During a recent set visit on the set of Psych, various other media outlets and I were able to interview Saladin Patterson and Gordon Mark. Saladin Patterson is one of the writers for Psych. And Gordon Mark is a producer on the show. We were able to visit them in the production office and sit down and discuss what happens behind the scenes.
We heard that you were just on the phone with the network. What kind of feedback does the network give you about the episodes?
Saladin Patterson: This is being recorded, right? [kidding]… Very sizeable notes. These were notes about an episode that James Roday and I are co-writing and he’s directing. It’s going to be our Christmas episode. And it was Jeff Wachtel just chiming in with character notes, things about how the characters are represented. The network cares a lot about protecting the images and the characters that we’ve grown to love so that the fans feel like they’re still part of the family, and things like that. So those are mainly the types of notes he had.
As the show has grown on, Gus has become more of an equal partner for Shawn. Dulé said that he thinks it was planned all along. Is that the case?
Saladin Patterson: You know, it’s probably a combination of things. This is season five, so we want to explore more and more stories, and see our characters in more in different situations. So because of that we tend to think, okay, what haven’t we seen in terms of for each individual character, and what haven’t we seen in terms of between the characters? So some of that’s just for every show you’re normally going to look for more things to play.
A lot of it also is as we’ve grown with the show, and as James and Dulé also bring so much to the table with their own personal chemistry, we’ve all seen the Gus character evolve more and more. And we all are playing more to Dulé’s strengths as an actor, you know, his ability to bring more to the table.
But also, as we get to know more and more about the character, funny things come up and we say, “Hey, that’s kind of a funny thing for the Gus character, and we should run with it – explore this.” Specifically, though, like the tap-dancing, that’s again something where we have access to a phenomenal dancer in Dulé, and we’ve been looking for a while to kind of showcase those skills. So it’s a combination of a lot of things.
How many episodes per season do the writers take a lead on?