For those unfamiliar with the fake psychic world created by Steve Franks, his "Psych" is now the USA Network's longest running series.
In this week's new episode (Wednesday, 10 p.m.), the show -- which has a reputation for goofy, fun storylines and an all-star line-up of guest stars -- welcomes Emmy winner William Shatner.
The original "Star Trek" star making the trip to the show's Vancouver set gave us the perfect excuse to chat with "Psych" creator (and "Big Daddy" screenwriter) Franks about the show's penchant for attracting great guest stars, the Shawn/Juliet romance (James Roday and Maggie Lawson) and that musical episode fans have been waiting for.
Read more: William Shatner Boldly Goes to 'Psych'
You have become known for getting great guest stars on the show, and Wednesday's episode has William Shatner as Juliette's dad. How big a get was that? He had to be pretty high on the wish list?
Oh, absolutely. We got George Takei in the first season. At that point, it felt like he was the biggest get we would ever get. Now, people know our show, and I think that word is getting around that when people come onto our show, they have a tremendously fun time, and you get to do a lot of fun stuff. We really haven't had the challenges getting actors that we did at the beginning. Before, it was like, "Wait, Vancouver? And what is this show? And when's it on?" And now we're hearing from agents and people actually are interested and want to do the show. Or if we offer it to somebody, and they turn us down, but they the say they would love to do the show some other time. And I keep an active list of that, whether they're paying us lip service or not.
I watched the episode with Shatner. It's one of the best things he's done in a while. He seemed really into it.
It was so great. And we didn't write the part with Shatner in mind. I had the idea that Juliet's dad was a con man, and Shawn goes down and drags him back home, and then he realizes that he's done a terrible thing. We would never say, "OK, let's write this with Shatner in mind." And because we weren't saddled with the baggage of, hey, everybody knows how Shatner talks and what Shatner is, it was a whole unique character for him. And he was so prepared and ready.
It's left open for him to return, too.
And in fact, (he does). He does come back briefly in another episode. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that … But he makes a very brief return in the second half of the season.
Read more: The End of the 2-Minute Commercial Break
