Maggie & Tim & James

James, Maggie & Timothy parlent de la saison 7, de comment ils se sentent après avoir fait 100 épisodes, de leurs moments préférés dans la série, des thèmes-hommages qu'ils aimeraient voir, du film "Clue", le fait que Shawn est obligé d'avouer la  vérité à Juliet...

By Tiffany Vogt

With the 7th Season of PSYCH now under way, and it was finally revealed that Shawn Spencer’s father, Henry, had survived the gunshot he sustained at the end of Season 6, PSYCH is getting back to what it does best – making fun out of everyday life and letting the fans revel in the fun with them.  As the series heads towards its 100th episode, they decided to crank up the fun-octane and do an homage to the film classic, “Clue.”  During a press set visit in honor of the occassion, stars James Roday, Maggie Lawson and Timothy Omundson shared some of their favorite memories, talked about the joy of reuniting the “Clue” cast, and what lies ahead as PSYCH’s world of wacky adventures continues.
 
PSYCH ended last season on a pretty dark note. How does that feel for you?  Are you apprehensive or worried that the audience might think the show took a bad turn?
TIM:  We’ve ended pretty darkly in the past.  Especially when James is at the helm.  I think our audience can certainly appreciate it.  I think when we can mix it up a little bit like that.  It’s not just always Pez dispensers and unicorns.  I think they like it. 
JAMES: I think after six years you basically have thrown every pitch that you have in your arsenal, and it’s fun to come up with something that the audience hasn’t seen yet and yet it is still PSYCH.  It’s always going to be PSYCH at the end of the day.  But if we can make your heartbeat a little bit faster every now and then, I think it’s probably healthy for everybody. 
 
So how does it feel to get to 100 episodes?
MAGGIE:  We feel older.  (Laughs) It’s so beyond anything. At first, you hope the show gets on the air, and then you hope you make it a second season, and then, my god, it’s like a third and a fourth and I remember every year just being like, “I can’t comprehend the magnitude of what this means,” and I still can’t.  Like it’s still kind of like we’re just at work and it’s a normal day, but it’s our 100th episode.
TIM:  I remember season three and we were all sort of calculating when would we hit a 100. Again it is one of the things, like we come to work every day, it’s the same gang.  But just think back to like seven years ago — where and when.
MAGGIE:  It’s wild. It’s been that like all these years and we’ve all been in this together.  We’re together all day, every day and like have yet to not have one moment where one of us angry or bitter or like, nothing.  It’s like this just happy and like, “Oh my god, look how lucky we are!”
TIM:  Well, they put something in the water.  (Laughs) No, this is an incredible and interesting milestone — the 100th episode.  The fact that it’s 100 episodes and it’s all gone as smoothly as it has.  Like there’s been no chair throwing.
MAGGIE:  No.  It’s like lightning struck.  I swear, I fell like that sometimes.  Like I remember the very first day of shooting.  Tim and I were the first scene, the second episode of the first season. I remember coming outside, and we had just met, because all my auditions were with James.  So I show up to meet my partner and then it’s like, “Hi, shake hands, let’s go, we’re rolling.”  And I remember I was really nervous.  The guys already had a thing and it was the same crew from the pilot or whatever and, and Tim looked at me, right before we were about to go, we were behind this door in this really small space and he was like, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to act the shit out of this scene.”  And I was like, “Alright, I’m going to act the shit out of this scene too!”  And then it was done and we were like, “That was it.”  I think that sort of happened with like everybody, but it’s only grown.
TIM:  In any relationship you’re going to have sort of those ebbs and flows and but this group, cast and crew, we’ve all sort of gone on the same trajectory.  And just in life, it doesn’t happen.  I mean this is, this show’s like a third of my career. 
 
Do you have any favorite moments from PSYCH?
TIM:  One.  My tops: Yang, up on the clock tower. 
MAGGIE:  That’s in my top — maybe my favorite of all of them.
TIM:  Yeah. I mean it’s weird.  Like we do the funny stuff so often and then when we get to do a dramatic –
MAGGIE:  One of my favorite scenes was from last year.  At the end of the vampire episode, “This Episode Sucks,” with Tim, and Christie Swanson in the jail cell, I tear up every time, and I’ve seen it a few times.  It was like, James was editing it, and the music and the whole bit. 
TIM:  That’s actually that’s one of my tops as well. 
MAGGIE:  It’s just so lovely ‘cause, you know.
TIM:  But that’s also a product of working with James so closely.  Working with people that you’re so comfortable with and James is such an amazing director.  He sort of gave me a little a preview like we talked about what he was going to do and, and at this point with him, I have complete trust.  I’ll do whatever. I mean I floated in a river for the man.  Some of my favorite moments are when Maggie gets to go undercover or and then there was the dream sequence in James’ episode, where you know you got the Farah Faucet hair.  That’s the hair I was talking about.  That hair and your uniform.  Whenever you get to play the badass cop.  It’s just so funny.  She has an episode coming up where she has to create an online dating profile lure in a murderer.  She takes it way too seriously.  He gets really offended when one of the guys won’t go out with her. 
 
The characters have grown and changed so much, what have been some of your favorite growth moments for the characters?
MAGGIE:  Favorite moments?  It’s hard to like pick a, a specific moment where there was like a turn or a shift, but I feel like the Yin/Yang trilogy pushed everybody into a deeper place.  It was a little bit darker overall in relationships and how we all had to work together.  When I think about those sort of turning points in the show, and when things took that sort of heavier turn and we got into characters a little bit, those episodes come to mind I think first because we explored so much.  There’ve been many, but those definitely standout to me of all of the moments we had. I mean I got to do a shotgun one-handed. (Laughs)  But just some of darker stuff making your hearts beat a little faster, I think for us, as actors, when you have a moment like that for your character, the whole thing takes a turn, and you rebuild from there.  Or you have that with you as you go along the journey and I feel that’s one of the reasons we’re still here.  It is because we’ve had those. 
TIM:  After a 100 episodes, to be able to like look back at, for example, where Lassiter started to where he is now.  Like he’s still the same guy, he’s still that same loveable prick.  But like one of the big turning points for me was obviously the divorce paper scene because it was such a culmination when it was finally was sort of revealed.  It was “Oh, this is why he’s such a prick.” ‘Cause he’s been so miserable and unhappy and so that was a big turning point. 
JAMES:  To go from that to last season, Lassiter finding love again, and learning that he he was capable of reciprocating, it’s a big moment for him. 
TIM:  We’re procedural in a way, but most procedurals don’t have what we have, which is the relationships.  To me, that’s what I want to watch when I watch a TV show.  I want to watch how these characters bump into each other.  You’ve seen so much of their lives, we’ve all sort of grown up on this show.  This is so much more rewarding to me.
   
What other homage themes would you want to see on PSYCH and what are your favorites so far?
TIM:  I want to do “Space Odyssey.”
 
What’s it like to have all these guest characters for the “Clue” episode all at the same time?
TIM:  I actually said to Steve Valentine, who’s one of our guests on the 100th episode, I actually said to him, “I’m glad you’re not a regular.” Because he’s so fucking funny! (Laughs) I don’t like the competition. Then you have comedic legends like Chris Lloyd.
MAGGIE:  It’s so surreal. I’m like we’re in the scene right now, and Christopher Lloyd is standing right here.
TIM: I grew up watching him and Garret Morris.
MAGGIE:  And Garret Morris.  I mean it’s wild. Martin Mull.  Leslie Ann Warren. 
TIM:  It’s a good group of people.
MAGGIE:  I feel like it’s a special 100th episode and we have such a dope cast.  It’s wild though. We’re used to hearing things like, “This is going to be a two shot, or this is going to be a four shot,” and since it’s our “Clue” episode, it’s like, “This is going to be a nine shot.”
TIM:  Everybody’s in every scene. 
MAGGIE:  Every scene and we all herd around in a pack.  It’s really fun.  It’s been fun.
 
Did you guys watch the “Clue” movie before the episode and is the tone similar in this episode?
TIM:  I did.  Very much so.
 MAGGIE:  It’s shocking.  I mean I saw it years ago, but then knowing that we were going to do this episode, we all watched again and it totally holds up, I mean the movie’s hysterical.  It’s so good. But this time we’re in the scenes and we’re with those actors. Isn’t it great?
TIM:  It’s very weird being in a scene, however many years later with actors that were in the movie that you just watched, even though it filmed 20 years ago.  There was a shot where Garrett and Chris and Leslie are all sort of setup in that classic “who done it” pose and it was sort of an outer body experience for me. I don’t know about you, but I always watched the movies that we do homage’s to simply to see what I can steal. I actually do that with everything, I watch dailies to see what I can steal from other actors. So in the 100th episode, we do very special flashback.  I’s a flashback to 2007, the beginning of the show, so we’re sort of riffing on our own. Very meta, and I’m like, “wait a second, we’re riffing on our own show, riffing on our own show.” But it takes back to James’ third case.  My sideburns were not quite as grey as they were back then.  So we’re doing the thing where we’re going to blacken it all up and my suits were not quite as slick as they are so I went into the wardrobe world and the guy pulled the worst shirt we had.   So now we’re at the point where we’re riffing on our own show.  Which is like really cool. 
MAGGIE:  Yeah, that’s a little wild. 
 
How was it filming the “Clue” episode?
JAMES:  It’s a beast of an homage. I think even bigger than we thought it was going to be when we took it on.  I’ve been astounded at how well this episode was going. I mean it’s crazy.  We’re nailing “Clue.” The sets are ridiculous and the alum that we brought out — it’s so crazy when you get to watch these reunions that happen on our shows. Christopher Lloyd and Leslie Ann Warren haven’t seen each other since “Clue” wrapped in 1985, or whenever it was. It’s pretty special.  We’ve been very lucky to witness some stuff like that.  Same thing on the TWIN PEAKS tribute.  Like a lot of those cats hadn’t seen each other in 15 years, and we just sat there drinking vodka and crying, while they all wept and hugged.  We can tease a couple homages we have in the pipe. We’ve got an “In-Laws” homage coming up. Keeping with Juliette, we’re also doing a little “Single White Female” action later this season.  And we have never done Barbet Schroder on the show, so I mean it was time.  Way overdue. 
 
What happens when Shawn is forced to reveal that he’s been pulling the wool over people’s eyes for years?
JAMES:  My feeling is that the big road block there is Shawn’s personal relationship with Juliette.  I think that that’s probably the biggest issue.  As far as the police and everything else, we’ve solved probably a 160 murders. We’ve put many people behind bars.  The fact that Shawn may not be psychic probably isn’t going to ruffle that many feathers at this point, but the fact that he’s been lying to the girl that he wants to make a life with is a different issue.  So sort of the whole Batman/Catch 22, I guess. 
TIM:  And Lassiter’s trust issues are never going to be the same. 
 
Can you give us an idea of what’s going to happen with each of your characters this season?
JAMES:  We are looking forward to treating you to the beginning of the next chapter of, Lassiter’s domestic life.  At some point.  And Shawn and Juliette are just going to keep feeling it out. As for Dule will surely mention, we’re finally bringing him to the front of the pack in terms of getting the love that he deserves.  So we’re starting to kind of pair people off and think about the future and try to bring this thing in, and land it properly.

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