GALO: Last season, Kevin married his girlfriend, Jenny, who is played by your real-life wife, Juliana. What was it like to have her on set and to work alongside her? Are there any perks or downfalls to sharing the screen with your wife?

SD: Well, you know, it’s cool because we get to carpool [laughs]. But we immediately have a rapport. So instead of all the stuff you might see on another show where two people have to get to know each other and build this history, we just took a shortcut. It’s great; there are a lot of things we can just do on impulse because we know each other very well.

GALO: More specially, what was it like to marry your wife a second time? I imagine there was less pressure.

SD: Yeah, there was definitely less pressure. I was pretty sure she was gonna say “I do” [laughs]. For the show, we were at a church and wearing formal wear, which was totally different than our wedding where we were outside and I was wearing a suit and she was in a dress — except she wasn’t in a gown per se and I wasn’t in a tuxedo. So, it was different in those respects. And my real-life family wasn’t there.

GALO: You had a family of extras.

SD: Yeah, really: “Oh, you’re my sister? I didn’t know that.”

GALO: Switching gears, before you were on Castle, you were a staple in the theater industry. In fact, you have starred in over 60 plays and musicals. That sounds exhausting! What was it like to come from the world of stage productions and live theater to a weekly television production?

SD: It’s undoubtedly different. Theater is high commitment and monetarily low comeback. But [what] they both share in common [is] that they’re a labor of passion, and you have to love them because you are going to be spending hours and hours with them. You’re going to be living at the theater or in the studio, so you better love the project you’re in because you are going to be married to it. So, those two different areas have that very much in common.

GALO: In that respect, do you favor one art form over the other?

SD: No, I get different things from them. The live audience in theater is rewarding. The fact on TV is that when you film something, you know that it is going to air and the public is going to see [it]. That is rewarding as well. There are very rewarding aspects to each and you just have to focus on the positives with all of them. With television, you know people will see what you do, but with theater, it is always a constant struggle to get people in the audience to see what you’re working like hell to bring to them. There are different struggles and different rewards, so I favor them evenly.

GALO: Now, when you were in school, you went to Northern Arizona University and Carnegie-Mellon University, but then you attended The Moscow Art Theatre. Why that particular school? Was there an advantage to studying acting abroad?

SD: Every (actor) studies the works of Constantin Stanislavski and I got the opportunity at the theater that Stanislavski created, so I knew I was getting a different understanding of what everybody studies in school. I got a direct line (to Stanislavski’s methods), and a very clear level of education about how to understand those teachings, and I don’t think I would have had that if I had not gone to Moscow and studied with the students of the students of Stanislavski. These are direct lineages and I’m walking around in his theater and seeing his pictures, and it was really about the lessons we got. I had some amazing teachers there, and all of a sudden, things just got a little clearer to me.

GALO: That must have been amazing for an actor looking to learn from the best. And you graduated with a Master’s degree faster than anyone in the school’s history.

SD: Yeah, well, I have four degrees — two Bachelor’s and two Master’s — and that’s ridiculous because you don’t need those to be an actor. I think I did those to satisfy my parents [laughs]. But they really taught me that it’s not about the degrees you have but what you do with them afterward. And I think that is the real lesson of life, and the real world. Once you get out of school, it is about what do you do with that education you get. Fortunately, I stuck to it and I really took my lessons to heart, and I still think about those lessons almost every day.

GALO: Going back to your more present-day endeavors, as Castle heads into the end of its fifth season, what can you tell me about your future plans? Is the cast confident that the show will receive a sixth season?

SD: We feel really good about the sixth season. Our numbers are very strong. In fact, the other day, we had a repeat that aired and it had more total viewers than its competition that aired new episodes. That was crazy! Like I said, I think the show is still growing and our numbers reflect that. I think syndication is really helping, and people are discovering the show on TNT. I mean, it’s hard to miss it. The damn thing clogs up my DVR because it records 20 episodes of Castle on TNT — and that’s not a hyperbole [laughs]. But I think people are seeing the show on TNT and it helps us gain public awareness. We all feel good about another season — no one is really worrying. It would be shocking if we didn’t come back because we are still a really strong show.

GALO: Do you have any plans to step outside the Castle universe in the near future and go back to theater or do some film?

SD: Yeah, I hope so. I hope to do a little of all of that. After Castle is done, I’d love to do another TV show — maybe something of my own. And I’d love to do some films; I’m always auditioning for those. We have a very limited window to work on anything else because Castle shoots nine-and-a-half months out of the year. But I definitely want to do some more theater in the future. Every one of those ideas, I haven’t cancelled any one of those things out in my mind.

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Featured image: pictured: Seamus Dever who stars as Det. Kevin Ryan in ABC’s “Castle.” Photo Credit: Manfred Baumann.