“I was just going to unapologetically steal from the energy and the spirit of that performance … Steve said Ferris Bueller, and we were able to break down just how short of a distance was between Chris Knight and Ferris Bueller. “I came into the process with Chris Knight from Real Genius ,” Roday Rodriguez explains. Where most who auditioned overplayed the snark, Roday Rodriguez brought a “warm and wonderful quality” to the character, and by the second time they met during callbacks, Franks knew that he was the only one who could do justice to Shawn. “There’s an innocence about the character,” Franks says, “but he’s also worldly at the same time.” During the audition process, Franks was looking for an actor who could be “fast and funny” and never aggressive. It was important to Franks that Shawn never came off as too mean, especially during his first few encounters with the Santa Barbara Police Department as a “psychic” - an ethos that was maintained for the remainder of the series, with few exceptions.

He was a guy who was lovable at the core, because he never made the choice he was supposed to make at some point.” “He was more of a student of life, and he appreciated the world around him and chuckled at the world around him. He wasn’t ultimately going to make a lot of money, or have a lot of possessions, or do any of the things people who surrounded him wanted him to do, especially his dad,” Franks explains.

“He seemed like he’s got life figured out more than most people. When creator and showrunner Steve Franks first envisioned Shawn, he thought there was a “wisdom” to the character that transcended what viewers first saw in the pilot: a sharp guy seemingly drifting his way through life, who by his late 20s had already rotated through dozens of odd jobs in dozens of other cities. Roday Rodriguez also wrote and directed numerous Psych episodes, which we’ve ranked.Įssential traits: Complete and utter devotion to his childhood BFF, Gus obscure ’80s and ’90s pop-culture one-upmanship diet of quatro queso dos fritos “Gus, don’t be a… ability to make friends at an alarmingly quick rate eidetic hearing it both ways hyperobservant. The actor: James Roday Rodriguez, 44, who has a very perusable IMDb page and is currently starring in ABC’s version of This Is Us, a.k.a.

The character: Shawn Spencer, a psychic detective-for-hire stuck in arrested development yet two steps ahead of everyone while solving crimes on USA’s Psych and in its two sequel films, the second of which premiered on Peacock on July 15.

James roday