Nathan Fillion looks ahead to ‘wrapping up’ The Rookie and his new life afterward

Nathan Fillion already knows what life after The Rookie wraps will look like for him, even if it is several years away! The Superman actor has been playing the beloved Officer John Nolan on the hit ABC drama for seven seasons, since 2018. Season eight of the show, which in a first, started filming in Prague, will finally return January 6, and it has the leading star reflecting on what life might be like when it’s time to say goodbye to the show.

Speaking with People about what he might do when The Rookie comes to and end, he said: “I’d either teach acting, particularly how to act through distraction,” before joking: “Or I would do, like, a sunset booze cruise where everybody would still have to call me captain,” adding that he has a lot more love for the craft than he does for the spotlight.

“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,” he went on, adding: “I like to think that this whole industry is a bit wacky and zany.”

Further looking ahead at a post The Rookie life, Nathan said he envisions having “a place on a beach, someplace tropical, where birds are always singing and I can hear the ocean,” and that: “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.”

“In 10 years, I would like to be just wrapping up The Rookie, maybe handing it off to someone else,” he then revealed of his The Rookie timeline. “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.”

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The Rookie season eight starts off in Prague, and Nathan, speaking at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 earlier this year about the difference between filming abroad and in Los Angeles explained how it has become a “double-edged sword” to film in Los Angeles, mainly out in public, due to the popularity of the show. “It is an added extra challenge that people driving by in a car will scream, ‘We love The Rookie,’ and [then we have] cut, go back to the beginning,” he said, though emphasized: “I’ll take it, though.”

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He also opened up about how his family members have become just as big fans of the show. “When I first started doing The Rookie, and The Rookie started airing, my youngest niece Jordan said to me, ‘Nathan, you’re finally on a show I like!’ I said, ‘I’ve actually been on TV since before you were born.’ She said, ‘I know.'”

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Showrunner Alexi Hawley said of getting the show over to the Czech Republic: “When I first said, hey, I want to go to Prague for season eight, I got some looks, because that’s not a normal network television thing to do,” before noting: “But I’m like we can absorb it, because we’ve gotten really good at making the show.”