Psych set visit: Everybody loves Roday (Part 5)

Random Observations

• While most of the other actors kept us entertained on the sidelines during set breaks, Roday frequently shifted over to a laptop on the side. In the interview, he stated: “On set I always make sure I have some sort of script template up.”
• Has blonde eyebrows.

Roday on Directing

• Roday stated he always gets excited and the most serious about directing. He views it as his newest toy and writing as an old putt putt. “I always get excited about directing because it’s the thing I know the least about. It’s the – it’s where I can learn the most. It’s where I feel like I can improve the most. I get to ask lots and lots of questions, and, you know, surround myself with people that have been doing it for a lot longer than I have. And that gets me jazzed.” Considering I tend to identify more with the writers and I have LOVED all of his past scripts, I find it slightly down-letting that he sees it as secondary.
• He likes to do something in the script that lets them use a different “muscle.”
• He loves when film takes his breath away including Inception’s scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the elevator shot: “And there was one shot in particular where he’s got them all in the elevator, he goes out the top hatch to set the charges out of the elevator. And you could still see into the elevator where the six of them are floating. I love it when I can’t even sort of figure out how dudes are doing stuff, you know.”

Roday on his Fellow Actors/Staff/Crew

• On Ally Sheedy, he called her awesome to hangout with and felt she really did her homework.
• He loves getting to pitch actors he loved as a kid. He still has Jon Gries (Lazlo Hollyfeld, Real Genius; Uncle Rico, Napoleon Dynamite), Billy Zane, David Bowie, and Val Kilmer.
• Dulé calls him Roday.
• Very little crew or writer turnover (unlike the Walking Dead). On a personal note, I loved the Kraft services table. It was very homey, budget-conscious, and I loved the woman who oversaw it. She was strict (she would not let me take dried fruit without a cup) but adorable.
• Both Roday and Dulé use the phrase “acting the fool.”

On his character

• Wants to let Shawn grow.
• Doesn’t want to become complacent.
• Confesses he based Shawn on Kilmer’s Real Genius character, Chris Knight.
• The pictures of little Shawn in Henry’s house are actually a young James Roday.

On films he enjoys

• He loved Let the Right One In.
• Feels the psychology in Rosemary’s Baby, American Werewolf, The Shining, and the original Texas Chainsaw still holds up:
  “Rosemary’s Baby holds up – psychological, sort of, paranoia-type horror. American Werewolf in London holds up as, like, a homerun for trying to marry the very sort of tricky horror and comedy sort of hybrid. The first Texas Chainsaw Massacre is pretty awesome. The Shining – awesome. Remake of The Thing – John Carpenter did it with Kurt Russell – awesome. I think they’re doing another one of those too.”

Clacked by An Nicholson
on Dec 27, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT