Is ABC staging a Castle-Brothers & Sisters crossover? Not quite, but Castle is borrowing B&S hunk Gilles Marini for a guest spot, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.

Marini will play Tobias Strange, a world-famous magician, who is one of the key suspects in the murder of a New York City magic-shop owner. His episode, titled “Poof, You’re Dead,” is scheduled to air in early 2011.

“Close Encounters of the Murderous Kind” – After a prominent astrophysicist’s body is found in her car — the victim of explosive decompression – Castle jokingly theorizes that perhaps she was killed in the vacuum of outer space. Yet as they delve deeper into the victim’s life, they’re confronted with a succession of evidence that keeps pointing them back to the impossible: Alien Abduction. Henrickson stars as Benny Stryker, a well-known alien abduction expert, and Lovett plays a mysterious government agent intent on shutting down the investigation, on “Castle,” MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15

At the risk of getting way too meta on you, “Castle” just cast an actress to play an actress cast as the character based on Beckett.

EW reports that Laura Prepon (“That ’70s Show”) has been tapped as Natalie Gray, an actress playing Nikki Heat in the film adaptation of Castle’s (Nathan Fillion) book, “Heat Wave.”

And Nikki, we all know, is basically Beckett. So what does Stana Katic think of her character meeting the actress playing the character based on her? (We warned you had to be patient.)

“I think Beckett has kind of gotten used to the glam behind Castle’s life,” Katic says of the show’s upcoming “Heat Wave” storyline. “I know we’ll be shooting a couple of LA episodes, so I think they’ll probably work some cases into that… but meeting the actress playing her, I don’t know how Beckett is going to react.”

Those LA episodes, presumably, being about the characters going to Los Angeles. The show already films there.

Prepon is expected to first appear as Natalie Gray/Nikki Heat in an early 2011 episode.

Source: here

Sneak peeks are up at TV.com for the next episode of Castle, titled “Almost Famous.” They are definitely considered spoilers, so only watch them if you like spoilers. Click here to watch the clips.

Warning: spoilers! Do not read anymore if you don’t want to be spoiled.

Apparently, Castle is about to get a new queen: I’ve learned exclusively that Laura Prepon has just been tapped to play Natalie Gray, the actress who’s been cast as Nikki Heat in the movie version of our hero’s book Heat Wave.

Go ahead and read that again: I realize it’s a lot to take in.

As you know, the author based Nikki on his actual partner in crime-fighting — and obvious true love — Beckett. So you can well imagine the sparks that will fly when, in essence, a second Beckett, this one bearing a striking resemblance to the hot redhead from That ’70s Show, arrives on the scene early next year.

Actually, as you’re imagining the sparks that will fly, why not discuss them below?

Source: EW

Anyone who thinks that the dancing ends on ABC when Tom Bergeron signs off Monday nights should probably take a closer look at the tricky twostep that Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic engage in weekly on “Castle.As choreographed here at Raleigh Studios, the romancemeets- murder-mystery has Fillion’s novelist Richard Castle and Katic’s homicide detective Kate Beckett circling each other, drawing together and drifting apart, their rhythms dictated by the actors’ instincts and by people offscreen who know just how volatile on- screen chemistry can be.

Because, yeah, they’ve seen “Moonlighting.

“When you’re dealing with romantic drama, where you have that tension, you want to make sure you maintain that tension, because that’s part of the fun, but in any real relationship, there are always missed opportunities, there are always moments when you almost come together,” “Castle” creator Andrew W. Marlowe told me during one of several interviews conducted during breaks in filming.

“In doing this dance, we also understand our obligation to the audience, to keep it interesting for them, but not to frustrate them and not to have them feel like they’ve been jerked around,” he said.

So, if you’ve been waiting two seasons now for Castle and Beckett to really get together, read into that what you will, straight from the mouth of the man who may or may not be responsible for last fall’s New York best-seller “Heat Wave,” and its sequel, “Naked Heat,” published by Disney/ABC-owned Hyperion Books.

“The book was written by the ruggedly handsome mystery writer, Richard Castle. I do have to say I worked very closely with him to make sure we were protecting all the elements of the show,” is all Marlowe will say about authorship.

The truth is, tension, sexual or otherwise, wasn’t much in evidence on the day I visited “Castle,” where the cast was still basking in the glow of a visit to San Diego Comic-Con – an event where former “Firefly” star Fillion, in particular, is regarded as something of a rock star.

Fillion, whose work on producer Joss Whedon’s “Firefly,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the online musical “Dr. Horrible” makes him a prominent figure in the “Whedonverse,” doesn’t mind at all that his sci-fi fans seem to have followed him to a different genre.

“I call Joss Whedon fans … ‘gold-ticket audiences,’ because it doesn’t seem to matter what I do, they’re always there,” said the actor. “They’re always excited, they’re always supportive. They’re always loyal,” he said.

The first lead to be cast – executive producer Laurie Zaks said that the actor “read the script very early in our casting process and called us and said, ‘I love this part,’” and after meeting him, “we knew it was right” – Fillion said that he recognized something of himself in the Castle character.

“He’s living in his imagination every day,” Fillion said. “He’s creating from his mind, he’s writing, he’s researching, he’s very much about the book and the printed page. And now, all of the sudden, he’s on the forefront of murder investigations, so now every day is a field trip to this guy. And he loves life, he’s having a great time.

“That’s my real life. I wanted to be an actor and I was watching TV and movies and I never thought it’d be possible to be in the little box on the wall with the action and the guns and the spaceships and stuff.

“But now this is my real life, and I’m lucky. My worst day is a fantastic day. I’m living the dream. And I saw that in Castle. He’s having a ball and … I just love the way he wears his joy on his sleeve.

Source: here

Warning: spoilers!

Question: Can I have some scoop on Castle? —Lori
Ausiello: A pivotal couple will break things off in the near future, and I can confirm it’s either Gina and Castle or Beckett and this guy. Elsewhere, a new — and rather surprising — interoffice romance will ignite in January.

I can’t remember if I’ve already posted about the PCA on the site or not, but I’m going to do it again, even if I did. Make sure that you vote for the TV Guide Cover, but also vote for Castle for the People’s Choice Awards. You can vote for Castle for Favorite TV Crime Drama here. Then, you can vote for Nathan Fillion here for Favorite TV Crime Fighter. Or, you can do what I did and in the ‘other’ box, write in Stana Katic, because she is also a TV Crime Fighter and I believe she should have been nominated as well. Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay were both nominated for Law and Order: SVU, so why not both Nathan and Stana for Castle? Either way, be sure to vote for our favorite show!

If you love Castle like we do and you’d like to see them on the cover of TV Guide magazine, please vote for the show here, as many times as you can per day, as the contest is ending on November 1st. Rumor has it that we’re nowhere near first place, and that we’re actually in fourth. See here for more details. Hopefully we can turn this around in the final few days of voting. I know Castle fans are very passionate, so vote your big, passionate hearts out. Castle definitely deserves this honor!