Harrison Ford served as a slight inspiration for Nathan Fillion’s Firefly performance. The actor once commented on the similarities between his Firefly role and Ford’s own space cowboy.
Nathan Fillion revealed how Harrison Ford inspired him for ‘Firefly’
Nathan Fillion’s Firefly captain Malcolm Reynolds drew a few comparisons to Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. Like the Star Wars anti-hero, Malcolm Reynolds didn’t set out to be a hero and save the universe. Reynolds was a part of a space crew, all looking to get by and make ends meet. It was one of the many aspects Fillion found about playing the character.
“He is heroic in a way, but in the same way as single parents are heroic,” Fillion once told Games Radar. “Single parents — parents in general — are heroes! You take a single parent, they’re doing it by themselves, they’ve got no help, it’s just them, with their family, holding it together, so there’s Malcolm Reynolds. ‘What, they got stolen? Somebody kidnapped them? Not my family!’ He goes, and he gets them. That’s what a parent does; that’s what people do — they keep their family together. There’s nothing heroic about them. He’s just doing what he knows to be right.”
“You take such a fantastical character, you put him in the upper echelon of adventurers, the captain of a spaceship in the future, and you make him an everyman,” Fillion added. “He’s just the same as everybody else. He’s not noble, 100%, and amazing 100%. He’s… just a cheap fighter, he’s poor, he’s hungry, he’s desperate!”
Given these traits, it might be easy to see why some compared Fillion’s Firefly captain to Han Solo. But the comparisons might not have been completely without weight, as Fillion asserted he did borrow from the actor during his performances.
“You know, I can certainly see the similarities between the two, and I can certainly say all my best stuff I’ve stolen from Harrison Ford,” Fillion said. “Like I’ve said before, Malcolm Reynolds resonates with me. He satisfies something deep inside, and I’m just glad to see that I’m not the only one.”
Joss Whedon once quipped that Nathan Fillion could be the next Harrison Ford
Fillion was very grateful to Firefly creator Joss Whedon, who took a chance on the actor. Whedon frequently spoke highly of Fillion both as an actor and as a person. When Whedon and Fillion first met, the two immediately clicked. It led to a professional friendship in which the two frequently collaborated.
“Joss and I chatted for 45 minutes; it was just a meeting,” Fillion once told Backstage about their first meeting. “We talked about the show, we talked about work ethic, we talked about family, we talked about goals. Then he said, ‘I’d love for you to come in and audition for this role,’ and then he brought me to the network and there we go. And when Firefly was canceled, he said, ‘Come and do the last five episodes of Buffy for me.’ And then, of course, Dr. Horrible.”
After working with Fillion for so long, Whedon quipped that he could easily follow in Ford’s footsteps.