Actor James Roday, whose “heightened observational skills” help him solve crimes as Sean Spencer on USA’s Psych sounds off on his super sleuth character, his recent appendectomy and missing grits. The actor also talks about returning to his stage roots with the Off Broadway play, Extinction.

Actor James Roday stopped by to talk about his role as Shawn Spencer in the hit comedy series Psych and the new season, which kicked off on Wednesday.

The show follows Shawn (Roday), a crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department. His heightened observational skills and impressive detective instincts allow him to convince people that he is psychic.

Roday is a Texas native, who studied theatre at New York University and started off acting in a number of theatrical productions, before making the switch to film with roles in Rolling Kansas and Beerfest. He also appeared in the big-screen adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard as Billy Prickett.

Psych airs Wednesdays at 10pm on the USA Network. For more information, visit usanetwork.com/series/psych.

James Roday, the star of USA’s Psych, says his show is the perfect hybrid of traditional TV crime-solving and off-the-wall goofball comedy.

He’s not satisfied, though, because there’s still one thing missing: He desperately wants David Bowie to do an episode.

“That’s my stock answer to every question regarding who I’d like to have come on the show, who I’d like to have sing our theme song, who I’d like to meet for coffee in a completely unrelated, non-Psych atmosphere,” Roday says, his tongue only partly in cheek.

“I would want it to be Bowie so I could hang out with Bowie. And I would actually request that he would come as his character from Labyrinth.”

Psych — in which Roday plays a phony psychic detective, a wisecracking slacker whose actual gift is extraordinary observational skills taught by his policeman father — returns from a winter break at 9 p.m. Wednesday, the show’s new home after three and a half seasons on Fridays.

Alas, no Bowie yet. But Roday, a 30-year-old San Antonio native, did hang out with World Wrestling Entertainment star John Cena while filming the return episode. Given that he’s a lifelong wrestling fan, it was almost as good.

We chatted with Roday last week.

With Monk no longer in production, Psych is the network’s longest-running original show. How does that make you feel?

I feel older. And my knees feel older. It’s a testament, I think, to the sort of little-engine-that-could mentality that we’ve had from the very beginning with this show. That we’ve sort of stuck around long enough to be anybody’s flagship show feels good for us.

Click to continue reading »

The other day I had the distinct pleasure of talking with one of the stars of USA’s hit show Psych, James Roday. I was able to ask him a couple questions to help us gear up for the Psych season premiere on Wednesday.

How’s it going?

James Roday (JR): What’s up Martin, how’re you doing man?

I’m pretty good. I was hoping you would tell us a little about Extinction, it’s opening next month in Manhattan right?

JR: Dude that’s true, that’s awesome. Thank you for mentioning that. And it is sort of, it does come back to Psych actually. It’s a play that I did in Los Angeles opposite Michael Weston who played Adam Hornstock, Esq., in Cloudy Chance of Murder. And Amanda Detmer who played Ciaobella Masterson in Black and Time, Crime of Fashion.

And the play is moving off Broadway to the Cherry Lane Theater starting next month and Dule Hill, my generous co-star has also joined the team as a producer. So there’s Psych all over this thing and it opens on February 17 and it’s a limited engagement, it’ll run through the middle of March and possibly extend to the end of March if people are actually coming to see the play. But thank you so much for mentioning that.

That’s Awesome! So James, in the fall finale there was a scene with Juliet and Gus in the Psych office where she asks Gus how he thought Abigail and Shawn’s relationship was going and Gus responded with “he didn’t know”. If someone, besides Juliette obviously, were to ask Shawn the same question, how do you think he would answer?

JR: Well since it’s still pretty new to Shawn I think he would probably say that it’s… it’s going okay. I think the fallacy there would be that he would say that it was going okay if she had just broken up with him as well… (at this point James got a little fumbly, hmm… wonder why that is) because he’s… I don’t think he would realize that that… that that means that things are rocky. So you know… I think… you know… it’s a pretty semi-fluid kind of relationship that he’s just sort of going along with and… and… we’ll see… I mean I think he’s… he’s one of those guys that might have to have an anvil dropped on his head to be like (adopts a confused tone) “What, we’re done, really? I thought we were doing great.” So we’ll see. We’ll see and I say that as if I don’t know even though I do know. But I’ll just say that we’ll see.

source: smallscreenscoop.com