Scott Speedman on Starring on RJ Decker and Grey's Anatomy at the Same Time and a Felicity Reunion

Scott Speedman is finally ready to take the lead. Nearly three decades after rising to fame as Ben Covington — the object of Keri Russell's desires — on the beloved WB college drama Felicity and after years of playing second fiddle to Andre Braugher on the ABC military drama Last Resort and Ellen Barkin on the TNT crime drama Animal Kingdom, the Canadian actor is finally at the top of the call sheet as the titular character in RJ Decker.

Inspired by Carl Hiaasen's novel Double Whammy and adapted by Elementary creator Rob Doherty, the offbeat ABC procedural dramedy — which became the network's most-watched 10 p.m. debut in over five years — stars Speedman as a former newspaper photographer and ex-con who reinvents himself as a private investigator in the colorful underbelly of South Florida.

"Sometimes, with these projects that I want to do right away, I read the script and just have that instinct that I have not very often," star and producer Speedman tells TV Guide. "The tone of the show, to be totally honest with you — what I liked about it was really in the writing. It's hard to describe or articulate that, but Rob [who is also the showrunner] had it really down. You could see and feel the show from the minute you read the script. I knew it was a character that I could absolutely play, so I called [my reps] right away and I said, 'I really want to do this.'

"I think [the producers] were going through their paces about what kind of show they wanted to make. Did they want to go with somebody more comedic or somebody more in that [dramatic] world? And eventually, it came around to me," he continues. "I was very thankful because it's a great part for me right now. I was just really ready to do the thing too, where it was 18 episodes a year — [working] every day, every scene, for 18 episodes. That's a big lift, and I'd never really done that before. So I was excited about the challenge of it too."

Everything you need for spring TV:

• The complete guide to spring TV
• The TV shows of the spring we can't wait to see
• All the new shows coming this spring
• The ultimate guide to what to watch in March

With the help of his investigative journalist ex Catherine Delacroix (Adelaide Clemens), her police detective wife Melody "Mel" Abreu (Bevin Bru), his former cellmate Aloysius "Wish" Aiken (Kevin Rankin), who won the lottery and opened a local bar, and the shadowy woman named Emilia "Emi" Ochoa (Jaina Lee Ortiz) who actually landed him in prison, R.J. investigates all kinds of cases that feel ripped straight from the "Florida Man" headlines — all while trying to get his life back together.

The decades of goodwill that Speedman has built up in the public eye certainly makes the character, who can draw comparisons to the titular protagonists in Magnum P.I. and Rockford Files, easy to root for. "I look at him as a guy that I can totally relate to. He was deeply involved in being a newspaper photographer and got burnt out, and the wrong thing happened at the wrong time and he snapped [and landed in prison]," Speedman says. "But it was a long time coming. If it wasn't that [incident], it was going to be something else that he had to have an awakening. He went to jail, met Wish there, but really that's when he came into his own. Actually, going to jail was a good thing for the guy."

Despite "delving deep into" crime fiction "as a younger man" back "before [he] had kids and a career that was going well," Speedman had somehow missed Hiaasen's most famous works, even though he was "very well aware of" his impact in the genre. Upon officially landing the part, "I started to read Double Whammy, which this show is based on, and pretty quickly put it down because Rob had his own take on the material," Speedman explains. "I didn't want to get clouded in terms of what we were doing on the show, so I read the book periodically before I start work every day, but I was really just going off of Rob's work more than anything."

Rather than adapting the single serialized mystery in Double Whammy, the nine-episode first season uses the familiar case-of-the-week format as a story engine. "I keep thinking, 'How do you keep doing this?'" Speedman says with a laugh. "I think that's why Florida is such a great place to do a show like this, because it really is the Florida Man headlines everywhere. There's a lot of craziness going on there. You believe it quicker, I think, if something crazy happens in Florida than, say, Wisconsin or something. But that blows my mind. I'm like, 'How are they putting out these cases that have a beginning, middle, and end?' They work, they're funny, they're crazy. It comes in [my inbox], and I'm constantly surprised."

Given that the debut season of any show is about building out a new fictional world, Speedman confirms that the first run of episodes will be more about solving cases and less about R.J.'s unique living arrangement or personal life. "We do get to go into the character stuff here and there, so that's always so fun when we get to actually get into the character and get into his backstory and his life — who he is, who he wants to be and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the day-to-day time onscreen is spent solving these cases too, so that's a big part of my job now," he explains.

"But as we get into the later part of the season, that [serialized element] comes to light," he teases. "That's one of my favorite parts of the show too. There is a throughline that we will play with here. It's not just one-and-dones. We do standalone episodes, but really there starts to be more of a through-line story."

The one serialized element that is immediately introduced in the pilot is the will-they-won't-they relationship between R.J. and Emi. A couple of years ago, Emi had hooked up with R.J., who was on a break from being put on trial for assaulting a young man. She then revealed herself — in the courtroom, no less! — as the star witness whose testimony was used to convict R.J. of the assault. (The young man in question was Emi's stepbrother.) Still wracked with guilt over turning on R.J. in order to protect her family and their reputation, Emi offers to use her connections to help him solve cases.

During the entire run of Elementary, Doherty was infamous for never crossing that line between platonic and romantic with Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu's Joan Watson. Should viewers expect the showrunner to repeat himself on R.J. Decker? Only time will tell, says Speedman.

On that question of will-they-won't-they, R.J. and Emi "were having sex right away in their first scene!" Speedman points out with a laugh. "We get that out of the way pretty quickly. So I think maybe that's what [Rob] wanted to do. I don't know. I haven't actually asked him that exact question, because maybe he was just intent on showing this is not going to be that kind of a thing. But, no, we do that, and then there's a slow, long buildup towards trust with those two characters as we go here. Obviously, they're in each other's lives in various different ways. A lot of it's [due to their] work, but it obviously will grow into something as we go."

Through the first two episodes, Emi's role in the story, as well as the nature of her relationship to R.J., is far from clear — and that's by design. "She's very indebted to her family, and that family will become much more of a character as we go [as we discover] who she is and what she's doing with her family and how it interacts with Florida. Our town, Fort Lauderdale, is a huge part of our show," Speedman explains. "But then there's an attraction and something with this guy that she can't shake. She's a high-powered lawyer, politician, consultant, whatever she is — and she's attracted to this guy that dresses in the same clothes every day and lives in a trailer. So there's some interesting thing happening there that obviously is not how she thought of falling for a guy, but here she is — and I think vice versa for him too. This is not the norm for him. I think that's what makes it interesting."

At the end of the day, Speedman recognizes that, in an era that has seen a prevalence of antiheroes, R.J. fits into the mold of other quirky protagonists on ABC dramas — High Potential, The Rookie, and Will Trent — who are fundamentally good people.

After playing his fair share of antiheroes the last few years, "what I like about the character is he is a very simple guy — and a good guy. He's a protector. If I've ever had discussions with Rob and the other writers, it's not to veer too much from that [core element]," Speedman explains. "His moral compass is strong. He's not a moralist by any stretch, but he is a good man that wants to help people at the end of the day. I think that comes across, and people will enjoy watching that part of it too, so I'm very protective of that."

ALSO READ: Judy Reyes on playing double duty on Scrubs and High Potential

Once he wraps filming on the first season of R.J. Decker, Speedman will fly from Wilmington (where he has largely been working for the last four months) back to Los Angeles (where he will step back into his recurring role as Dr. Nick Marsh, the boyfriend of Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey, on Grey's Anatomy). Because both shows are produced by the same studio and network, Speedman has somehow been able to balance his starring role on R.J. with multi-episode guest appearances on Grey's.

After guest-starring in Season 14 of Shonda Rhimes' medical drama as a transplant surgeon who experiences complications from his own kidney transplant, Speedman returned to Grey's in Season 18 to play Meredith's new love interest. He spent a year as a series regular before being bumped back down to recurring the following season after Pompeo decided to scale back her involvement on the show. Having weathered all the ups and downs of any new relationship, Meredith and Nick have now built a quiet life together in Boston, where he works at a local hospital and she works for the Catherine Fox (Debbie Allen) Foundation on Alzheimer's research.

"They've had their challenges, but I do think they're in a really good, solid place, which is nice," Speedman says of the characters. "I'm sure that will change at some point; that changes as these shows go. But right now, that's what's been fun about it. We are more of a team, and it hasn't been so dramatic in that sense, but we'll see what happens."

In their last joint appearance on the Jan. 22 episode of Grey's, titled "Fortunate Son," Meredith and Nick's bliss was interrupted by the impromptu arrival of his troubled younger sister, Erica (Brit Morgan), and her six-month-old son Miles, who Nick didn't even know existed. While his sister insisted that she was two years sober and had gotten her life together, Nick — who took in Erica's daughter (and his niece) Charlotte and raised her as his own child after Erica abandoned her — still had his doubts.

When Erica left the house to clear the air, she left Miles behind, leaving Nick to panic over whether he would have to raise Miles, too, with Meredith. Meredith, who famously already had three children of her own, reassured Nick that they could handle raising his nephew if Erica didn't return, but she also encouraged him to keep an open mind with his sister. In the end, Nick was able to mend fences with his estranged sister — all while realizing that Meredith might be more open to the thought of raising another child than he had thought.

"We'll see what that means. Hopefully they're not layering in another baby coming around," Speedman says with a wry laugh. "But that would be very interesting material. That's what's so great about doing shows, especially shows that have been going on for a long time. If you're doing 22 seasons, everything is on the table and you can't lock into [the thought that], 'Well, my character's this, he wouldn't do this. We're not going to get married or have a kid, or whatever.' That's going to go out the window."

But would Nick want to take that next step with Meredith? "I'm sure he is ready," Speedman responds. "If anyone was more probably gun shy about all that, it would be Meredith, Ellen's character, more than my own. I think she's been there, done that, in a sense [with Patrick Dempsey's Dr. Derek Shepherd]. I don't think Nick has as much, so I think that would be something he'd probably be interested in."

Speedman's character on Grey's, in some ways, feels like a spiritual successor to his career-defining role as a romantic lead on Felicity. With the 30-year anniversary now approaching, the original stars of Felicity have repeatedly been asked about whether they would be open to some kind of reboot or revival. In fact, Russell has revealed that Amanda Foreman, who played her roommate Meghan, has a pitch for where the characters would be in middle age.

If he was ever asked to reprise Ben, "of course, the answer is yes. If they want to do that, that'd be so fun, just to get to hang out," Speedman says. "Keri's told me she knows the story [pitch]. I don't know what that story is, but I'd be very curious to hear what that is. Mandy's a good writer too, so it'd be very fun to see where they are, what they're doing. But [Felicity and Ben] have to be sort of messed up, not together. That would be something that would be interesting to explore — why they didn't [last] and then they'd have to be in the same proximity again for whatever reason. I'm sure that's a part of it, but I have no idea."

RJ Decker airs Tuesdays at 10/9 on ABC. Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu.