’t one in real life [laughs].  The budget’s much bigger.  Let’s see…It’s fun because there are a lot of the same things – you’re remembering that you’re making a decision, and everyone’s nervous for the big day and making sure that everything’s planned.  There are so many things to cross off your list.  You’re making decisions about everything and you’re tired of making decisions.  You’re thinking about how everyone’s going to be there, and you’re going to say these words in front of everyone, and you want to look your best, so it’s a big day to lead up to.  So there’s a lot of that.  Remembering what it’s like to get everything together at the last minute for everything to come off.  It was fun because it’s always great to have Juliana around, to work with us.  She gets along with everyone in the cast really well, so they’re always so sweet to her on set.  It was a lot of fun, because we get to dress up, we get to look nice.  We don’t always get to do that on CASTLE.  We look nice, but to see everyone in tuxes, and the ladies in gowns.  It was a lot of fun to shoot that, as well.

We’ve seen Kevin and Jenny’s relationship impact the other core relationships on the show.  How does their getting married impact everyone else?  How is everyone else approaching this wedding?
Weddings are one of those things where I think a lot of people take stock of their own feelings, or their own situation, or their own reflections.  I know, in my real life wedding, there were like, 3 or 4 couples who went to our wedding who ended up breaking up after that [laughs], in real life.  It’s weird.  It happened like, within a month of our wedding.  All these people that were together, all of a sudden weren’t [laughs].  I think weddings cause people to sort of stop and take stock, and it’s certainly no different with this.  All of a sudden their friend is getting married.  Esposito is trying to figure out how he stands with Lanie, and she is bringing a +1.  He finds out that it’s some doctor, and he’s trying to score a really hot +1, and has difficulty getting his +1 together.  And Castle and Beckett are doing the same thing.  It’s one of those things that causes, I think, the people around you to reflect on where they’re headed, and the single people in their life are thinking, “god I’d like to be in that situation.”  So I think that’s what it represents for everyone around Kevin Ryan; everyone else is trying to figure out how they feel about each other.  I haven’t seen the episode yet, but I think Castle and Beckett, I’m pretty sure that there are some things that they played that caused them to think about each other.

What can you tease beyond this episode, and what we’ll see for a some episodes later this season?
All I know it to about episode 16.  I can say that there’s an episode coming up that involves the Mayor of New York.  The Mayor is sort of in jeopardy and involved in the case that we’re pursuing.  It could potentially cause Castle to not be around us anymore because he’s sort of hanging there only at the good graces of the Mayor.  That’s an interesting episode.  There’s another one coming up that’s a lot of fun to shoot.  It was our film noir episode.  We got to do some fantasy stuff, and shoot all these scenes where were imagining the cast back in 1947.  Castle finds a detective’s journal, and sort of imagines himself as a private detective, a gumshoe, sort of a Raymond Chandler character.  It was sort of an opposites thing – we all got to play characters that were in the 40s that were sort of opposite.  I get to play an Irish mobster, so that was a lot of fun.  We’re dressed up in all these cool sort of film noir costumes.  It was a nice departure, fantasy episode.  I’m always amazed that we got to shoot that in the 4th season.  I thought tat was something that would happen in the 7th or 8th season, so I think fans will really like that because it’s such a departure from what we’ve been doing.  And then there’s the two parter coming up with Jennifer Beals, and it is probably going to be a big one.  I read the script [the other day] for the first episode, for episode 15, and it’s got a nice cliffhanger at the end there that people are going to want to tune in the next week.  There is some interesting relationship stuff with Castle and Beckett and a new sort of wrinkle in their relationship.  It’s going to be big.  It’s directed by one of our best directors, Brian Spicer, so there will be explosions I’m sure, and car crashes, so it will be neat to see that one come about!

Tune into CASTLE tonight, and be sure to head over to ABC’s CASTLE site for pictures, recaps, and full episodes!

Also, follow @seamusdever on Twitter for live tweeting of the event on January 9th!