The Big Picture

• In 'Monsters at Work,' Nathan Fillion voices Johnny J. Worthington III, who was first introduced in the film 'Monsters University.'
• Fillion embraces villains like Johnny, who is CEO of FearCo., married to Claire with two kids, and a flawed character.
• Fillion reflects on his 30-year acting career, appreciates long-running projects like 'The Rookie,' and talks about his upcoming role as Green Lantern.

Inspired by the Disney and Pixar movie Monsters, Inc., the animated series Monsters at Work follows Tylor Tuskmon (voiced by Ben Feldman), a monster who dreams of being a Scarer at a time when the city of Monstropolis is shifting its focus to children’s laughter. In Season 2, Tylor must decide whether to continue his journey as a Jokester alongside his idols Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) and James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (voiced by John Goodman) or be drawn in by an offer from Johnny J. Worthington III (voiced by Nathan Fillion) and FearCo.

The character of Johnny J. Worthington III was first introduced in Monsters University, where he was the top Scare student and the president of Roar Omega Roar fraternity. Now, in Season 2 of Monsters at Work, he’s the CEO of FearCo., husband to Claire Wheeler-Worthington (voiced by Aubrey Plaza), and father to their two kids, while still stirring up trouble as a Monsters Universe antagonist.

During this one-on-one interview with Collider, Fillion talked about why he loves the Monsters Universe, how it’s a blessing to have long-running acting projects like voicing a Monsters character or being picked up for the seventh season of his ABC series The Rookie, embracing the villainous decisions of Johnny J. Worthington III, why being flawed is more fun than being perfect, and the fun of taking this journey with an animated character. He also discussed his long-standing collaborative relationship with James Gunn, how he found out that he’d be a part of the new DC Universe, and why he’s well-suited to play this version of Green Lantern.

Collider: I appreciate you talking to me about this. I take any excuse that I can get to talk about characters from the Monsters world because I love them all.

NATHAN FILLION: Thank you for that. I wish I could take more credit. I, too, love to indulge in anything Disney and Pixar. When you’re telling a story one pixel at a time, and they’re painstaking over it, there are no details left untouched. It’s incredible what they come up with. The level of imagination that they are tapping into, they’re such talented people.

Nathan Fillion is Still Voicing His 'Monsters' Universe Character, More Than 10 Years Later

When you were cast as this character in Monsters University, did you think it would just be a one-off job? Were you hoping to get to voice him again, or does it surprise you that, more than 10 years later, you’re doing Monsters at Work?

FILLION: First of all, yes, I thought it would be just a one-off thing. Second, I couldn’t believe I was getting the opportunity to do so. It was my dream to do so. These projects really light my imagination on fire. To be a very small part of the process and get to see some of what they’re doing behind the scenes, it doesn’t take any magic away from the project, that’s for sure. It just makes you more impressed with what they’re doing, because if you see how much work goes into it. You always think, “Yeah, this is a one-off. I've got this.” You never think to yourself, “Maybe it’ll be possible,” but people will say that it’s possible. When you do a guest star on a television show, sometimes they’ll say, “There’s a chance that character will come back.” The chances are slim that the character will ever come back, but sometimes it happens, and when it does, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Is it equally surprising that you’re here, six seasons later on a TV series called The Rookie, where you’re playing that character? When you started that show, were you ever worried that there would only be a certain length of time for how long you could do that show?

FILLION: That’s a question that we get a lot. I always tell people, “Listen, don’t get too caught up in the title. It’s a metaphor for life, not a position in the police force.” It’s not about being a rookie police officer. It’s about being a rookie at life. It’s about starting fresh and starting over with nothing to go on. It’s about having the courage to drop everything and start again. That’s what it’s about, as far as being a rookie, so I’m not too troubled by that. But being able to play a character in his university days, and then that same character, now that he’s the CEO of a giant power company, you start to feel like you’re on a journey together. I’m not the young guy I was at one point, with the grey in the beard now. It feels comfortable and strangely apropos.

You’re voicing this character that you started voicing more than 10 years ago, and your TV series, which has had more than 100 episodes, has been picked up for a seventh season. Do you ever stop to think back to the times, as an actor, where you didn’t know if you would get to continue being an actor?

FILLION: I think about it constantly. I look over my career and all the people I’ve worked with, and the list is short when it comes to the people that are still here and rolling along. For a lot of people, it’s an opportunity, and then life takes you in a different direction. I just had my 30th anniversary of being in the entertainment industry. For 30 years, I’ve been paying my bills with this one job, but it hasn’t always been easy. I was very fortunate, right off the top. Right out of the gate, I was having a great time. But I’ve experienced stretches of my career where I was out of money, and I was thinking about whose basement I was gonna be living in, calling up people that I used to work with and saying, “I need a job.” I think about my blessings constantly. If there’s one thing that hardship will teach you, it’s appreciation for when it’s not hard.

Nathan Fillion Leans into the Flaws of His ‘Monsters at Work’ Character

You’ve said that your first impression of your Monsters character was that he was a handsome fellow who looks like he would be popular, but that he could also be a jerk. Did you want to make him more than that in the beginning, or did you just want to lean into that and embrace it? He feels like he’s evolved a little, but he also feels like he’s living in his own world that he boosts himself up in.

FILLION: As a younger man, I always wanted my characters to be liked because I wanted to be liked. The insecurity of being an actor, you wanna be liked, so you want your characters to be liked. I thought that meant being perfect and having a perfect character, but there’s really no such thing. People are flawed and characters are flawed, and playing flaws is so rewarding. It is such a gold mine of choices for how and where to take the story. Harrison Ford once said, “Making a choice in acting is easy, making the right choice is hard.” If anything, I love leaning into flaws. For Johnny Worthington III, one of his flaws is that he doesn’t know how flawed he is. He’s caught up in family responsibilities and living up to his father’s memory. He’s got his own motivations, but it doesn’t make him a great guy. The villain of the story never thinks he’s the villain of the story, he thinks he’s the hero. I enjoy those flaws and those personality quirks that make you think, “Oh, you’re not such a nice guy, are you? You think you are, but your scale is off.”

In his defense, he just has a different point of view.

FILLION: As do we all. But I think you could fairly say that there are other characters who have kinder hearts.

What was your reaction to seeing Johnny’s family, the kids, and their adorable little dog?

FILLION: Part of what I love about the whole Monsters universe is, if you remember watching the Flintstones when we were kids, they’d use the disposal and you’d pull that curtain under the sink and see a little saber tooth pig under there eating all the scraps, or taking a photo when there’s a little bird in there with a chisel that’s making the photo, that level of imagination always really tickled me. That is everything in the Monsters universe. So, anytime you can discover a little bit about a character in their backstory, with their family or the house that they live in, the level of detail and imagination that these guys can take it to is so very rewarding. It’s a bigger payoff than would be typical.

I love that he’s such a very snazzy dresser, especially when it comes to a collared shirt under some sort of sweater or outerwear.

FILLION: Yeah, his outer shell doesn’t bely his inner self. What’s dangerous about him and what’s maybe not so great about him is that he’s such a nice package on the outside.

'Monsters at Work's Johnny J. Worthington III is Defined By the Choices He Makes

How would you say his style represents him? Did you always know how he would sound, especially after seeing him?

FILLION: I remember seeing a drawing of him when I first started doing the voiceovers. They said, “Here’s what your character is gonna look like.” I remember looking at the script and doodling little versions of him with expressions on his face, just trying to imagine and scribble it out. While I was doing the actual recording, someone leaned over and said, “Did you draw these? Hey, guys, look at what he did.” They were making a fuss. I think what tells me the most about Johnny are his choices and motivations. What motivates him? Why is he doing this? He has important reasons for why he’s doing everything he’s doing. He’s got his own problems and his own responsibilities, and when he makes a choice, he’s a fearful person who’s afraid of failure and afraid of not living up to his father’s example. He doesn’t wanna be in the shadows. He doesn’t wanna be little. He’s got a lot riding on this stuff and it makes him a little bit desperate. It makes him make bad choices. He’s weak, in that way. It takes a lot of strength to be strong enough to be kind. It’s easy to be mean. It’s easy to be uncaring. It’s when you open yourself up that is the real challenge. It was those kinds of choices that he would make, that really informed me as to what kind of a monster he is.

When you’re doing the voice performance for a character like this, that you’re revisiting at different points over the course of 10 years, but he’s animated, he doesn’t change his age unless he’s drawn that way. Do you feel like you’re always discovering something new or different with him, every time you voice the character, or does it feel like revisiting and catching up with an old friend?

FILLION: It’s a little of both. If I was just watching this program, I’d be learning about these characters as we go along. You learn through watching people’s choices, and that’s the same thing with these characters. I just get to learn it a little quicker than the audience because I get ahold of the script a little earlier. You see their journey and you see what’s important to them and what matters to them. In his heart, this is where he lives. If that’s the end-all be-all, everything you do has to push into that goal. I think we constantly learn about people and about characters through their choices, so I’m learning right along with the audience. We’ve been through a lot with these guys, through incredibly poignant moments of their careers, back to their schooling, the things that shaped them, what brought them together as incredible friends. And now, later on in life, we see where they’ve come to, and we see them passing the torch to the next generation as they come up. That’s real life. It’s the circle of Monster life.

What Was Nathan Fillion's Reaction To Learning He'd Be Playing Green Lantern in the New DC Universe?

You have been friends and collaborators with James Gunn for a long time. What was it like when he came to you and said, “How would you like to play a Green Lantern?” Was that how that conversation went?

FILLION: We were actually at the premiere party after Suicide Squad and he was in a huge crowd of people. We saw each other in the crowd and I congratulated him, “Oh, my God, that was amazing. It’s so great.” He goes, “Hey, did Peter [Safran] tell you what we’ve got for you next?” I said, “No, he hasn’t said.” He looked around like someone was gonna be listening. We were in a throng of people, but he leaned over and said, “You’re gonna be Guy Gardner.” In my mind, it just says, “This guy is just firing on different cylinders and he’s taking things in different directions, and that’s what makes his stuff so satisfying and so fun to watch.” He’s got different ideas and they are so worthy.

I used to collect comic books. I had a comic book rack in my room that you could spin. It had all these pockets and you could spin the rack. You used to go to the drug store and buy comics, and they used to have the rack. I remembered Guardians of the Galaxy and that I couldn’t relate to it in any way. I just couldn’t get into it for any reason. Spider-Man held something for me. Batman had something that I really liked inside. The X-Men, I couldn’t get enough. But Guardians? Eh. And that movie moved me. Those movies make me feel things. And not just crying, but feeling joy and feeling connections and feeling the love. It’s about family. It’s so much about family. I just think that’s what James Gunn does best. He says he’s thinking of something else that we’re all thinking of, and he just makes it so much better, and he makes the things that matter to us all.

It also seems like that would not be one of those projects that would feel so much like a one-off because there could be movies and TV shows, and you could be voicing the character in video games. There could be a lot of things that come with signing on to play that character.

FILLION: Yes, indeed. What a mensch. He’s an amazing human.

For someone like you, who was such a fan of comic books, does your brain just explode with the possibility that you could be living with a character like that for a while?

FILLION: Constantly. The worst thing to happen to someone in my position, as an actor, is to be forgotten, and people like James Gunn keep doing things that make it impossible for people to forget that we’re out here and we’re telling stories. He’s on an incredible journey and he keeps turning around and saying to me, “Come on, let’s go!”

Without saying something that would get either one of us in trouble, why do you feel like you’re well-suited to play this version of Green Lantern?

FILLION: The reality is that people have flaws. We all have quirks. We all have vulnerabilities. You could have the most wonderful family, but be like, “Oh, my God, my dad drives me nuts. He’s got this one thing.” Everybody’s got something, and I love to lean into those faults and flaws. It’s what makes people real and what allows audiences to relate, because we all know what that is. We all have our own. We witness it in other people. Guy Gardner is 90% flawed and doesn’t care. That’s one of his flaws. I think there’s a real freedom in playing that. So, for a guy who likes to play flaws and flawed people, Guy Gardner is a gold mine.

Monsters at Work is available to stream on Disney+. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Disney+