“He’s pretty optimistic and easygoing, no matter what,” Scott Speedman says of his title character, an ex-con turned private eye, in this breezy drama, back for Season 2.
But will last spring’s shocking cliffhanger change that? Victor Ochoa (David Zayas), a corrupt politician and the father of R.J.’s love interest, Emi (Jaina Lee Ortiz), was killed. That investigation is still ongoing a couple months later in R.J. Decker‘s September 15 premiere.
Also in the first episode back: A prison acquaintance pulls R.J. into a string of bank heists; Saturday Night Live vet Sasheer Zamata guests as an FBI agent who has a history with Detective Mel (Bevin Bru); and Dancing With the Stars pros Jenna Johnson and Val Chmerkovskiy and The Bachelor‘s Joey Graziadei appear. It’s going to be another weird season in Florida, and Speedman previews it below.
What’s going on with R.J. when the season begins? How is he doing? Because he was in a pretty good place at the end of Season 1, but he also didn’t know about Victor’s murder at that point.
Scott Speedman: Yeah. I think he’s wrapped up what he feels is the full circle of jail and maybe going back to jail and who did the whole thing, and all that information’s come to light. I think we see him maybe even dancing with Emi and feeling good about where he is in his life. And of course, the last shot of the show is finding Victor dead in that pool. So, that will be a shockwave to the system. I think it reverberates through his life, not only through his business, but also his romantic life with Emi, too. So he’s in a good place, but it’s back to zero in terms of trying to figure all that out.
Disney/Dana Hawley
Speaking of Victor’s murder, what can you preview about that investigation and how that’s playing out? Is that something that’s going to be solved in the first episode? Is that a multi-episode, a season-long arc?
I wouldn’t call it season long. I wouldn’t call it an immediate solve. I think we’ll take some time to figure it out. That’s been such a big story for us. I think we wouldn’t be doing our audience any favors by just having it wrap up so quickly. So, yeah, no, we’re going to not tease it out, but it’s going to take some time to get all the pieces in place.
R.J. and Emi put the discussion about their relationship off in the finale, but then there’s a matter of Victor’s murder, how that’s going to affect them. Where does Season 2 find their relationship and their feelings for each other with everything else going on?
I think it’s in flux. I think obviously with the death of Emi’s father, her whole life perspective has been turned upside down. And so we find this season, she’s in a different place. She’s in flux. That really does affect their relationship and where she’s thinking it’s going and what they want. And so I think we find out pretty quickly that it’s a bit in turmoil and it’s a bit, not on the rocks by any means, but there’s some imbalance there. So, they’re trying to figure that out.
That’s fitting considering how they began.
Exactly. Exactly. I think like you’re saying, when we find them at the end of Season 1, they’re coming together, but I think it just brings up too much stuff when her father’s murdered, so, it kind of puts us back to square one.
Since there’s been a bit of a time jump between seasons, has the possibility of R.J. being a suspect been addressed?
Yeah. I mean, I think we know as an audience and we do a good job of illustrating why he’s not really a suspect just timeline-wise. I think that would be a lot for us as a show to sort of deal with that he would now be a suspect. I mean, there’s no question he has motive, but I think we deal with that pretty well that he’s not actually a suspect.
So we don’t have to worry about other detectives besides Mel looking at him for this.
Exactly, yeah.
Sasheer Zamata is coming in in the premiere. What can you say about what we can expect from her? I know she’s more with Mel than R.J.
I think that’s a one-episode kind of thing, and we were lucky enough to get her on the show. They have an interesting dynamic. I don’t have a lot of interaction with her, but Mel really does. We’ll see how the audience reacts to it.
Disney/Dana Hawley
Speaking of that first episode, what can you say about that case?
That case is very interesting. The Bottomless Bandits, we’re excited about that. I think it’s a very exciting first case. The first episode is probably our biggest episode we’ve ever done. I mean, I think this season in general, what I’ve really appreciated that the writers have done is we’re expanding the show, it feels like, in a way that feels necessary and good and always what we want to do. But we haven’t lost really kind of the stuff I loved about the show to begin with. But we’re really packing this episode full of action. And the first case is quite a doozy.
The premiere also features a couple DWTS pros, Val and Jenna, and The Bachelor‘s Joey. That’s different for the show.
Yeah. It was a cool idea that Rob [Doherty], our writer, came up with. We’re following Dancing With the Stars this year, so there’ll be a bit of a tie into that. Very fun sequence to shoot. We shot that down in Fort Lauderdale. And yeah, we had some interesting people on the show. And then we had one of the Bachelor Nation dudes on the show. He was very cool. I loved working with him. He was a very sweet guy. It’s just, like I was saying, kind of an expansion of the show, willing to do some different stuff and see how it plays out without losing sort of the core DNA of our show, so I’m excited to see how our audience will react to it. And I’m excited hopefully to bring in some new audience with this 10:00 pm time slot coming off Dancing With the Stars.
What’s coming up for R.J. with the rest of the characters?
Mel and R.J. work really well together. We have a lot of fun. We get into the weeds quite a bit this year in some episodes. There were some episodes last year that we were really pretty much the A storyline working together on cases, and there’s a couple of episodes like that this year. And as an actor, Bevin’s really, really, really fun to work with. So I love that.
Wish becomes a bit of a partner, too, to me at times this season, which is really fun. I love Kevin [Rankin]. I think he’s an incredible actor and I think he’s such a fun foil for R.J.. Everybody has their own dynamic that’s kind of created. And the one we’re finding naturally, me and Wish, is great. I think a show like this really needs that dynamic and we find a great one.
Is there anything else you can say about the premiere? Is it setting up any other multi-episode arcs for the season?
I wouldn’t say that necessarily, but it does definitely start our show with a bang. You’ll see right away what I mean. And I wouldn’t say it sets up a longer term storyline, but I think it sets sort of a new direction for the show. And we’ve been able to maintain it, given our tight schedule as we go here. So hopefully that continues.
What else can you say about what’s going on with R.J. and how he’s doing in these early episodes of the season?
Yeah. We’ll see. There’s some new characters, possibly on the romantic side of things for R.J. to deal with that I think is really fun. Some fun characters there. There’s some great personal characters for R.J. to deal with. We get to know some of his backstory a little bit more about where he came from. Some family stuff comes to light. Some family characters are introduced, and that’s really fun. We’ve done a really good job of letting the audience into R.J.’s life just a little bit more than even we did in the first season.
He’s still in that good place at the beginning of the season. Are we going to see that changing at all early on or is he going to kind of stay there for now?
Yeah, I think he’s there for now. I think that’s the cool part about this character. He’s a pretty optimistic dude and pretty easygoing guy no matter what’s going on around him. He manages to find the light and the fun in all he’s doing. And I think that’s really important that we maintain that. It’s not a particularly dark, edgy show, even though he gets into some dark, edgy situations. So, I think the key to the character and the key to me playing it is to always be trying to have fun no matter what we’re doing. And that’s definitely been the case on and off screen. It’s been a blast to shoot this show. I’m having a blast. R.J.’s having a blast. And the cases are just getting bigger and more fun and weirder, and we’re all having a great time with it.
R.J. Decker, Season 2 Premiere, Tuesday, September 15, 10/9c, ABC