'Psych' star James Roday

Psych is a show meant to be enjoyed with some pineapple-derived foodstuff in hand, seeing as (according to the pineapple references made every episode) it must be the favorite fruit of somebody in production. They certainly appeal to the main character, Shawn Spencer (James Roday), a hyper-observant fake psychic who, along with his assistant and best friend Burton "Gus" Guster (Dulé Hill), works as an official consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department and gets into as much trouble as possible. The second half of the third season has returned, and I recently got to talk with James Roday by phone about the upcoming episodes and the amount of effort put into the various hijinks sprinkled very liberally throughout the show. Enjoy.

Hello?
Hello.

Hey, it’s great to meet you. How are you?
I’m good. Good morning.

Good morn—oh, right, where you are it’s, like, six in the morning.
It is. It’s dawn. It’s dawn.

That’s insane. So, new episodes start today.
It’s true.

Tell us some of the settings we’re gonna see.
Well, tonight’s is at the aquarium. It’s all about the aquarium and funny, fuzzy aquatic life.

I’ve gotta say my favorite episode so far is the one where you crashed a telenovela.
Yeah. That one was a lot of fun. And we didn’t have to move out on stages, which made it even cooler. We all had a lot more energy that episode.

Speaking of which, I heard Rachel Leigh Cook [who recently guest starred as a potential love interest for Shawn] is returning. Is this true?
This is true. She’s coming back to reprise her role. Same role. It would be weird if she were playing a different role, so we kept it the same.

Awesome. Is there going to be jealousy between her and Jules O’Hara?
Yeah, I think they’ve got a little goin’ for her. We’re just trying to mix things up a bit and change the energy and keep things as fresh as we possible can. It’s tough when you have one of those “will they or won’t they?” relationships [like that between Shawn and Jules] in your show because it’s like, “Wow. How can we keep this going year after year after year?”

Yeah, if you resolve it too soon you’ll have to bring a kid on.
Yeah, or something like that. So we’ll try this instead.

Sounds good! What about Gus? Is he going to get any action, like, at all?
It’s… I’m not gonna lie to you; it’s not going to happen this batch of episodes. But we’ve made a concerted effort to get him some action starting next season. We’ve been lucky enough to have been given a fourth season, so when we get started on that it’s one of the things on the board: “Give Gus some ass.” That’s on the board and you can look forward to that next summer.

Awesome. I’m sure Dulé Hill was happy about that.
He’s very happy. It’s a little overdue, but it’s coming.

So, by the way, I know that you’ve written episodes for the show in the past. Are you going to be writing any more?
Yeah. You know, I did two this season that, just for logistical purposes, are airing last and second to last. So they’ll be coming up in February and they’re both sort of darker, kind of different tonally from what we usually do, so they’re sort of lumped back to back, and then one of them is the finale, which is actually pretty tense, at least by Psych standards. So, yeah, all my contributions are backloaded this season. And I think that as long as they let me I’ll keep writing because I enjoy it and I really enjoy getting to write for my fellow castmates, letting them do things they don’t usually get to do and pushing the envelope for our show. I guess I’m sort of the renegade in the writers’ room, which I think is a healthy thing.

Yeah, I know that in the first season you wrote the episode "Scary Sherry", which I think ended that season and was also the darkest episode so far at the time.
That’s true. That’s definitely true, and it’s not that I think that should be our show on a regular basis. You know, you do sixteen a year; you gotta color outside the lines once or twice.

Mix it up a little.
Yeah, absolutely.

Do you bring any extra insight as Shawn Spencer when you’re writing an episode?
I think mainly what occurs to me when I sit down to write an episode is “What haven’t we done? What haven’t some of my supporting players done?” And I guess I tend to write sort of Shawn-light episodes, just because the rest of the writing staff that covers most of the time—

Focuses on Shawn.
Yeah. Yeah, so I think I tend to open it up a little bit and sort of privilege some of these other fantastic actors that I get to work with every week.

I want to ask you how much of the dialogue with the pop culture references is improvised, because you’re like a walking pop culture encyclopedia. It’s like a bouncing ping-pong ball going back and forth at top speed.
[laughs] You know, there’s always a couple thrown in there that are scripted, and we just sort of abuse it from there. More so me than anybody else, I think, because I am sort of a walking pop culture encyclopedia and this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever had a use for any of that crap.

[laughs] Well, it’s coming in handy now!
So I tend to fill it out way more than they need, and they sort of cut around the ones they want and the other ones go back into the trunk for ready usage!

According to the Psych-Outs that play at the ends of the episodes you guys also burst into song a lot on set.
You know, that was happening loosely during the first season. We’ve kind of worn ourselves out a little bit. It was something we did on the pilot to amuse ourselves, but they caught it on camera and everybody really gravitated toward it, and then they started asking us to do it every week, and it became a grind, because I think what made the first one so good was that it was spontaneous and came out of nowhere. It’s a little bit different when you have to actually manufacture ‘em. So I think we took a little bit of a hiatus from the singing so that when we bring it back it can have that old magic.

Oh, yeah. And then you moved on to, what, is the cast still playing mafia behind the scenes?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. You’ve got some inside info, man. That was our big thing last year. Absolutely. We were playing poker the past few years, and then mafia—I can’t remember which one of us learned it, and then it sort of just took everyone by storm. It’s a pretty phenomenal game. It’s a great sort of dinner party game.

It is a pretty great game. Not gonna lie.
But, yeah, everybody really took to that.

All right. Gus’ multitude of names. There’s a new one every week. Where do they come from?
Yeah. Well, I sort of… I sort of get myself into new situations and I do something and let it catch on and then it becomes this expectation, which is great, but then you want to get as far with that as possible. So it’s sort of a trial by fire thing every week. The writers will give something a shot, and if it’s good enough, it stays, and if not then maybe I can come up with something better.

Well, you know, if the name isn’t good enough, you could always distract people with another pineapple or something.
Another pineapple! You know, another one of the corners that I’ve painted myself into. Yes, yes.

[laughs] You’re thinking of replacing the pineapples with, like, guavas?
Yeah, well, we’ve spoken about it, but I guess there’s something to be said for tradition, and the pineapple’s always gonna have the sentimental value for us since it came from the pilot. The only thing about the pineapple—and it was actually used rather correctly, which is rare, because everyone things it was actually ironic—that little bit where I grabbed the pineapple off the top of Gus’ refrigerator was not scripted and the director of the pilot was not a fan of that moment. It was not in his cut, and I think it went in and out and in and out about two more times and was about one of the last things to get thrown back into the final cut of the pilot. And look what it became.

Well, now it’s the mascot!
It is! It’s iconic, man! It’s like, the face of our show!

It’s another character!
It is. It’s got the spiky hair and everything.

Psych airs on USA Friday nights at 10pm. Don't miss it!