The hit ABC drama Castle has returned for its third season and Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) is hurt by the fact that she hasn’t heard a word from Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), since he left town with his ex-wife to finish writing his latest novel. So, when he unexpectedly stumbles into her crime scene, he quickly learns what his actions have cost him.

During a recent interview, actress Stana Katic revealed that she loves playing someone she sees as a female superhero, how she loves the physicality of the role and that she enjoys getting to show Beckett’s sexier side. Check out what she had to say after the jump:

Question: How will Beckett’s decision not to declare her feelings to Castle change her in Season 3?

Stana: He doesn’t even call her. He’s back in town, doing a book signing, and he doesn’t even call her. How do you not call her, especially after he said he’d be back in the Fall? That’s how it affects her.

Why was the decision made to have Beckett let loose a little and be more sexy?

Stana: Any girl that’s in a professional setting has to have a certain amount of decorum, but there’s always a different story going on, when she goes home. That’s probably what really attracts Castle. There are moments when she says, “Maybe there’s a bit more Nikki Heat in me than you know.” That’s always sitting behind a gate and, hopefully, we continue to find more opportunities to let him peak in on those kinds of spaces. Even if we get a chance to go and see her doing her thing on the side, without having the perspective of a character from the precinct, I think those would be really fabulous opportunities to see Kate’s wild side. And then, you learn stuff like she studied in Russia, and she can quick-change and become a crazy, amazing super-spy. That stuff shows you the edge that she has in the background.

What do you like most about Beckett?

Stana: I think she’s like a female superhero on television, and we’re slowly exploring more and more of that. She’s got a tremendous amount of integrity. I’ve gotten to do more stunts lately, which is really cool. They’re letting us show more of her sexier side. She’s complex, and she’s also flawed. She’s not a perfect character, so there’s a lot to play in that.

What’s it like to work with this cast?

Stana: It’s fun. We work long hours. We work 14 to 17 hours a day, so you have to have fun. It’s really nice to be able to work with a group of people like this. Our crew is from The X-Files, and they’ve been working together for decades. It’s a long-standing team of people that have a real close-knit familial and familiar vibe on set, which makes it easy.

With all the physicality involved with playing Beckett, are you comfortable with all that stuff now?

Stana: I’ve always been comfortable with it. I love it. I have a lot of brothers. It’s easy for me to do physical stuff. I had to survive. I really love it, and I’d love to do more of it. I want to do action films. I want to go and hang off of wires, and jump off of bridges, and hang on bungee chords. I’ve always really loved it.

Do you enjoy hand-to-hand or using the big weapons more?

Stana: Hand-to-hand ‘cause it’s a dance and it’s beautiful when you get it. I just did this film with Richard Gere, where they’re doing a lot of Systema, which is a crazy Russian martial arts form that the KGB was doing on the secret. What you do is disarm a person and kill them without anyone around you knowing. It looks like you’re just touching someone, but in actuality, they know all these crazy parts of a person that can kill you, never to return.

If you could play any superhero in a movie, who would it be?

Stana: Rob Bowman, who’s one of our executive producers, directed Elektra and I didn’t know that. Elektra was the first character ever that I auditioned for. I was so new that I drove down from Toronto to Chicago to read for the role, at 18 or 19. I thought that was a really neat piece of kismet. And then, Frank Miller drew me as Elektra and gave me his personal edition of the Elektra comic book that he had drawn. The new Wonder Woman is pretty bad-ass. I’d love to play Talia al Ghul, who I played in the new Batman Asylum for the video game. I’d love to play her. I think Liam Neeson is so killer, and I’d love to play opposite Christian Bale and the rest. I read Scarlett recently, and that was a killer comic book. The Black Widow was pretty rockin’. There is a big list of killer chicks that are just rockin’.

CASTLE returns for Season 3 on ABC on September 20th