Both Emily Deschanel (John's ex-wife Sarah) and Nathan Fillion (John) formerly played in serial crime dramas as novelists who end up helping law enforcement based on their knowledge base and also got married to members of law enforcement that they worked closely with as consultants (Fillion as Richard Castle, a writer shadowing the police for research, in Castle (2009); Deschanel as Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who wrote crime novels on the side and examined murder victims for clues, in Bones (2005)).