Blacula and Lestat: An Interview with Psych’s James Roday & Dule Hill
A few days back Psych stars James Roday (Shawn) and Dule Hill (Gus) sat down for an interview and spilled some info on the new season (which starts tonight at 10/9c!) While also keeping it extremely silly, as usual.
Q: I heard two different things from you and Andy Berman about the Clue episode; is it definitely off?
Roday: It is not off, it’s just not a part of our 6th Season. It’s still very much in the hopper and all of the key players are still committed, we just weren’t able to shoot it this season because of various scheduling conflicts. But it’s on tap for next season — knock on wood — probably the first or second episode.
Q: Besides the Clue episode, I hear there is also a vampire themed Halloween episode, an Indiana Jones inspired episode, and a Cuckoo’s Nest inspired episode, can you tell us about these?
Roday: Yes, we did in fact deliver on those other ones. Those are in the can. Those are fully produced and being mixed.
Hill: We also have a Shining episode this year too.
Roday: Shining is what you get in place of Clue. So we still felt like we should swing big. Halloween is the vampire episode. And I think it’s airing the week of Halloween. [It guest star] Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy, and Corey Feldman, one of the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys, and Tom Lenk, a regular on Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV Series. We went Double Buffy.
Hill: And Blacula makes a guest appearance also.
Roday: Guest appearances, Blacula and the Vampire Lestat.
Q: I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about the Joey McIntyre episode?
Roday: That was our Superhero episode. There’s like a vigilante superhero like combing the streets of Santa Barbara, cleaning them up one bad guy at a time. And it may or may not be Joey, we don’t know.
Q: You guys are embarking onto some new territory with the Hashtag Killer, how do you guys feel about embarking on that new territory?
Hill: I think it’s fun. I mean obviously, you know, that whole interactive and social network stuff is a big part of today’s society and our fan culture, so anything that we can do to engage them some more and keep them interested in our show, I think is a fun journey. And it’s something different. And I hope people are enjoying it. I haven’t had a chance to play it myself yet, but it seems like it’ll be a fun thing to play.
Q: What’s your favorite Psych-Out that you’ve done? They all seem like so much fun, but what’s your favorite?
Hill: For myself it would be either the one we did with Joey, which because when you start involving real, you know, musicians and real singers and real artists singing their own songs with you, you can’t really top that. It would be the one that we did with Joey, and then it would be the original one that we did in the pilot, Man in the Mirror, because that’s kind of what started the whole machine going with the Psych-Outs. And that was just really just Roday and I having a lot of fun off camera. And then we got to the final shot just, “You know what, let’s put it on tape. Let’s just do it.” And it turned into this whole big Psych-Out phenomenon so.
Roday: Yes and in the spirit of doing Psych-Outs with the original artists, I’ll mention a drunken rendition of Head Over Heels that we did with Chris Smith.
Q: If you could have any crossover with whatever show, which would it be?
Hill: USA Network, I would want to do White Collar. I mean, that’s on the air right now, I would say White Caller, a show that was off the air, I would still go back to Monk.
Roday: Well if it’s any show I would say we should crossover with The Walking Dead because I think we’re due for a zombie episode.
Hill: For myself I would say if it’s any show I would say, “Modern Family,” because I just love the show so much. And I think it would be fun to have Shawn and Gus interact with all of those characters over there.
Q: Tell us a little bit about what it was like working with William Shatner.
Roday: Unbelievable.
Hill: Right.
Roday: The man is – I mean he’s an icon obviously but watching him work was an honor in and of itself. I mean he’s a machine. He was totally invested. He had – and I say this – this is not me editorializing or exaggerating, he had the heaviest load that we’ve ever given a guest star on our show. He pretty much drives the entire episode. He had the same schedule as Dule and I. And it was just remarkable. I mean not only did he know everything, he had questions, he had thoughts, he had concerns. You know, he was modulating his performance and he just – he really, really wanted to knock the role out of the park. And then to top it off, when the weekend came and you know, and Dule and I basically beach ourselves and recharge our batteries so that we can get back to it Monday morning, (Bill), flew to Calgary and did two live shows on Saturday and Sunday, and then flew back to Vancouver and was back at work at 6:00 am Monday morning. The man is 80 going on 20. And like I said, “It was humbling and it was a really honor just to watch him work and pick his brain and be around him.”
Q: So now that Shawn has Juliet, now Gus is all by himself. Is he ever going to have a longer relationship than like an episode or two?
Hill: I think we’ll have to see what happens in Season 7, but in Season 6 he makes a valiant effort to attain that. He goes for it. You know, you can’t blame Gus for trying in Season 6, he’s actually throwing his hat into the ring and he’s out there, you know, really trying to make it happen. But we’ll see what happens going into Season 7, maybe he’ll get past the one-episode love interest then.
Q: You have a whole bunch of themed episodes, is there something you really want to do that just hasn’t happened?
Hill: Well I know Steve Franks has talked about it for a couple of season now and it hasn’t actually happened yet, but I hope that in Season 7 we can actually make the musical episode happen. I mean, that’s how I started in the business, doing musicals, so it would be great to bring that to Psych and be able to sing and dance in an episode, and not just in a Psych-Out.
Roday: Agreed, yes I think that’s kind of the pinnacle of theme episodes that we’ve yet to do. So that’s the big apple that hopefully we’ll be able to slice up and feed to all of our fans.
You know it’s tricky, it’s not something that you could throw together. You know, other shows have tried it to varying levels of success and I think because Steve has such a love for music, you know, his band sings our theme song, it’s really important to him to hit a homerun with it.
And I think that’s why there’s been a little bit of Indian giving in the past, because you know, he realizes – I think it really hit him this past off-season, like just how much work it’s going to take to do it right and that’s why he postponed it. But I think he’s committed and I expect it to happen next season.
The good news is, look he’s got a game cast and you know, he’s got his own band and they’re songwriters. And you know, it’s just a matter of putting in the time and you know, we should be able to execute.
Q: Since you just wrapped, is there anything you can dish about the season finale, is it a cliffhanger?
Roday: Yes, there’s – that is fair to say. There is a shocking ending that I hope our fans will not soon forget.
