PSYCH 2: LASSIE COME HOME Boss on the Movie’s Emotional Twists and Potential Sequels

[Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for the PSYCH 2: LASSIE COME HOME movie, which is now streaming on Peacock.]

Come on, son (or daughter)—PSYCH’s Gus (Dulé Hill) is going to be a dad!

Selene (Jazmyn Simon) revealed the big news near the end of PSYCH 2: LASSIE COME HOME, after incorrectly Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) assumed his wife, Juliet (Maggie Lawson), was pregnant—while they were in the middle of a showdown with a bad guy.

Of course, there was a little twist: Selene told Gus she was still, technically, married to someone else. Cue the next film? Maybe.

“[Co-writer] James and I, we were riffing on the set, ‘Oh my gosh, okay, so, Selene’s husband is this guy,'” PSYCH creator (and LASSIE COME HOME co-writer/director) Steve Franks says. “And James, of course, goes off the rails, and he’s pitching wrestlers, actors who may not still be alive [to play this mysterious man]. It’s a really fun concept. But if you remember, the end of the first PSYCH movie had us running off with John Cena and we only, very briefly, make an illusion to that [here].”

Here, Franks breaks down the biggest moments of PSYCH 2, and teases what may be ahead…

How will Gus’ impending fatherhood impact his partnership with Shawn?

For eight seasons and two movies (not to mention all of their pre-series shenanigans), Shawn and Gus have been partners in crime, with Shawn often reluctantly dragged his longtime BFF into crazy situations. But since Gus was often reluctant, at best, how will this new responsibility change their dynamic in a potential film follow-up?

“The possibilities are so fantastic,” Franks gushes. “It’s so exciting to see Gus try to handle Shawn—and his inability to say no to some of Shawn’s more ridiculous ideas. And then try to balance that [with his new family], it adds such a great new layer that’s going to be really fun to explore.”

“We even tried to do a little bit of it in the series, when Gus had the girlfriend who had the son,” he continues. “It didn’t quite fit into what we were doing as much as we want it to, because once we start doing it, it’s like okay, this would mean so much more if this was Gus’ actual child. So, here we are; we’re pretty excited.”

And the team is very conscious of responsibly, yet realistically, altering the show’s core relationship.

“You don’t want to take the characters and make them do this massive sea change, but time passes,” Franks says. “Shawn’s always going to evolve at the bare minimum. My favorite stuff to write [this time] was Shawn, trying to be a good husband, and the sort of switch we got to do with Juliet being the one sneaking around. That stuff is really fun and it’s great for the actors. And anytime I can reference CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING, then the world is all well.”

Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) came home.

The film was in many ways to PSYCH co-star Omundson, who suffered a stroke while the first film was in pre-production and had to be almost entirely written out to allow for his recovery process. In the sequel, Lassiter was ambushed on the job, and his recovery—including a stroke—led to him staying in a facility, where he pushed many of his loved ones away, including his wife, Marlowe (Kristy Swanson).

But at the end of the film, Marlowe came to bring Lassie home…and he got out of his wheelchair and walked to her.

“We marked it on the calendar, it was toward the end of the shoot,” Franks recalls of the emotional scene. “Everybody in the building just has tears in their eyes. And we didn’t know how far [Omundson would go] or how it was going to look. Tim was kind of keeping us a little bit in the dark of how he was going to do it. And I said, ‘Listen, I want it to be fresh for you.’ So, it was just extraordinary. Kelly Kulchak, our executive producer for the series, had flown up for that day, all of our families were there. It was an extraordinary day; so uplifting, so emotional and so great.”

Naturally, however, it was accidentally juxtaposed with one of the lighter scenes of the film kicking off their production day.

“It was also one of the most ridiculous days ever, because it was the same day that we shot Jimmi Simpson as the imaginary Shawn baby,” Franks says with a laugh. “I’ve never spent so much time in my life going through one piece of equipment as that oversized baby chair, because we had to build it from scratch. And I’m really never too hard driving on anything, but I said this has to look like one of these bouncy seats. I think we drove everybody crazy but it was worth it to see Jimmi Simpson in this nine-foot thing against this giant oversized wall.”

When might there be a third PSYCH film?

Franks has been open about his desire for the PSYCH franchise to have six films, total, but they came very close to already having another one under their belt to release.

“[When the films were being developed at USA Network, they asked,] ‘Can you do two movies at once, shooting back to back, PIRATE OF THE CARRIBEAN-style?'” Franks shares. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I can so do that.’ One of them was going be the John Cena story, and it was going take place in a foreign country, with them on the run, and all that stuff. And then the other one was going to be this Lassiter story with Tim.”

“Then they saw the budget for shooting two [movies],” he continues. “Then it was, ‘Why don’t we just do one.’ So, we had to choose between the John Cena one and the Lassiter, and obviously our mission was [to honor] Tim; Tim has always been the mission.”

But while the events of the Shawn and Gus’ adventure with Juliet’s brother Ewan (Cena) have passed, Franks still is interested in telling that story.

“I still would love to pick that story up and do that as a prequel to the second film,” he says. “As confusing as we can make [the timeline], that’s our goal.”

“We are like constantly searching for ways to break out of our traditional norm,” he continues with a laugh. “Aggressively pursuing ways to break them. And the FAST AND THE FURIOUS movies sort of stopped being about street racing and now they’re these heist movies; they’re evolving into this other thing. I want to make sure that we can sort of evolve these stories as well. And if it just became an adventure story, I’d been so pleased with that. Occasionally, yeah, Shawn has to look at things and they have to light up. And then you have to figure some stuff out. But we love these characters so much we just want to take them on on popcorn movie adventures.”

Legal helped inspire one of the most meta moments of the franchise.

PSYCH has always had fun with its pop culture homages and indulged in its meta winks (LASSIE COME HOME included nods to newbies Richard Schiff’s THE GOOD DOCTOR and Sarah Chalke’s SCRUBS), but one of the best jokes of the film was crafted on the fly.

When Shawn’s father, Henry (Corbin Bernsen) scolded him for leaving a slow cooker on when he abandoned the Psych offices in Santa Barbara, he noted, “You nearly THIS IS US-ed the entire block.”

“THIS IS US?” Shawn asked. “Dad, why are you watching that show? They have the same show on ABC, but newer.”

Of course, the show in question is A MILLION LITTLE THINGS—which Rodriguez co-stars in. (And Allison Miller, also a star in the aforementioned ABC series, interrupted the duo’s conversation.)

“I think the THIS IS US joke was [co-writer] Andy Berman’s joke,” Franks recalls. “It was one of the few things from legal; it was one of a few things we couldn’t say. We had to say slow cooker, rather than a brand name. So on the fly, we’re trying to reword the joke. And so we got the slow cooker, which isn’t quite as funny as the original phrasing, but I understood where they were coming from. So we were we were working around that and then suddenly it started turning into this THIS IS US run and then it turned into A MILLION LITTLE THINGS, and it was so fun.”

Franks admits even he wasn’t sure if that was asking too much of Rodriguez. “We didn’t think he’d say it, and we were so wrong, because he didn’t hesitate for a second,” Franks says. “And that’s that’s the joy of being on these sets and working on this show—we’ll take it to its logical conclusion. And our actors will always go there.”

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Can’t get enough PSYCH? Fans can enter to win a Zoom with stars Rodriguez and Hill on Peacock’s Twitter page today (Wednesday, July 15) only!

PSYCH 2: LASSIE COME HOME, Now Streaming, Peacock

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