Turn Me On (P)review: Psych Set Visit Interview with Tim Omundson

Tim Omundson, who plays Detective Carlton Lassiter on the hit USA Network show Psych, is the complete opposite of his television persona; he is hilarious. Lassiter is the strait laced, no
nonsense cop who never cracks a smile and Tim was funny from word one. He was not what I had expected.

Our group of reporters waited in a conferene room for Tim to arrive. He was taking time between set-ups to speak to us about the upcoming midseason finale of Psych. When he arrived
we found out that he had brought his dog Lucy along for the interview. She made her way around the room while we asked our questions, occasionally distracting one reporter or another,
looking for attention.

Tim: Hi, everybody.

Panel: Hi.

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.

Panel: So does that mean the rumours are true? You’re really playing Donald Trump in the Donald Trump movie?

Panel: I was going to say that.

Tim: You’re a nut. You’re just—you’re a wacky guy.

Okay, so I’ve become one of those freak actors that carries his—takes his dog everywhere. [Indiscernible].

Panel: Usually, they’re smaller.

Panel: In the purse, usually.

Tim: This is Bobo. Say hello, Bobo. Bobo’s good. That’s sweet. I was just working with Chi McBride, God bless his heart. He’s one of the tallest men I’ve ever worked with. His dog is this big. He’s got the sweetest—

Panel: Chihuahua?

Tim: No, he’s a little sort of Yorkie, miniature Yorkie thing. And to see that man—he lives in my neighbourhood—walking that dog, that is some comedy.

Panel: That’s awesome.

Tim: So what would you like to know?

Panel: I’ll start.

Tim: Yes?

Panel: I 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 fucking lie. There’s no children in the room, right?

Panel: No, just reporters. Lots of reporters.

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

Panel: Who makes it the hardest to keep a straight face?

Tim: James, normally. I mean, Dule knocks me out, but I just find him so funny, and our—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. Dule, not so much. [I'm kidding].

No, you see it’s just—and it’s tough, because Lassiter has no sense of humor and never cracks a smile, really. And so I—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 just—that’s something that James always liked, so I’ll throw this one in.

Panel: I was going to ask if the sense of humor on the set is—like, does the show—is it different on every show or every set? Like, is the—or is it always—is there always a sense of humor, or are some sets completely, like fun—

Tim: You mean episode, or different jobs?

Panel: No, different jobs.

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—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. Maggie loves to—James will do something that could never possibly make it to air, and she’ll 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, you know, 70 episodes and the subject matter being so deadly serious, we just tried to figure out how to make each other laugh. So we—and that sort of—you got to see that in the characters. 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. The characters really—it was all like this. That’s—I’m not—you can’t see this if you’re writing for TV. I mean, if you’re writing for radio. But they inform each other. And Deadwood, not so funny.

Panel: The biggest laughs backstage on serious shows. Likely that’s where—because you need that catharsis.

Tim: Absolutely, yeah.

Panel: Well, I do have a question about one of your older shows, and this is a two-part, geeky question. Considering you used to play Eli, and now you’re playing Lassiter, I can’t really remember if there has been an episode where Lassiter has gone and become this uber-peaceful character, but is there a possibility of Lassiter kind of breaking out of the extreme violence.

Panel: Like a hard hit to the head.

Tim: There would be that poss—I actually—I think I pitched one time that—I don’t know, it’s after a therapy session, Lassiter becomes very Zen. I just think it would funny to seem him play that, where he’s just so, “Everything’s all cool, man. Everything’s okay,” and then slowly Shawnster’s [ph] chipping away at him. By the end of the episode, he’s shot three people in the face. That would be really fun for me to play. I don’t know if they’re going to do that.

Panel: I’d love to see the shot in the face. I don’t think that would go, but—

Tim: No. No, they can’t really do it. But it’s like you—I get to play—this is why this job is so great, because most of the time, you do a TV show and what you do in the pilot is essentially what you’re going to do for however many years and episodes it’s on the air. It’s going to be the same show with different guest stars coming in because, as the mandate goes, “The audience wants to tune in and see the same thing.” To a degree, I understand. But we can get away with so much more on this particular television show where we can do a Yin. You know, we can do Lassiter’s silly tap dancing. We can do, you know, Tuesday the 17th where it was some of the most dramatic stuff I’ve ever gotten to play, period, and it was on Psych. So it’s really—I feel amazingly fortunate, as an actor, that it just constantly is staying fresh and goofy.

Even the way we shoot the show. This episode right now, Mel is going for a much—the camera work is going to be different. You’re going to look—if you really are into the show, you kind of look at it and go, “That one’s shot differently,” because we can—we let the script inform what’s going on, where a lot of shows, it’s this way, these are the shots we use, these are the angles we use. You do not deviate. Where we have the [indiscernible].

Panel: All right. And if I could slide in another question, well, I guess I would say, also, just—we’ve seen kind of Lassiter being frustrated in his social life. So I would like to see, maybe, a little bit more of Lassiter possibly dating and, of course, possibly having [indiscernible]. But I would love to see, like, Lassiter dating.

Tim: I would, too. Maggie has pitched, many times, that she signs him up on Match.com, and becomes his sort of—his love guide of trying to get him into that. I mean, we’ve touched on that a little bit. There hasn’t really been any Lassiter relationship stuff since the break-up of his marriage, which is okay. I mean, Maggie has sort of become his surrogate—well, not social life, but she’s really the only other human being he speaks to, I think. You know, other than the guy who clocks him in at the gun range.

So it—you know, we got to see a little bit of it in–which one? In, I think, A Very Juliet Episode, where he becomes her love counselor with the—you know, the Grease stuff. And I loved playing that, because then that came out of nowhere for him to be the one that she goes to, and you see this weird sensitive side, just these non-sequiturs like, “Wait, who was that that just—oh, that was Lassiter?” And then kind of never touched on it again. So we’ll see what happens.

[Lucy] be quiet. I’m talking to the reporters!

Panel: Now, here’s a different one for you. Luck of the Irish. Are you surprised you still have so many younger fans who [are not] watching Psych.

Panel: They play it on the Disney Channel all the time, still.

Tim: And I get about 35 cents every time it airs now, so that’s great. That’s a—you know, I don’t know if you were at Comic-Con, but I got a question about that at Comic-Con.

Panel: [Saw that, yeah, that question].

Tim: And what I should have also said is, “You still know who I am, right?” And the great thing about that—those people were, you know, 9, 10, 12, 13, and they’re now 19, 20, 21, 22. It’s like that. My audience has sort of grown with me in a way, which is, I think, really cool that—here’s these kids who were kids when they saw it, and now they’re young adults. Or they’re the parents who—they had little kids at the time, and now they’re watching this, and they’re 30 instead of 20. And, you know, we—apparently, we all grow old, and it’s nice that I sort of have this—what’s—I’m sort of locked in with this certain—I mean, because I’m a—when you see shows as a kid, and they get stuck on the back of your hard drive, and you can never get them out, whether you want to or not, and you don’t necessarily realize they’re there until something else sparks it. And so I think a lot of people go, “I know him from somewhere.” Then they go, “It’s Seamus freaking McTiernan.” So that’s [indiscernible] really cool.

Panel: And here’s another one. Now that you’ve danced on Psych, can we expect to see you on Dancing With the Stars one season?

Tim: Okay, now here’s the deal. I really cannot dance to anything written after 1960. So you give me a meringue, you give me a nice waltz or a box step, I will tear that shit up, because I came from a large Irish-Norwegian-Slovak family. But all the Slovaks are still pretty much in [indiscernible] Washington, so I’ve been going to these family reunions since I was four, and I think I learned how to polka when I was four and a half. It’s all pretty much—all dance is based on the polka. There’s very small variations, but I don’t know. Dancing With the Stars hasn’t called yet.

Panel: Well, they should. I’ll vote for you.

Tim: Thank you.

Panel: [Would just] like to see more of the list of people that piss you off in the next part of the season.

Panel: Oh, nice.

Tim: How can they not? I mean that—you—that is going to be comedic gold. That’s certainly got to be a go-to list. It’s just always on my desk.

Panel: Are you putting actual names on there, or is someone—

Tim: There were a lot of actual names on there.

Panel: I’ve seen a few of them.

Tim: Yeah, if you—and I’m sure it’s—you know, the lawyers at NBC are going to go, “He what?” I see—a friend of mine is an NBC lawyer, and we were talking about, “Hey, remember when I used to blog on this show, back in the day?”

Panel: Now you get to Twitter feed.

Tim: Now I’m Twitter feeding. You know, nobody blogs anymore, man. It’s all about Twitter. But I was blogging for a while as Lassiter, and I would put names of friends in there, and characters that Lassiter interacts with. She was like, “Ha-ha. That’s really funny. You’re getting that cleared, right? You can’t keep doing that. Clear it.”

Panel: Did you see the actual [indiscernible] sites that—

Tim: I did. I didn’t realize—I didn’t know what that was, at first. Somebody—I got a post—a link to them. These people are out of their minds, and they don’t realize [indiscernible].

Panel: It was like 30,000 hits in two days. It was crazy.

Tim: We’re selling advertising on that.

Panel: I have a question. You mentioned a couple of times about pitching things. Do you feel like there’s lots of, I guess, input from the actors on the show about the direction of certain episodes?

Tim: More—to a degree, but that degree is more so than any other show I’ve ever been on. I mean, Steve Franks called me after season one. He’s like, “What else do you want to do?” [Indiscernible]. I’m like, “Dude, you’ve already had me on a horse in Civil War.

Panel: I love that episode. The face beard.

Tim: My face wig.

Panel: The face wig was awesome.

Tim: I’ve already, you know, shot Hummels [ph]. I’m trying to think of some other great things I got to do, especially season one where I kind of—we didn’t know what the show was going to be yet, and so suddenly I’d get an episode where I’m in Civil War regalia. This is a fucking [mess]. Like, no, what—you’ve—I’ve—and now it’s like, “You’ve had me on a horse with a sword. You’ve had me in an Old-Western-timey shoot-out. No, there’s nothing else to do. What ever you—I’m good. Whatever else you come up with, I’m good.” But we still—you know, they’re certainly open to [indiscernible].

Panel: Now, what is your favorite thing you’ve done as Lassiter?

Tim: There’s too many to list. There really are. And, again, because it’s so varied, it’s such a wide spectrum of things I’ve gotten to play. Like, you know, you play this tight-ass cop like, you know, supercop. He’s supercop. Like I said, you don’t think you’re ever going to get to do anything else within that show, but I’ve gotten to do so much other stuff. One episode, it’s pure goofy, silly. One episode, it’s bad-ass action, [indiscernible] my head. And another it’s—you know, it’s just drama. You know, I can’t think of any one episode that’s been my favorite because they all sort of become my favorite, and then I read the next one and that becomes my favorite, and I read the next one.

You know, I can’t tell you which is the best—like, there’s no way we can top season two, and then we do season three. Like, there’s—forget it. We’re done. We’ve jumped the shark. It’s going down.” Holy shit, this is the best season ever.” And it doesn’t normally work that way. It goes the other way. The writing—you know, you tend to shed writers, certainly after, like, five episodes in a season, all the original writers are gone on any other show. Not this. It’s like they’re all sticking around, they’re all still having fun. They’re all still able to really be creative, and the characters are still growing. It just doesn’t normally happen that way. It’s one of the greatest gigs on TV.

Panel: Maggie commented on the relationship between Lassiter and—

Tim: First of all, Maggie’s a liar, whatever she says.

Panel: She said you were awesome. But she made a comment about when she—at the end of last season, when Juliet has her breakdown, that she was really happy that Lassiter was the one that was there for her, and not Shawn. And the comment I wrote down was that the characters had earned this.

Tim: And we—that’s a phrase we used while shooting that. Like, because [you could have got Shawn]. That would have been really easy. But for—the hard thing is for that asshole from season one, Lassiter, to be the guy who comes in and sort of takes care of her. That was real—that was one of the most satisfying moments to get to play.

Anyway, that was a really—that was a, you know, a beautiful day at work. And the song that played over that montage was a beautiful song.

Panel: Band of Horses.

Tim: Band of Horses. I go to [the bed shed] because [indiscernible]. Just gorgeous. And they played that on set while it’s going on, which is—it was just a really lovely, emotional, sweet, sweet day. Yeah. And whoever would have thought if you watch, you know, season one that those two characters would be safe enough with each other to go there. It was great. Plus, it’s like, you know, that’s what happens with cops, and that’s what happens with partners and people, you know, in real life, so I’m glad they addressed that. I wish they’d address it more.

Panel: Does it ever get you out of a speeding ticket?

Tim: What? I’m sorry.

Panel: Does it ever get you out of a speeding ticket?

Tim: No. No. I heard—I’ve heard great stories of actors who play cops or on cop shows getting out of those. I can’t—I don’t know how I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket, because I tend to be a little hot in the car. But the one—I was in Whatcom County, just over the border, and I made an illegal U-turn because I was pissed off at my children, and I may have been screaming. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about the driving. And, you know, 30 seconds later, [imitates siren]. And I wanted to—I so wanted to go, “Dude, I play a cop on TV, man. I’m on the job, kind of. Cut a brother a break.” But I—look at this guy—I’m like, “First of all, I know this dude doesn’t watch Psych.” So, no.

I have gotten much—and this is much scarier than cops letting actors out of police—out of speeding tickets. The border. I’ve gotten—not that the border’s been light at all, but they’ll still give me the same look up and down, but then a lot of times they’ll go, “Okay, when is the new season coming?” I’m like, “How the fuck [indiscernible].”

I have a NEXUS pass, which is—basically, they scan your retina and take your DNA and put it in a file, which—because I commute on the weekends, most times, so it fast-tracks you through. And occasionally the computer will hold me, and I’m, “All right [indiscernible]. [make my flights] okay. Good. Cool.” You can’t give any attitude. It’s like, “Yes, sir. No, sir. Here’s my stuff. Go through everything.” And the woman standing—the other border agent was like—she’s like, “They’re not giving you any love?” I’m like, “Would you tell this guy who I am?” She’s like, “You know who this is?” Like…anyway. So that’s a no. No speeding tickets.

Panel: Now, we’ve seen Juliet go undercover. Are we ever going to see Lassiter go undercover, and as what?

Tim: I think Lassiter should go undercover as a drug lord. You know, I keep saying that, well, I’m raring to go. They—I think they feel that Lassiter—they’ve written in that Lassiter had a few bad experiences undercover. Perhaps he lost his temper and blew his cover. But the second this show is over, I grow a beard. I always do, because I get bored with what I look like. So I’ll grow this massive beard and grow my hair out. My rule is, pretty much, I won’t cut it until someone pays me to cut it. So if—or my wife threatens to take the kids. So depending on how good my hiatus is going, I could have a pretty long beard. And I keep saying, “I will come back for season one with a beard down to here, if you want.” And I always thought it would be a great time to—we’ll just do, like, one scene of him just post—you know, doing a sort of narc. And then we’ll, you know, shave it off. They haven’t taken me up on it yet.

Moderator: We have time for one more question, guys.

Panel: Between your and your wife, who’s the good cop and the bad cop at home?

Tim: With the kids?

Panel: Uh-huh.

Tim: Oh, me. It’s not like they listen to me. I’ve got—that’s the thing. You’re out of town. It’s like, I try not to be gone for more than 10 days. But even 10 days, you come in and they’re like, “Who are you? What? Put down my DS? Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” And that’s from the six-year-old. “Hey, Dad. Go get me a fucking juice box, huh? While you’re up.”

And I try. I try to pull my Lassiter face on them, and I try and pull like—occasionally, I’ll do, like, the Lassiter eyebrow. Now, see—and it’s these damn kids today, because my dad, all he had to do was raise his left eyebrow. I never got spanked because it never came to that. He would raise the eyebrow, and I’m like, “I’m going to stop what I’m doing.” This—I swear, I would have to be dangling them upside down from the top of a 40-storey building, I think, before they’d go, “All right, I’m sorry,” to her sister. They’re delights.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got time for. Thanks.

Panel: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Tim: See you later.

Panel: Bye. Thank you. Thank you, Tim.