Interviews

Tim Omundson was up next in our round of interviews with the cast of Psych. Tim plays tough-as-nails Detective Carlton Lassiter. And the real Tim couldn’t be farther than his character on screen. He’s quick, incredibly funny, and easy-going. He arrived with his dog Lucy, who immediately began running around the office getting attention from all of us. And as soon as Tim sat down at the boardroom table he began…

Tim: I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here. There’s been some—well, it’s a downward economic turn, and I’m afraid we’ll have to let you all go. Kidding. I can’t fire any of you.

We hear that you’re the first person on set to break character. Who makes it hard to keep a straight face?

Tim: First of all, that’s a f-ing lie. There’s no children in the room, right?

No, just reporters. Lots of reporters.

Tim: I wish it were true. It is absolutely true. What was the second part of the question?

Who makes it the hardest to keep a straight face?

Tim: James, normally. I mean, Dulé knocks me out, but I just find him so funny, and we have the same twisted sense of humor, which you wouldn’t necessarily get from last year. But me, he just cracks me up. I just find him hilarious. Dulé, not so much. [I’m kidding]

No, you see it’s tough, because Lassiter has no sense of humor and never cracks a smile, really. And so there’s no leeway for Lassiter to at all enjoy what Shawn does, but on the inside – that’s why I always say I’m the best actor on the show, because I’m constantly covering wanting to giggle like a girl.

There are a few moments where Lassiter, or Lassiter’s sense of humor likes to come out. It tends to be tensely inappropriate times, and he’s always pleased as punch with himself. We did something in Scary Sherry, that never made it to air, that just delighted James to no end, where Lassiter says some quip and then is so pleased, he just gets this big Cheshire Cat grin. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it, and that’s something that James always liked, so I’ll throw this one in.

How does the sense of humor on this set compare to others that you’ve worked on?

Tim: Oh, it’s as unique as the individuals that you’re in the room with. We just kind of got lightning in a bottle on this show where it’s like you have this group of actors, all of whom, especially me, are really funny. And I always say we have very different senses of humor. We find different things funny, but I think we come from the same foundation of funny, if that makes any sense. And we all appreciate the same kinds of humor.

I think Maggie would like a little less crass humor. There are a lot of boys on this set. We try and keep it in line and not let it get too blue, but every now and then, we’ll forget Maggie’s there. You’re talking…she’ll just walk up and go, “A lot of boys on this set. A lot of boys,” and then walk away. James will do something that could never possibly make it to air, and she’ll [Maggie] just go, “That’s my boyfriend.”

So yeah, it’s certainly the funniest set I’ve ever been on. But then, when I did Judging Amy, which was not a show full of yucks unless you like child abuse, it got to the point where Tyne Daly and I worked so closely, got to know each other so well. And after 70 episodes and the subject matter being so deadly serious, we just tried to figure out how to make each other laugh. Like, those two characters of Sean Potter and Maxine really grew to sort of – I know we’re not here to talk about all my career, but our relationship as people really grew. It was all like this… And Deadwood, not so funny.

We’ve seen Lassiter frustrated with his social life. I’d love to see Lassiter dating.

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Maggie Lawson was the first person we were able to interview during the recent set visit of Psych. Maggie plays Juliet O’Hara, a detective for the Santa Barbara Police Department. Her character has gone through some recent changes – most notably her hair color change this season. Maggie sat down to talk to us about the current season and her character. She is incredibly funny and sweet, which certainly came across in the interview.

How would you like to see Juliet and Shawn’s relationship develop?

Maggie: Good question. I think we’ve done a good job, over the last few seasons, of, like, really playing out how a relationship like this might go. So many complications are going to come into play when and if these characters get together. So I think that we’ve exhausted a lot of that now. So I think that some very serious things have been said, and it’s like a little ticking bomb that I feel like it’s going to happen, somehow, in a big way. It’s either going to be great, or it’s going to be a crazy fall-out. I mean, Shawn has a huge secret and, you know, if he’s going to have honest relationships, how does all that work? And so, I would like to see for both of them to be honest about their feelings with each other, however that’s going to play out.

Part of the fun of the show is all the guest stars. Are there some that you have bonded with more than others, or that you were really excited to work with?

Maggie: I hope this is because people enjoy being here, but I feel like just about every guest star or guest cast that we have come on – we end up having a real experience with them, almost like a movie shoot with them or something. We play games.

Nestor Carbonell, this season, he’s been on. So we’ve had a good time with him. And we had Freddy Prinze Jr., who’s a friend of Dulé’s, so we had fun with him. To say, some over others is kind of hard because what if they read these? You can turn the tape recorders off. Then we’ll talk! We love them all the same!

Will we see Juliet go undercover again?

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Eric Balfour, star of Haven which airs Fridays at 10:00 pm on Syfy, participated in a conference call Q & A to talk about his character in the show and about last Friday night’s episode.

Can you tell us about the process the prosthetics for the episode “Ball and Chain” and how was it to work with it?

Eric Balfour: Yes. You know, it was actually really crazy. Even in prepping for it we were so under the gun because we were in the middle of shooting another episode.

And it came down to just even at the beginning they had to fly me from where we shoot the show in Halifax on a redeye to Toronto at like – it was 11 o’clock at night. And I flew in and I had a few hours sleep and then I went to the visual effects artist’s studio and they started doing the face mold and cast.

And, it’s that weird process where you have to, you know, they put a bunch of plaster on your face and alginate. And you sit there with a little straw coming out of your mouth and trying not to get claustrophobic. And so we had to do it really, really quickly. But they had a few days to prep and then they showed up on set with these different prosthetic pieces.

And, we’ve been talking about it for a few days before about how the aging would take place and the different stages of ages I would go through the first one being a light prosthetic and mostly just makeup use. That would age me about 20 or 30 years.

And then from there you go to about 75 or 80 years old and then to about 95 and then all the way up to, you know, well we hope to about 100 years old because Duke’s going to live a long time or so we thought. But it was a pretty intense process. I mean it was about four or five hours every day in the makeup chair.

But to be honest it was so helpful once you started getting into the prosthetic because we had talked about the different physical attributes that come along with the way that your body can, you know, degenerate over time and the physical abilities you lose and the joint dexterity and your voice changes.

And but the minute we started putting on the prosthetics it makes that whole process so much easier. It was crazy. It was a little scary at times because you’re looking at yourself going is this really what I’m going to look like in 30 years, 40 years? But in some ways it was interesting because some of it was very correct. You could see wow, that’s what my face is going to do. Given the nature of that it’s not, you know, reality. And it is still an artistic, you know, conception of what you look like.

It was interesting to see even the makeup artists themselves, the visual artists, they’d look and go oh you know what? Now having spent a little more time looking at the way you use your face these two wrinkles won’t really happen to you, but you’re going to get a wrinkle here not there. Unless of course you’re terrified of having them and have been looking up supplements to prevent them (such as these beverly hills md reviews). But the majority of people will find themselves with some before the age of 50, and so it was really fun to play with that.

And then we went through a long conversation about facial hair. Because there was this sort of – a question of well okay so if you’re aging really quickly would the hair continue to grow at the same rate and if you didn’t shave it would you have it? So as you probably have seen in some of the pictures I have at one point this really sort of long goatee, this wispy long Fu Manchu goatee… because we just – we decided to play on the idea that well if you’ve got facial hair and he doesn’t cut it would just keep growing. And then eventually, you know, as you got really old you would just start to lose your ability to grow hair and that would all fall away.

But it was intense. I mean I had to show up hours before everybody on set and sit in the makeup chair and try to keep myself awake all day. And then it’d take about an hour and a half after everyone left at the end of the day to get it all off.

And we did like three or four straight days of that. And it was intense but those guys were amazing. And it was just – it’s so much fun to like – to be perfectly honest, I haven’t gotten a lot of opportunities to dive into that sort of heavy a character development as far as totally taking on a different character.

And although it was a character I play it’s at an age that I’ve never played or at a physicality that I’ve never played. So it was really fun as an actor to get to really put on a character, you know, not just a maybe a little bit of an accent but to really – you know, my favorite actors growing up were guys like, you know, Gary Oldman and Daniel Day Louis and Sean Penn and guys who really were magical, Meryl Streep, were incredible actors at creating completely different chameleon characters.

And Gary Oldman being really one of my biggest inspirations because he, no matter how big he takes a character and how out there it seems it’s always so realistic. It’s always so believable in some ways. And I’m just – I’m fascinated by the work that he does and it’s always something that I wanted to do. So even getting that opportunity even if it’s only for a few days was really special to me.

How important is the online community to the show’s success and why is it important for you to interact with your fans online?

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