Maggie Lawson

Lawson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She is the daughter of Mike Lawson, a hotel manager, and Judy Lawson, a homemaker. She began appearing in local community and dinner theatre productions as a child and later worked as a youth journalist for a local Fox television station before moving to Los Angeles.^[9][10][8]

Lawson attended Assumption High School in Louisville. After moving between Louisville and Los Angeles during high school, she completed her senior year through correspondence and graduated with her class. She also said that she wrote for the school paper while attending Assumption.^[11]

Lawson began acting on television as a teenager. Her early television appearances included roles in Hang Time and Boy Meets World. She later appeared in Pleasantville and played dual roles in the television film Model Behavior. In 2002, she portrayed Nancy Drew in a television based on the character.^[8]

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lawson appeared in television series including Inside Schwartz, It’s All Relative, Crumbs, ER, Party of Five, and Felicity. She also appeared in films and television films including Cheats, Nice Guys Sleep Alone, Cleaner, Killer Hair, and Hostile Makeover.^[10]

In 2018, Lawson joined the third season of Lethal Weapon as Natalie Flynn, an emergency-room surgeon and former partner of Wesley Cole.^[6]

In 2020, Lawson played Kay Bennett in the Fox sitcom Outmatched, opposite Jason Biggs. Fox canceled the series after one season.^[7][12]

In 2024, Lawson played Emily in the Hallmark Channel television film Sugarplummed. The same year, she voiced Jo in the animated series The Milk Chug and was listed as one of the project's executive producers.^[10][13][7]

In 2025, Lawson portrayed Krista in Lifetime’s I Was a Child Bride: The Courtney Stodden Story. That year, she also joined the CBS series Boston Blue, a Blue Bloods spinoff, as Sarah Silver, the Boston Police Department superintendent.^[14][5]

Lawson co-hosts The Psychologists Are In with Maggie Lawson and Timothy Omundson, an official Psych rewatch podcast, with Timothy Omundson. The podcast has been active since 2021.^[15]

Lawson also hosts Unconditional with Maggie Lawson, a podcast about relationships between people and pets.^[16]

Lawson is associated with animal-rescue work. She co-founded the Tiger Frances Foundation and developed Love on Paws, a program involving rescue animals and children. In 2025, The Astra Awards announced that she would receive the Petco Love Lovey Award for her work with animals.^[10][17][18]

Throughout the series run of Psych (2006–2014), Lawson was in a relationship with series lead James Roday Rodriguez.^[19][20]

Lawson married actor Ben Koldyke in 2015 and filed for divorce in 2017.^[20]