I remember one night, my parents were out at a function of some kind and I had just gotten cable in my room. That was a big deal, and I saw 'Blue Velvet' on HBO. It blew my mind in a way that I don't think children's minds are supposed to be blown, but they probably shouldn't be watching 'Blue Velvet.'
My plan was to go to New York and do some theatre, and then I got the script for 'Psych.' I was like, 'Ahh - just as I thought I was out, you pulled me back in!' I had a great meeting with the show creator and we laid out the parameters to make the show work: what I would do, what he would let me do.
Look at every show on television; it's derivative of another show that came before it. It was only a matter of time. So all you 'Mentalist' fans, it's okay to like the show, but don't be in denial of where it came from. Friday nights, U.S.A., basic cable-style baby.
Leonardo Dicaprio didn't change his name, Emilio Estevez didn't change his name. But every case is different. I only have one reference of what my career was and I was very, very blessed and very, very lucky, and it got started very quickly after college. And I only know that by going with Roday.
I'm a sports fanatic. It's hard for me to commit to the weekly, episodic nature of television, so for me, anytime that I can put a game on, that's what I do.
I would say I'm more fascinated by Big Daddy V than I am necessarily a huge fan of Big Daddy V. He simply threw on the double-strapped unitard... and now he's some sort of fearsome, fighting, wrecking machine.
I did nothing but theater until, I guess, '99. I was all the way through college the first time that I had stepped in front of a camera. And it's weird; it's definitely a transition.
I came from Texas, I was studying theater at NYU, and I thought for sure that my lot in life would be to get the best bartending job I could find and do theater in New York. And that was a good life.
I usually just pick a genre of movie that I feel like saluting and then go off and come up with something that I can sort of pay homage to. That's the great thing about our show is we've sort of created a landscape for 'Psych' where we're kind of allowed to go off and give shout-outs to movies that we love, genres that we love.
When he came to television, there was no way I wasn't going to watch. Of course, he delivered everything that you would expect David Lynch to deliver, and more, and he was doing it in primetime network television. Even as a 14-year old, I wanted someone in the room with me that I could look over and say, 'Can you believe we're watching this?'
I get star-struck anytime I meet performers that I grew up watching and appreciating. I mean, it's still incredibly surreal to me that I was a kid in San Antonio watching movies and then now I'm working with some of the people that were in those movies. I don't think it'll ever stop being surreal on some level.
And I have to say, for the record, my favorite line from 'Without A Clue' is after Michael Caine pokes a dead body with a stick and announces to everyone, 'It is my opinion that this man is dead.'
I would say I've actually done a lot more comedy than I've done drama. It's weird the way that worked out, because when I came out of theater school I took myself way too seriously, so it's kind of ironic that I ended up sort of going down the comedy path.
