Scott Speedman, R.J. Decker
Disney/Dana Hawley
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of R.J. Decker, “Before You Accuse Me.” Read at your own risk!]
Across the first two seasons of R.J. Decker, the titular P.I. (played by star and executive producer Scott Speedman) has come perilously close to landing back behind bars — or worse, losing his life in pursuit of justice for his clients. But when his latest case wraps, R.J. is left grappling with the realization that he may have inadvertently put a couple of his own loved ones in danger.
In the Season 2 finale of the ABC crime procedural, R.J. agrees to reinvestigate the death of police officer Bobby Werner, who was killed by a gunman at a convenience store 10 years earlier, at the behest of his on-again, off-again love interest Emi Ochoa (Jaina Lee Ortiz). After meeting with an old law school friend who tackles wrongful convictions, Emi becomes convinced that Gabriel Romero, a young man convicted of the crime, was coerced into a false confession. The case, however, immediately puts R.J. at odds with Mel (Bevin Bru), another officer who was on the phone with him when he was shot point-blank in the back of the head.
The winding investigation ultimately points to Bobby’s own wife, Jessica (Meredith Garretson), who likely killed him to cash in on a sizable line-of-duty payout. It wasn’t the first time a husband of hers had died under mysterious circumstances, either; as it turns out, Jessica only started going by that name after moving to Florida from Michigan, where her first husband was killed in a suspicious head-on collision with a tree. Though Jessica refuses to confess, Mel obtains a warrant to search her house. The search initially turns up nothing, but it’s enough for Jessica to temporarily lose custody of her and Bobby’s daughter, Danielle.
As R.J. and Mel reconcile over mid-day beers at the end of the finale, Jessica calls Mel with a chilling warning. Parked outside the home Mel shares with Catherine (Adelaide Clemens) — who also happens to be R.J.’s ex-wife — Jessica is watching Catherine and Mel’s daughter, Sofia (Mélodie Rose Romano), menacingly from afar, and she makes it clear she intends to go after them in retaliation.
Everything you need for fall TV:
Calling in from the set of Grey’s Anatomy, where he’s dressed in scrubs and preparing to shoot in one of the infamous ORs, Speedman opens up below to TV Guide about how his crowd-pleasing protagonist has evolved, what he thinks that cliffhanger will reveal about R.J.’s true nature in a potential Season 3 — and the enduring legacy of Felicity, which just began streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
Heading into Season 2, you said the creative team wanted to show more of R.J. beyond being an ex-con. One way they accomplished that was by introducing his garrulous, estranged father, Reggie (Beau Bridges), who ends up helping on a case midway through the season. How did your vision for their relationship compare to what actually plays out on the show?
Scott Speedman: Everything felt very right, but as an actor, even though I’m an executive producer on the show, you’re sort of just waiting for the scripts to arrive to see how they define the relationship with your dad. That’s what we do on shows. When they say they want to get to know R.J. more, we do it in the limited time we have, in the 44 minutes, by bringing in people that are very personal to him.
R.J.’s a very cool customer, so when you bring in something like his dad, it just throws his center off big time. That definitely happened with Beau. It was pretty funny to watch R.J. scrambling around and getting outsmarted at times by his dad and surprised by his dad, and then they have deeper issues that they had to work out. I think through that, the audience gets to see R.J. in a different light and they get to see how the man became the man in a certain kind of sense.
In hindsight, can you now see the link between what makes R.J. tick as an adult and how he was raised — or not raised — by his dad?
Speedman: Oh, big time, because it’s a fraught relationship. They had a lot of drama in that household and that definitely led to some of its demise, which we see at the beginning of our series in terms of R.J. coming out of jail. We don’t see it. We hear about what he did, but there’s a lot of deep-seated feeling and anger. Some of the basis of R.J. is in the [original Carl Hiaasen] book [Double Whammy]. His ex-wife, Catherine, is on our show, but in the book she refers to him as “Rage.” So there’s a lot of feeling there when we see the father and the lack of the fatherhood, and once you hear about the fact that he wasn’t around that much, we understand a little bit about how he came to be.
R.J. and Reggie finally reconnect and reconcile by the end of Episode 5, yet R.J. suggests that Reggie would be better off staying with his other son, Tommy. What do you think R.J.’s relationship with Tommy is like, given that he rarely talks about his biological family with his chosen family?
Speedman: He doesn’t talk about Tommy, and that’s very purposeful because I think just from a producer point of view, from literally producing a show, the writers want to keep all options open. They don’t want to be sectioned off and boxed into something we said in Episode 4 of Season 2 if that doesn’t serve us going forward. With Tommy, I think that’d be really interesting to explore what that could be. They’ve left that open, but it’s not something we’ve ever talked about. That could be an interesting character, no question.
This week’s episode didn’t exactly feel like a season finale; it seemingly wrapped up a case from the penultimate episode, but now there’s a small cliffhanger relating to that same case. What did you make of how the finale played out?
Speedman: I kind of love that it wasn’t a big cliffhanger at the end. It is a cliffhanger though, emotionally. I think that really gets to the core of what R.J. is. At his core, R.J. is a protector, and that [ending] will send him, along with Mel obviously, down a certain path to try to figure this out, to right the wrongs and to protect them. That will really instinctually take over for him. Hopefully, in Season 3, we’ll get to see immediately what happens there. I’m sure that’ll be sort of a longer-term story figuring out the what and the how of all that. But it definitely is an exciting place to end. For me, specifically as a character, I think that really gets to the root of what R.J. is.
Did you film any alternate endings, or was the finale always written to end with Jessica leaving the phone behind in her car and walking toward Catherine and Sofia?
Speedman: That was always what it was; that was always how it was supposed to end. We didn’t do any other versions of it at all. It just read really well. I loved that whole script, that whole season finale. It was very tense. Obviously, Mel and R.J. have spent the seven episodes of the second season building a relationship, and to see it tested like it is in that episode was really fun to play. And then obviously, we come together at the end of the episode and we’ll see what happens as we go there.
R.J. spent much of the episode convinced that Mel had put an innocent man behind bars for the death of Jessica’s husband, even suggesting that Mel had planted evidence to frame him. Do you think R.J. really believed that Mel was capable of such a crime?
Speedman: It’s a great question because it was something I discussed with [creator/showrunner] Rob Doherty and the writers quite a bit: “Does he really believe that Mel is capable of this?” I think they have this really great scene where she says something like, “You know me,” and R.J. responds something like, “Well, not anymore.” That really gets to the bottom of [their tension] because she’s playing around on the edges. Bevin would say something different — that she’s just doing the right thing — but in terms of how R.J. looks at things, she’s playing around on the edges that could get her in a lot of trouble. I think he knows she would do anything to help her friend, and she’s emotionally tied into this whole story with her own partner. So, yeah, it has a lot of emotional triggers to it.
What do you know at this point about the future of this show? Do you even know if a potential next season would pick up in the immediate aftermath of that cliffhanger?
Speedman: I have no clue. Listen, we need to get a Season 3 going! We need to get that pickup, and then they’ll start figuring out. I’m sure Rob has ideas. The way this show works for me is… I’m in every scene, so I’m running and gunning and learning lines, and I don’t have a lot of time. I have a few things about story stuff here and there, but really, I’m finding out how the story’s going and what we’re doing with the rest of the cast. That might change as we go forward, but that is what it is right now. So, everybody’s just waiting to see what we’re doing, if we’re doing more, when we’re doing more, and then we’ll get into the how of it.
You mentioned that you sometimes have some input into the story as an executive producer. What have you found yourself pushing for from a creative standpoint?
Speedman: Look, I’ve been doing television for a long time. I have been so happy with all the ways that these writers are tackling these stories. We have to get these episodes out pretty quick; we have a fast turnaround. I’m amazed how well these guys are doing, getting these scripts up and how strong the scripts are.
But I love the Beau stuff. I love going back and revisiting the Emi relationship, which I don’t think is over in many ways. There’s a real friendship and connection, a real bond with Emi. And with Mel too — the brotherly-sisterly challenging thing we have is very fun to play, and I think for audiences, it really roots our show. Those are all things that I think we’ll continue to revisit. Obviously, I’d love to get Wish [R.J.’s former cellmate played by Kevin Rankin] more involved in stuff as we go here and see what goes on there because Kevin’s so fun to work with.
Do you have any specific unanswered questions about R.J. that you would like to get answered in a potential third season?
Speedman: Oh my gosh, yes. [I have questions] about [R.J.’s] mom and family life, and what happened in jail for him. What was that really like with Wish? And the Catherine relationship too — how that worked [and didn’t work], what that was really like, where they are now and where that could lead. Those are things we’ve delved into a little bit but not fully, so I’m excited to really do all of that.
Bevin Bru and Scott Speedman, R.J. Decker
Disney/Dana Hawley
Even with the extremely limited real estate of seven episodes this season, the writers still wanted to inject a new love triangle between R.J., Emi, and Trudy (Shantel VanSanten). How do you think the writers have tried to develop R.J.’s romantic life, considering that he is very much still letting his work get in the way of those relationships?
Speedman: It’s a good question. I think when we split up [R.J. and Emi] per se, for lack of a better way to say it, that allowed for a lot more story. Again, it’s the same thing with his dad. I just think it’s interesting for an early show like this to see R.J. challenged and to see him with different rhythms and different people right now. That brings out who he is, and it allows the audience in a little more, which, when you’re doing a network procedure, is really important. How the writers are thinking about it, I don’t really know. I just know that it kept me on my toes to have different rhythms, different people, and bringing in someone like Trudy, who is vastly different from Jaina’s character, was really fun. It really showed a different side of R.J. with a different person, and I think that was the writers’ intent.
Since wrapping production on R.J. Decker a month ago, you have already guest-starred on two more returning shows filming in Los Angeles: Season 3 of Netflix’s Running Point and Season 23 of ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy. What can you say about your involvement in both shows in the immediate future?
Speedman: Running Point, I just did very quickly. I did a bunch of episodes very quickly, which was super fun. My friends, Dave Stassen and Ike Barinholtz, do that show. I jumped in there, and it was a completely different energy and vibe than coming off of R.J. Decker. I haven’t done a lot of that heightened romantic comedy stuff, so that was great. It’s just a really fun show. Plot-wise, there’s not much I can say.
And in terms of Grey’s Anatomy, they probably want me to keep stuff under wraps, but I just got here a couple days ago, so I’m on my first episode and I’ll be finding out what’s happening soon. I think they’re still figuring it out, to be honest, about what’s happening with me and Ellen Pompeo and all that, so we’ll see what happens. I probably shouldn’t say too much.
Everyone is waiting with bated breath for news about Meredith and Nick’s impending wedding.
Speedman: I know! I can hear the question under the question. [Laughs.] That’s why I’m trying to be smart about that.
Netflix just licensed all four seasons of Felicity to coincide with the new season of Keri Russell’s show The Diplomat, and there are quite a few people who are now rediscovering Felicity as fully grown adults or who are watching the show for the very first time. What do you make of the enduring cultural impact of that show?
Speedman: Oh man, it’s such a fascinating one for me because it was my first show, and I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know how good I had it with [creators] J.J. [Abrams] and Matt [Reeves]. Keri, as the lead, was always an incredible number one on the call sheet. Still, to this day, I’m trying to figure out how she does that. She’s been doing it for so long, and she’s still doing it. I’ve never met any of the crew on The Diplomat, but I can guarantee you all that crew, wherever she shoots, loves her the way they did on Felicity. So we were incredibly lucky.
When I first read that script, I was a dumb kid doing Canadian indie films, but I knew it had something special about it in terms of the vibe and the relationships and just how emotional it was. I think [regardless of] whatever’s going on in the world, shows like that are really emotionally truthful. It was also beautifully shot. Matt and J.J. shot that show on film with long lenses, multiple takes, and great lighting. It’s interesting to see shows like that are still connecting — Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, and a lot of the shows that were done really well back then. I think there’s a lost art to that kind of thing, which we don’t see that much anymore, unfortunately.
More on Hulu:
Out of curiosity, when was the last time you actually rewatched Felicity?
Speedman: Oh, I watched some episodes to do a [Dear Felicity] podcast a couple of years ago, and that was really the first time since [it first aired]. They showed me some very Ben-specific episodes, I think, from the second season. It was really, really great.
You and the rest of your former co-stars have all described the making of Felicity as your own version of going to college. Now that you are in your 50s, what do you see when you rewatch old episodes or look back at old photos from that era?
Speedman: That part was not written for me, but it felt written for me when I first read it. I just see a young kid trying to figure it out who found a role that was very much like who he was at that time, which is a lot of what those roles are when you get “discovered” when you’re young. They’re parts that really connect to you. So I see a guy who had something interesting that was kind of compelling on screen, who really didn’t know what he was doing. I see a pretty immature kid figuring it out on screen in front of a pretty broad audience, so I love watching that show now.
Both seasons of R.J. Decker are streaming on Hulu.