Scott Speedman is becoming a virtuoso at time management. “I’m just finishing work in North Carolina, and then after I talk to you, I jump on a plane to see my kids for 36 hours, then I fly back and continue,” says the actor, on the phone from the set of “R.J. Decker.” This trip home to LA is a stealth one, he adds. “My wife knows, obviously, but I’m gonna sneak back and surprise my kids.” As it happens, his production team may not be in on it either. “They don’t even know I’m leaving tonight,” he says. “They probably won’t love that.”
The “R.J. Decker” star, who’s simultaneously shooting parts on two other shows, has gone rogue because he’s feeling sentimental; his 4-year-old daughter is starting school. “She has this great teacher, Miss Molly, and they’re starting to learn how to read and all that kind of stuff. She loves it. It’s super cute.” The doting dad, who got engaged to his longtime love Lindsay Rae Hofmann in 2023 and calls her his wife, marvels at his current work-life pace. “It’s truly wild,” he says. “It’s fun, too, but it’s definitely a challenge.”
He’s not kidding: “When I finish [shooting] this, I go right on to ‘Running Point,’” he says, referring to the Kate Hudson-led Netflix sports comedy on which he plays hockey team owner Luke McShay. “I’ll do like three episodes, and then I’ll go over to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ for a bit to do that.” Speedman joined “Grey’s” in 2021 as transplant surgeon Nick Marsh, who became a romantic interest for Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo).
The 51-year-old actor, whose boyish grin and disarming good looks made him a household name in the late ’90s/early aughts as college heartthrob Ben Covington on J.J. Abrams’ series “Felicity,” is embracing the chaos of his current lifestyle. “I spent a lot of years not, not working, just sort of not having both feet in the river, in a sense,” he says. “Now I’m kind of going for it, and that’s fun.” (One publication has dubbed this the “Speedmanaissance,” which, while cumbersome to say, is also accurate.)
The second season of “R.J. Decker,” in which Speedman stars as a newspaper photographer and ex-con turned private investigator, serves up more of the Florida crime drama’s balance of intrigue and absurdity, with Speedman’s character coming under fire as one of the main suspects in the death of a major Season 1 character. The show, inspired by a Carl Hiaasen novel, shoots in Wilmington, NC, with two or three forays into Florida per season as well. “Down there, it’s always a run-and-gun,” Speedman says of the Sunshine State. “You’re doing three, four episodes at a time.”
Born in London to Scottish parents and raised in Toronto, Speedman swam competitively for the Canadian Junior National Swim team, and even placed ninth at the 1992 Olympic swim trials. He says he’s been spending time in Florida since his youth. “I grew up going to Fort Lauderdale quite a bit as a teenager,” he says. “I like the weirdness of it. It’s become a lot more grown-up, with the high-rises and hotels, but the weirdness is still there. It attracts people that are looking to, you know, escape. It’s not a surprise to me that great stories and movies come out of there.”
Speedman’s Decker fits right into the wild aesthetic, favoring Hawaiian shirts as a uniform for investigating crime. As for the actor himself, he’ll be the first to tell you he’s not a clotheshorse. Though he doesn’t go as flamboyantly lowbrow as his character, he is happiest in a simple white tee and pants. “AllSaints makes a T-shirt without a logo that I like. I buy four at a time,” he says. “I still dress the same as when I was younger. White T-shirt, trousers and a backpack.” As for accessories, he keeps it equally low-key. “I don’t take care of things well enough,” he confesses with a laugh. “Any nice thing I’ve ever bought, I turn to s–t very quickly. So, I tend to not spend too much money on anything!”
At his shoot with Alexa, Speedman leaned into the luxe Brooklyn-chic aesthetic. “It was one of my favorite photo shoots I’ve done in a long time,” he says. The actor even checked off a new milestone: “I’ve never had a manicure in my life before, so that was very fun.” Though he maintains his stance as a watch agnostic, the actor particularly vibed with the “sleek steel Tudor one I’m wearing with the green jacket,” he says. “I like the simpler stuff.”
The Gen Xer looks back fondly on his younger days, before the ubiquity of social media. “I kind of love to despise all that,” he says. “Just what it’s done to our culture. Look at LA — it used to be so much easier! I used to ride my bike to parties, and just be a crazy person. And that’s all gone.” He misses the p.r. philosophy of yore, when actors were advised by their publicists to be mysterious. “We were always taught to show [the public] as little as possible,” Speedman says. “If I was a young person now, I don’t think I would have been able to excel. The stars I looked up to shunned all of that for good reason, and now it’s the opposite. When I talk to younger people, they’re sort of shocked that I don’t want to share stuff,” he says. It’s a tough time to be someone who keeps it close to the vest, he adds. “The people we’re celebrating aren’t the interesting introverts,” he says. “Some people take a little longer to come out of their shells, and some of their work has a lot more magnetism and interest to it. Extroverts who can put a phone to their face 24/7 are not always the most interesting people.”
Given his three-show work schedule and his family life, Speedman doesn’t have a lot of time to be extremely, or even a little bit, online, anyway. Technically, he’s got an Instagram — his bio description reads, simply, “Not sure yet” — but its offerings are sparse. “I tried. I just couldn’t do it. I just can’t do it,” he says.
When not shooting, he’s sprinting home to the family. “Kids are chaos,” he says happily, adding that becoming a parent has changed his life in “every conceivable way.” Speedman and Hofmann, a co-founder of the luxury swimwear line Juillet, welcomed their first child, daughter Pfeiffer Lucia, in 2021, and their second, son Indy Roy, followed in 2024. Now, Speedman’s contemplating how to integrate future work and being present for his kids. “Opportunities kind of arose naturally that I was more ready for this time around, and that’s snowballed into working a ton and being a part of all these things,” he says. “But then I start to think about my childhood, and what I was into, and I can see some of the same things for my kids, and I don’t want to miss out on that.”
Raising two young children in California means being able to show them all of the natural wonders surrounding Silver Lake, the neighborhood in which the Speedman family currently resides. He’s always been outdoorsy, and when he first came to LA to shoot the “Felicity” pilot, he discovered a spot that would become one of his all-time favorites. “My best friend and I explored a lot, and we went up to Big Sur and just camped a bunch that summer,” he says. “When I was having rough times when I was younger, in my 20s and 30s, I would go up there and rent a cabin and kind of hang out and hide and try to get my s–t together. And then when me and my wife started hanging out, we would go up there and stay overlooking Pfeiffer Beach — that’s what my daughter’s named for.”
He was equally happy to return to New York for his shoot with Alexa, which took him back to the very start of his acting career. “My first apartment there, when I went to theater school — when I dropped out of [Neighborhood Playhouse] theater school — was at Second Avenue and Third Street. So, I try to go down there on the East Side, and go up to Washington Square and visit my aunt, and then walk all the way up to Central Park,” he says. “Really, if I had all the money in the world, the second place I would buy something would be New York for sure. I would love to be there again as an adult, and I want my kids to see it and get out of LA and be exposed to that kind of lifestyle, too.”
All in good time.
Photographer: Michael Schwartz; Editor: Alev Aktar; Stylist: Anahita Moussavian; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Groomer: Rheanne White at Tracey Mattingly using R+Co; Manicure: Jazz Style at See Management using Dior; Digital Tech: Dallas Raines; Photo Assistants: Carl Chisolm, Brandon Jones; Fashion Assistant: Dominic Turiczek; On-set Assistant: Yared Glicksman
Vintage car: Jeffrey Westbrook, Location: The 1896, Studios & Stages