James Roday Rodriguez (born James David Rodriguez, April 4, 1976) is an American actor, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for starring on the USA Network series Psych as hyper-observant consultant detective and fake psychic Shawn Spencer. He most recently starred in A Million Little Things, which debuted in 2018, playing Javier "Gary" Mendez.
Early life
Rodriguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, as James David Rodriguez. He attended Taft High School in San Antonio. His father, James "Jim" Rodriguez, is of Mexican descent, and his mother, Deborah Collins, is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Rodriguez's father is a retired Air Force master sergeant.
At New York University's Experimental Theatre Wing, Rodriguez studied theatre and earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts. At the age of 22, he selected the professional name James Roday. In a July 2020 interview, Rodriguez explained the decision was mainly driven by producers and casting directors feeling his appearance clashed with his Latino family name. The characters he read for up until that point were not written with a Latino background in mind. In order to book his first job, he legally changed his middle name, David, to Roday (from an Anton Chekhov play), and omitted Rodriguez from his screen name. In the same interview, he stated regret that he "sold out my heritage in about 15 seconds" and announced that going forward he was going to use his full legal name of James Roday Rodriguez.
Career
Theatre beginnings
Rodriguez started his acting career starring in various theatrical productions, including Three Sisters, A Respectable Wedding, and Severity's Mistress. He took on leading roles in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Extinction which he produced with his theatre company Red Dog Squadron. For RDS he also directed the play Greedy, and wrote and directed the one-act play Sustenance. His most recent foray onto the stage was in December 2016, when he starred in the New York production of White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour.
Big screen and television
His big screen debut was in the 1999 film Coming Soon alongside Ryan Reynolds and fellow debutant Ashton Kutcher.
Other early film credits include the 2003 film Rolling Kansas and the 2005 film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard. Behind the scenes, he and writing partners Todd Harthan and James DeMonaco wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film Skinwalkers. The team also worked on an unused script for the film adaptation of the video game Driver.
Rodriguez's television credits include starring roles in 2001's First Years and NBC's Miss Match in 2003.
Psych franchise
His big break came on July 7, 2006, with the series premiere of USA Network's original series Psych. Airing following the season premiere of USA's other comedic success, Monk, it was the highest-rated scripted basic cable TV show premiere of 2006. Psych ran for eight seasons until 2014.
In 2017, Rodriguez returned to his most famous role as he starred in and executive produced Psych: The Movie, which he also co-wrote with Psychs series creator Steve Franks. It aired on USA Network in December 2017.
A sequel, Psych 2: Lassie Come Home was officially announced on February 14, 2019. It was filmed in Vancouver in March and April of that year and debuted July 15, 2020 on NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock. Lassie Come Home was the first project that featured his full legal name, James Roday Rodriguez. He once again served as co-writer and executive producer.
Psych 3: This Is Gus was filmed in June 2021 and released on Peacock on November 18, 2021. As of May 2023, a fourth Psych movie is rumored to be in the making.
Post Psych
After Psych the series ended, Rodriguez starred in various pilots and independent films, most notably Pushing Dead by independent filmmaker Tom E. Brown, which accumulated a number of awards at film festivals in the US and elsewhere.
At the same time, Rodriguez began focusing on his work behind the camera as a director, writer and producer. He has since directed episodes for Battle Creek, Rush Hour, Rosewood, Blood Drive and The Resident and developed, wrote, and directed the pilots Shoot The Moon for USA and Quest For Truth for E!.
Rodriguez directed his first feature film, Gravy, in 2013, co-written by him and Todd Harthan. He co-wrote (once again with Todd Harthan) and directed his second film Treehouse as part of Hulu's monthly horror movie anthology Into The Dark, which aired in March 2019.