James Roday on How to Keep 'Psych' Fresh Through Multiple Upcoming Movies

The recent revelation that Psych creator Steve Franks wants to do at least a half-dozen movies featuring the cast of the defunct USA Network series means that barring a ratings failure for this December's Psych: The Movie, series star James Roday is going to be busy for quite a while under Santa Barbara (or San Francisco) skies.

So how do you keep things special, when you no longer have "we're back from our cancellation/hiatus" to fall back on?

"The answer is that we keep doing these movies and not try to bring the show back, where we're having to do sixteen episodes a season," Roday told PopCulture.com during a conversation at Comic Con last week.

"I think when you only have to tell one story for two hours and you have a break between, the challenge is always going to be there to make that good, but we should be able to make that good. It's one script, it's one story; we should be able to knock that out a couple of more times, at least," Roday said.

"I think the way we're doing it is ideal, because not every episode of Psych was a home run, and it's impossible to do sixteen incredible episodes of anything. I think by doing it this way we can promise the fans that they're not going to get any turkeys, and it gives us time to reboot and come up with the best possible idea that we can," Roday added.

The movie will take place three and a half years after the long-running TV show's series finale, with the characters having developed in real time while the cameras weren't running. That means a balancing act of making the characters recognizable to fans of the series, accessible to potential newcomers, and yet pushing them down a growth path so it doesn't feel like they have been stuck in stasis for all this time.

"Deceptive growth is a perfect way to describe [Shawn's] character arc, and I think he can always be described that way," Roday said of his character. "I think he needs to be Shawn but he also needs to be building a fundamental knowledge of what it means to be a grown up and execute that in his own incremental way. And the people who love him get that about him, which is why he's able to get away with it — but I think it's always going to be baby steps."

Psych, which ran from 2006 until 2014 on USA, centered on Shawn Spencer, a slacker whose photographic memory and keen sense of deductive reasoning made him a perfect detective — except for his utter contempt for the local police, borne out of a bad relationship with his cop dad (who is also the one who groomed his detective skills; it's all very complicated). He found a way to have his cake and eat it too (along with lots of pineapples over 8 seasons) by convincing local law enforcement that he was a psychic and contracting out his services as a consultant.

James Roday, Dule Hill, Tim Omundson, Maggie Lawson, Corbin Bernsen, and Kirsten Nelson will return. Recurring antagonist Despereaux, played by Cary Elwes, is expected to be back as well, based on Elwes' own comments during a recent comic book convention appearance. Chuck and Thor: The Dark World actor Zachary Levi stars as the villain.

Even before the movie was officially announced, rumor had it Psych would be returning to Vancouver — where the series originally filmed — for a feature film shoot. At the time of the show's cancellation three years ago, USA executives had teased the potential for a return down the line.

Photo Credit: Getty / Dia Dipasupil