Scott Speedman in 'R.J. Decker.' Disney/Dana Hawley Logo text Scott Speedman has finally settled into his status as a true leading man. Nearly three decades after breaking out as the brooding Ben Covington on the WB college drama Felicity — and following years of playing second fiddle on shows such as Animal Kingdom and Teacup — the Canadian actor is finally at the top of the call sheet as both the star and executive producer of R.J. Decker.
Adapted by Elementary creator Rob Doherty from Carl Hiaasen’s novel Double Whammy, the breezy ABC procedural dramedy stars Speedman as the titular sleuth — a former photojournalist and ex-con reinventing himself as a private investigator in the vibrant underbelly of South Florida. (The first season, which aired last spring, became the network’s most-watched 10 p.m. debut in over five years.)
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Whereas season one follows R.J. as he attempts to rebuild his life after prison as a private eye, season two digs deeper into what makes the easygoing protagonist tick. At the same time, the latest installment will uncover the mystery surrounding the suspected murder of Victor Ochoa (David Zayas) — the corrupt politician and father of R.J.’s on-again-off-again love interest, Emi (Jaina Lee Ortiz), whose testimony originally sent R.J. to prison years earlier.
“This year, we put an emphasis on getting to know R.J.,” Speedman, who also serves as an executive producer, tells The Hollywood Reporter. Season two will specifically explore how his character’s work impacts his personal life, as well as his “very complicated” relationship with his father, Reggie (played by new guest star Beau Bridges).
Calling in last week from Wilmington, North Carolina — where he is currently filming the sixth of just seven episodes for R.J. Decker’s second season — Speedman caught up with THR to discuss his desire to flesh out the personal life of his ex-con-turned-P.I., why he will always make time to return to Grey’s Anatomy, and the current status of a potential Felicity reunion.
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What new layers have you found in playing R.J. this time around compared to the first season? How has your understanding of him evolved?
The luxury I’ve always said about doing television — and [what] I’ve always loved — is you get to settle into a character as you go. As a performer, it’s a nice thing to be able to do that. In a movie, sometimes you get there and you have four, five, six weeks to do a beginning, middle and end; with television, if you have a bad episode, you get another try. To that point, there are certain rhythms to doing a network procedural like this, but then you get to know the characters, you relax into the characters as you go, and you get to know this backstory.
This year, we put an emphasis on getting to know R.J., his family and his personal life — how he is in romantic situations and coming out of romantic situations, how his work has affected his personal life, and all those types of things. We have Beau Bridges coming on this year [as R.J.’s father]. We have seven episodes right now to figure out what we’re doing for season two, so the big part was introducing family members and, through that storyline, really feeling how R.J. came to be R.J.
Whose idea was it for Beau Bridges to play your onscreen father?
There were names we bandied around, and I didn’t make the decision at all. But being a fan of his, when I heard it was possibly going to be him, I was thrilled about that. He’s an amazing actor, and there was some physical similarity I could see that made sense to me, so I was excited about it on that level as well.
You mentioned that the arrival of Reggie will reveal new sides of R.J. What kind of relationship, if any, do they have in the present day, and how does that dynamic evolve over the few episodes that you and Beau have already filmed together?
They don’t have any relationship right now, before these episodes start. So they’re estranged; [R.J.] hasn’t seen him in five years or something like that. But what we see with R.J. is, a lot of parents are triggers. We need to see another side — a familial side — of R.J. He’s a cool customer in every setting. And then when we see him with his dad, he’s quite amped up; he kind of turns into a teenage son. You just have that dynamic with your parents; you have the same arguments you’ve had your whole life.
So I think how emotional their relationship is comes out pretty quickly,in the first episode. He loves his dad, but the way he comes back into his life and their history, he’s definitely not happy about it at the beginning. He has a very complicated relationship with his dad. There’s a lot of bad blood that, through the episodes we did together, we worked through — and we’ll see where that takes us.
You have spent your entire career being just an actor, but you now have the added designation of being an executive producer for the first time. Some lead actors are actively involved in the development of their shows; others are admittedly given a producer credit as a vanity title. How involved exactly are you behind the scenes as a producer?
To be totally honest with you, not very much. Since the pilot, we have been running and gunning, getting our orders. And when we get whatever the order [of episodes] is, we’re deep in it. They’re jumping into a writers room. They needed me back [for season two] in four weeks in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Florida. I think there’s some real fun parts of that creatively — you don’t have a lot of time to think or worry. But in terms of my involvement creatively, I trust Rob and Carl so much. I’ve had zero issues with how they’ve creatively gone about this show. I’m just learning what it means to be an executive producer on a show, what kind of space that can create, what kind of input I can really have. But it’s going so well that I haven’t really had to call Rob too many times and say anything at all about the process.
But in your creative conversations with Rob and Carl, have you established any specific guardrails for R.J. as executive producers to ensure that you stay true to what you all initially envisioned for the character? R.J. strikes me as a genuinely good person who made a costly mistake years ago; he has a strong moral compass — and a propensity to break the rules, mostly for the right reasons.
In certain situations, the threat of going back to jail looms heavily [over R.J.]: “I was in jail for two years last time. I could be in jail for 20 with the wrong move to the wrong person.” With this character, you have to put the boundaries out in terms of [this idea] that character does like to break the rules, go against the grain, be a bit of a rebel and push the boundaries of whatever authority is in front of him, so that can really backfire on him. But we’re just having fun with that. [I’m] not even reminding [the writers] — it’s just that sometimes we talk about stakes, like, “Okay, if I make a mistake with this FBI agent or whoever, that could really rebound on me and that could be breaking the law in some way.” So that’s always in the background of [creative decisions] for sure.
In season one, you joked that R.J. and Emi skipped the “will-they-won’t-they” phase of their relationship since they’d already hooked up years before the present-day events of the pilot — yet their final scene in the premiere, which is set to “Only You,” is a not-so-subtle nod to their romantic potential. How are you collaborating with Jaina and Rob to navigate their dynamic this season, especially now that these characters crossed that line again late in season one without defining their relationship?
That’s a Rob question and creators’ question [about] their idea for the long-term. If they have a long-term idea, I’m not aware of it right now. I think story dominates everything. Story-wise, it’s helpful to have them as characters not be, for lack of a better way to say it, boyfriend and girlfriend — like everything’s great, everything’s perfect, and now we’re going to have a happier relationship while solving crimes. For whatever reason, it’s not the DNA of our show, and it makes more sense for us to be split up — and not be at each other’s throats or anything like that, but to be estranged in a way, and then coming back into each other’s lives in certain ways.
We’ve dealt with it as much as we can, but, again, a lot of making television like this is running, gunning, and figuring it out as we go and seeing what works and what doesn’t work. Even though we’re going into season two, it feels very much like the beginning of our show. We’re still figuring out what stories work, which characters work with what characters, and how they work and all that, so we’re still discovering [their relationship].
You are notably still balancing your starring role on R.J. Decker with your recurring role as Dr. Nick Marsh, the now-fiancé of Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), on Grey’s Anatomy. How much will we see of you on Grey’s this season? Have you filmed anything yet?
No, I think their season’s starting right now. They’re doing a certain number of episodes. I won’t give away how many they’re doing, but they’re doing a certain number of episodes too. And, yeah, I’ll be doing something this season. I just don’t know to what degree just yet. With [showrunner] Meg [Marinis], I always check in about when they want me to do stuff and what they’re thinking. I’ve been so honestly so busy with this that I don’t have time to do much of anything else.
Since both R.J. and Grey’s are produced by the same studio and network, I’d imagine that it is a little easier to balance both shows. Are you simply carving out time in your R.J. schedule and filming Grey’s in blocks like Ellen does now?
Yeah, basically. I’m finishing here, and we’re done at the end of September. I’ll have some free time. It’s just the way the schedules work. If it works, it works — and it will work this year. So, hopefully, we get to continue doing [R.J. Decker], but we’ll see what happens.
Was there a part of you that was concerned that Nick wouldn’t make it out of the bridge collapse at the end of last season alive?
No, I wasn’t concerned at all because I knew when they told me I wasn’t [dying]. (Laughs.) But I feel and I’ve always felt so lucky to be a part of that show. Look, they just had to cut loose some really important characters [Drs. Owen Hunt and Teddy Altman, played by Kevin McKidd and Kim Raver], the series regulars that have been on there for 15 years. They’re beloved, beloved characters [whose] stories reached the end of the line.
I wouldn’t have R.J. Decker without Grey’s Anatomy, without Ellen. They had a lot to do with my resurgence on television, and I’m very, very lucky and feel very indebted to them. I’m very involved with what happens [on R.J.]; on that show. I just sort of go in and I have a great time. I love working with those people, and whatever they need from me, I try to give them. If they wanted to kill me off, if they needed to kill me off, that’s great. I don’t want to die! I’m just saying that’s what would happen.
I was particularly taken aback by Meredith’s decision to propose to Nick after he woke up from his life-saving surgery following the bridge collapse. How did you think about playing Nick’s reaction to her proposal?
Man, I don’t even know. I try not to judge those [emotions] before they happen. I think it was a natural thing. To me, having done [a proposal] before myself, that emotion felt very easy and natural and not planned from both of us. My reaction was very in line with her, with where she was coming from. I didn’t even think of it as a marriage proposal, even though I know that’s how it’s read [to the viewer] and that’s what it is. It was more of them coming together at the same time to say, “Hey, I almost lost you. I don’t want to lose you. Let’s get married,” kind of thing. That’s how that read to me, but I should not have been as naive as I am still in this late stage about how it would be taken on a show like Grey’s Anatomy.
Wait, did you read that proposal scene and not think it was a proposal? Or could you immediately tell that it was a proposal?
Yeah, I guess I understood it. It just didn’t seem like a big “event” in that way. I think I was just coming out of surgery or whatever, just coming out of the haze that I was in from the accident. So [the proposal] didn’t take me aback or anything, but it wasn’t like this [proposal] on a beach next to an ocean. It wasn’t this big, big, big to-do.
So, do you think Nick was always ready to take that next step and was merely waiting for Meredith to get there on her own?
Oh yeah, she just beat him to the punch.
Do you think that we will get Meredith and Nick’s wedding soon? If so, how soon?
I mean this when I say it: I don’t know. I think it would happen at some point, but who knows if it’s this season or next season or whatever? I’m the wrong person to ask about that.
To be fair, I don’t think Meredith has ever been a traditional wedding kind of gal. She and Nick may just go to city hall and get married on a whim. She’s done it before with Derek!
(Laughs.) Yeah, we’ll see!
Since you have dipped in and out of the fictional O.R. for the last five years, has the medical jargon gotten any easier for you on Grey’s?
(Laughs.) I enjoy that part of it. I think every job I’ve ever done, especially lately, involves something you’re learning and picking up and trying to figure out, and that was [a new skill] for sure. Getting to do that and [seeing] how serious they take it and trying to do a good job with that was a great tool for me to figure out.
In recent years, you and your former Felicity co-stars have all expressed an interest in revisiting the show in some capacity. In fact, Keri Russell has even revealed that Amanda Foreman, who played her roommate Meghan, has a pitch for where your characters would be in middle age. With the 30-year anniversary approaching in a couple of years, has there been any movement toward some kind of revival or continuation of Felicity?
I don’t think there has, to be totally honest with you. I would just love any excuse to get to hang out with those people, but I think the powers that be are just such busy people. It’s such a tricky thing. Obviously, I think if all of us could push a button and do something — whether it’s a 90-minute movie for Netflix, or six episodes for whoever — we’d all be game to do it. It’d be so fun to get to hang out with those people at the age we are now. But, yeah, I don’t know. Keri’s schedule’s crazy. My schedule’s crazy. We all have family and kids. Scott [Foley], J.J. [Abrams] and Matt [Reeves] are pretty busy guys, as you know.
Do you think your and Keri’s characters, Ben and Felicity, are still together today?
Who knows? Whatever’s better for the story. I think it’s probably better if they’re not together, like something went wrong.
So you’re suggesting that they may have drifted apart or something else went awry with their relationship —
Exactly — and some event or something would bring us back together in the same proximity. Who knows what could be?
Wouldn’t Felicity and Ben have college-aged children by now? That could be the event!
(Laughs.) Hey, they could! They could! I don’t, but some of [the other Felicity alums] do.
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R.J. Decker airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on ABC, while Grey’s Anatomy season 23 premieres Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.
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