By Jamie Ruby
James Roday is probably best known for his role of Shawn Spencer on the television series,
Psych, which he has also written and directed for, but he has also previously worked on other series such as
First Years,
Providence, and more recently
Love Bites. He has also done work in film, starring in
Rolling Kansas, and appearing in other movies such as
The Dukes of Hazzard and
Gamer. He also cowrote the screenplay for the movie
Skin Walkers.
Roday recently sat down with the digital media to discuss season six of
Psych, as well as his upcoming part on USA Network's reality series,
WWE Tough Enough.
Roday first studied theater in college and was lucky to get a break quickly after. "I went to NYU and studied theater. Somehow I made it through all four years and, you know, started the thing that you do when you’re done with college and horrified that real life is starting. I had a bartending job in New York, I got an agent a very tiny agency, and - that mostly represented opera singers, if I remember correctly.
"And started getting sent out, mostly television stuff, and you know I have one of those 1 in 100,000 stories where I actually got the first job that I auditioned for, which you know it was a TV Pilot, which sent me to L.A., which you know ultimately got me a much bigger agent, and then I was sort of off and running.
"It’s not the most popular story to tell in a room full of actors, but the truth is I got really, really lucky and I was very blessed and, you know, after about a year of living the life of a struggling actor in New York, I was in L.A. with a job. So...it kind of worked out for me."