The things we do for love:

Drama turns spotlight on tragedy.

Actor James Roday is pretty psyched up about his latest role as a breast cancer survivor in the drama A Million Little Things.

After eight years playing Shawn Spence, one half of a detective duo that pretends to use psychic abilities to solve crimes in the comedy Psych, Roday had traded in acting for writing and directing – until the script for this ensemble drama landed in his hands.

A Million Little Things follows a group of friends as they struggle to come to terms with the suicide of one of their number and the impact the death has on their own less-than-perfect lives.

“I think it would be shortsighted and somewhat dismissive to look at this show and go, ‘Oh, it’s really dark’, because the truth of the matter is, it’s no darker than any of our lives,” Roday says.

“We’ve all been touched by cancer, we’ve all been touched by lies – people who tell us one thing and do another – but inside of all of those machinations are also beauty, falling in love, laughing your ass off, having children, loving children, just waking up every day and being lucky enough to be alive.

“So to call this show ‘dark’ is to call being alive ‘dark’ and that’s not really accurate either.”

The series hinges on the friendship between four men who met when they were stuck in a lift together and bonded over their allegiance to the Boston Bruins, a professional ice hockey team.

There’s Gary (Roday), a breast cancer survivor who can’t quite find comfort in remission; Eddie (Grimm’s David Giuntoli), a stay-at-home dad and music teacher who is having an affair; Rome (Romany Malco), whose need for a meaningful life has left him dangling on a dangerous edge; and Jon (Ron Livingston), a seemingly happy businessman who leaped to his death in the series’ opening moments.

After Jon’s death – and as secrets are revealed – the friends and their families, including Gary’s lover and therapist Maggie (Alison Miller), lawyer Grace (Katherine Kim), widow Delilah (Stephanie Szostak) and restaurateur Regina (Christina Moses) begin to re-evaluate their careers and relationships.

Roday says the relevance of the script to him and many others in the cast was one of the reasons he decided to come out from behind the camera and return to acting.

“It’s a show,” he says, “about grown-ups dealing with love and loss, disappointment and responsibility, tragedy and child-rearing and friendship, and trying to check as many boxes as possible when we all know that a lot of times life doesn’t let you do that.

“One of the few ways that we as artists can sort of justify our place in the Venn diagram of life is, ‘Can we do something that affects others? Can we do something that educates? Can we do something that emotionally resonates? Can we do something that in some way, shape, or form maybe helps another human being get through the day?’

“I think the older you get, the more important it becomes that you seek out projects that allow you to do that.” The actor says he was drawn to the character of Gary. “He is a man diagnosed with breast cancer who’s right in the thick of the battle and, because of that, he’s experiencing a lot of anger and a lot of self-doubt and he’s asking a lot of questions,” Roday says, adding he welcomes the show’s frequent flashbacks which enable him to flesh out his character. “I’m getting to sort of play both sides of a guy who didn’t have a care in the world and was the life of the party and then all of a sudden is just slammed in the face with his own mortality and you go one of two ways. And this guy went real angry and that’s very interesting to me and also feels very real to me.” Roday hopes viewers will also be able to identify with Gary and his friends and gain something from that. “We are dramatising what a lot of hard-working, good-hearted, decent human beings are going through for real,” he says. “And the more authentic we can make that, I think the less alone people will feel and right now, more than ever, regardless of where your allegiances lie or your politics or what line of anything you fall on, I think we can all agree that anything that can unite us, we’ll take.”

“We are dramatising what a lot of hard-working, good-hearted, decent human beings are going through for real.” – James Roday