James Roday & Dule Hill talk up the new season of PSYCH

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The cast of USA's PSYCH

The USA series Psych rolls into its fourth season this Friday and I had the chance to talk to stars James Roday and Dule Hill during a press call to talk about the changes coming and how they feel about their characters after playing them for four seasons.

Jim Halterman:   The bantering you guys do in the show is so great. Is that always directly from the script or is there some room for you guys to ad-lib a little bit?

Dule Hill:  I mean definitely there’s room to adlib so the simple answer would be no it’s not all directly from the script. Most of the adlibbing I’d say – I’d say most of it comes from Roday and then it’s me just keeping up with him at that point. And then we see where it goes. We’re pretty lucky in that, you know, we have a pretty long leash on our show. There’s a lot of room to sort of play around and maneuver. And sometimes that’s how we find our best stuff. And sometimes that’s how we find our worst stuff.

JH: Cool. And I know [Executive Producer] Steve Franks has talked about this a little bit but the fact that The Mentalist is such a big hit and it’s just pretty much a variation of what you guys have already been doing. How do you feel about that show kind of being such a big hit and, you know, it being close to what you guys are doing?

DH:  I mean…

James Roday:  You know it’s – I think it’s flattering. We make jokes about it because it’s silly and that’s what we do. And we make jokes about everything. But, you know, the truth of the matter is, you know, we’ve been around long enough to sort of become somebody else’s derivative and that’s a good thing.

On how last season folds into the new season…

JR: Well, for me anyway I kind of felt like Season 3 was sort of a tale of two seasons really. I kind of felt like we heated up down the stretch on the backend there especially. And that makes it a little easier to keep up the momentum because I kind of felt like we were riding a high going into the hiatus and with, you know, the last batch of episodes that we had shot and everybody was feeling confident and good and didn’t want to stop. And I think because of that it’s yielded some pretty strong stuff at the beginning of Season 4. So I do think we’ve kept up our momentum and I think the end of Season 3 had a lot to do with that.

On how Roday feels about Shawn walking away from Juliet and how often will Rachel Leigh Cook appear this season…

JR: Well, the actress, Maggie Lawson, did such a wonderful job playing that scene that, you know, I watch it sort of as a fan of the show and, you know, and feel for her and feel for Shawn. But, you know, it’s a marathon, that relationship. I think everybody kind of gets that that, you know, there’s going to be a lot of going in circles and missed timing and hurdles that have to be cleared in order for something to ever actually happen. And next season Abigail, Rachel Leigh Cook’s character, is one of those sort of curveballs. We’ll be seeing her sporadically over the course of the entire season.

Hill on Gus find romance this season…

DH:  I think it will probably happen the second half of Season 4. It’s been a long time coming so Gus has a little pent-up energy. I think he’ll get to take care of second half of the season.

Guest Star Cary Elwes with Hill and Roday

On Hill’s comedic timing…

DH: I think it more comes natural to me. I mean, generally I’m someone who likes to have fun and make jokes a lot and act a fool so it’s a – it’s – I guess it’s something that just comes easy. But then also working with someone like Roday and the rest of the cast you kind of – I guess improve on it day in and day out. Like I do as a person I just think I’ve learned more and gotten – I guess my timing has gotten better since Season 1 then now. And it has a lot to do with working with Roday and the great writers who write all this fun stuff to do.

On the nicknames Shawn comes up with for Gus…

DH:  There’ll be an endless list of new names for Gus as long as the show is…

JR:  It started off as just an improvisation all the way back in the first episode after the pilot I believe. And it just really caught on with everybody in the writer’s room and on set. And everyone’s in on the joke now so, yeah, there’ll be plenty of names.

On balancing the comedy and mystery in the show...

JR:  I think there’s a couple different camps on that one. I think we would probably fall into the camp of no, never sacrifice a good joke to make the mystery better. And then there are people sort of at our network and one of our executive producers in particular who would probably disagree and say that, you know, you can always spare comedy on this show and that we need to have good cases and, you know, the track. And, but, I don’t know. We sort of got a – we got a kind of an eye-opening experience this weekend at Comic-Con and so we got to come face to face with some of our fans. And I feel like the majority of them are tuning in to watch us act like fools not solve a mystery.

DH:  And then from my side I mean I think that we – I think there should be a balance. And I think the show is first and foremost a comedy and people tune in to laugh every week. But I think you have to have balance because if you have – if you don’t have any balance then obviously you can, you know, I think it’s possible to have a overkill.

Roday working his psychic magic

On their experience at Comic-Con in San Diego…

DH: I think for myself I was just surprised that the place was packed out. You know…I mean, I wasn’t necessarily surprised that – the type of fans. I mean, I think we have such a wide variety of fans for the show that if someone says that they’re a fan of the show it doesn’t really surprise me. But I guess when we went to Comic-Con the fact that the room was packed at Comic-Con I was very surprised. It was like I guess like 4200 or 4500 people. Yeah, so I was flattered by that.

JR:  It was definitely overwhelming. And it was great to actually be sort of face to face with, you know, with our fans. I mean, we shoot up in Vancouver and it kind of puts us in a bubble sometimes. And, you know, to be able to come down and sort of hang with them and mingle with them a little bit and feel the love it was, you know, we were blown away, we really were.

On their characters growing since the beginning of the series…

JR:  We had, you know, we – I think Shawn and Gus both they’re both works in progress. I mean, they’re both sort of overgrown kids. But, yeah, I think Shawn is trying to be in a relationship and that’s new. You know, the idea of maturing but not really maturing is kind of a tight wire act. But, you know, we do our best to sort of continue to peel back layers of these guys. We have one episode coming up that actually gets pretty serious. My character gets shot and that was kind of interesting. I was separated from the rest of the cast for the first time the way the episode – just the way the story is told we’re sort of broken into three groups. And it was interesting because we each got to sort of work with people that we don’t necessarily usually work with and we were all kind of separated for most of the episode. And that was challenging and different. And any time you can – hey you’re in Season 4 of a show and can still come up with something that is completely different that’s saying something.

The season premiere of Psych airs this Friday on the USA Network at 10/9c.

Photos courtesy of USA.

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Tagged as: Dule Hill, James Roday, Jim Halterman, Psych, USA Network