Bates Motel’s Freddie Highmore and Kerry Ehrin Talk What to Expect in Season 3
Debi Moore
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Tonight A&E airs another powerful episode of “Bates Motel,” and recently Norman Bates himself, Freddie Highmore, and executive producer Kerry Ehrin sat down with a group of journalists to discuss the upcoming Episode 3.02, “The Arcanum Club,” as well as what fans of the series can expect during the new season, what it’s like working on such an iconic set, Norman’s relationships with Dylan and Emma, his power struggles with Norma, when he might begin wearing her clothes(!), and much, much more.
So settle in and prep for Episode 3.02, “The Arcanum Club,” in which former “Sons of Anarchy” co-stars Ryan Hurst and Kenny Johnson reunite amidst all the mayhem we’ve come to love about the show.
Related Story: Bates Motel: New Images Check in for Episode 3.02 – The Arcanum Club
Q: Freddie, how do you get into character because judging by your performance in Season 3 thus far, it doesn’t seem like you have far to go to get there.
Freddie Highmore: Having done two seasons before this one, you’re more aware of and you can easily slip into [character]. And this season was more about changing him and making him a bit more mature with the self-awareness that he gained at the end of the second season, and so perhaps trickier than giving a look or finding out who Norman was in this third season, it was more about discovering in what ways he would change and grow up.
Kerry Ehrin: It’s definitely an evolution from where [co-creator] Carlton [Cuse] and I began with the character in the first season. It’s a very different person at this point – and a lot of that has to do with self-awareness and also the natural development of teenagers to start seeing their parents as real people as opposed to gods or goddesses in their universe. I think there’s a bit of that in it as well. And also this season is very much playing with the game of control between him and Norma and the power struggle, which is really delicious.
Q: The house and the motel are such iconic horror images. Does working around that atmosphere add to the creepy feeling both as an actor, Freddie, and as a writer, Kerry?
Freddie Highmore: Yes, it does. I think from the first time I stepped on the set, it kind of has this weight already behind it when you look up and you see a very similar version of the house and the motel to the one that was in the original. And then over time it seems to become in view with your own memories and events that took place in “Bates Motel.” Like on the set, for example, leading up, there’s still the blood stain or whatever they used to pretend to be blood from Deputy Shelby’s death… so there are little reminders to us all of how far he’s come.
Kerry Ehrin: There’s definitely a texture to that set that is emotional, and you feel it when you’re there. It’s very cool.
Q: Now that Norma knows about Norman’s blackouts, do you think that she’s going to ever let him back out on his own, or is she going to try to keep more and more control of him even though she’s already so overprotective towards him to start with?
Kerry Ehrin: Yes, it’s sort of like any mother. If your child had something wrong with him, especially something you couldn’t control, your instinct would be to literally tie them to your ankle. I mean, you would want to be in as close proximity to them at all times as you possibly could be. And then you add to that all the dark undercurrents and suspicions, and that is a terrifying ordeal for Norma. And yes, her instinct is to keep him as close as possible.
Q: Can you preview for us what’s to come regarding Dylan and Norman’s relationship? That is such an interesting dynamic.
Freddie Highmore: You [saw] in the first episode how Dylan starts to get in between Norma and Norman. And I think that previously they have both shared this unbreakable bond, and no one could come between them. For the first time in the third season, Dylan starts to breech that a little bit, and Norma will start to confide in Dylan things that she can’t say to Norman. So that’s kind of where their threesome is headed to some extent…
Kerry Ehrin: It definitely heats up.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of Norman and Emma’s relationship and where we’re going to see that go this season?
Freddie Highmore: We’ve seen in the first episode how Norman wants to try and establish… wants to try and date Emma. And the reasons behind that become clearer as the season goes on, and it is … purely out of the feelings that he has for her, but a lot of it is also out of feelings for his mother in the way that he feels like he should feel dating Emma. And not only does he on some level want to, he also feels like he’s doing the right thing by asking her out.
Kerry Ehrin: And Emma in general has … done some growing up, as Norman has… When Norman first met her, she was very much in many ways still kind of a little girl, very idealistic. I think lonely. And she was really grateful to have this friend who was Norman Bates. And I think as she grows older and she has to deal with the reality of her health… it clarifies a lot of things in life when you have a crisis like that. She starts to mature, and part of her story this year is her starting to understand things about Norman that are concerning to her.
Q: The season premiere was excellent. What can you tease about what’s going to happen for the rest of this wonderfully intense season?
Freddie Highmore: From Norman’s perspective… as Kerry [said]… there’s this struggle for power between Norma and Norman in their relationship that will start to become ever more important. And whereas Norman has always been very much the son or the younger person in the relationship before, that dynamic is starting to shift, and even in the shots that we see in the first episodes, it’s much more set up as these two equals are either lying in bed together or [are] on some level equal. But… it won’t stay that way. Norman will seek to take more and more control in their relationship and become the person who’s more dominant by the end of the season. And I think that’s interesting. He’s become slightly more manipulative and capable of toying with Norma and using his knowledge about what he’s capable of to gain things from her.
Kerry Ehrin: He’s starting to understand the kinks in her emotional armor very well.
Freddie Highmore: Yes. And he gets to [wearing] some of her clothes so that’s another side to him.
Q: It’s very hard to have a likable anti-hero as your main character. It was successfully done with “Dexter” and a few others; how are you doing that with “Bates Motel” to make sure that people still feel connected with him?
Kerry Ehrin: Well, when [we] write these things, we love the characters… and the actors have to love the character they portray because they have to do the best version of it from that person’s point of view. The writing is kind of similar. If you’re going to take on a bad guy, you have to get inside of them and feel the world through them. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Hey, I’m a bad guy. I’m going to go out today and do bad things.” Everyone wakes up in the morning and lies to themselves so Norman is no different. And, you know, he’s been through a lot. He’s been through a lot that people would have a lot of sympathy for, empathy for… tough, very violent childhood, home life, and dysfunctional family. No father figure present. A mother who loves him to pieces but is very emotionally needy. He’s been through a lot of terrifying things, and he’s very endearing because he always tries to do the best that he can. And I think that we love him for that. He doesn’t want to be a bad guy.
Freddie Highmore: In spite of his best intentions, I think he does become [a bad guy] over the course of… well, over the course of the entire show but moving towards that in the third season. And so I feel it was especially important to set Norman up in the first two seasons as someone we supported and whose side we were on so now we can start to … challenge whether we were right to get on his side and to start supporting him in the first place.
Q: It’s great that Norma’s brother, Caleb, is back in town, trying to have a relationship with Dylan. Kenny Johnson is so good in that role. If he sticks around long enough, it’s likely that either Norma or Norman or both will run into him. Are you allowed to talk about that at all?
Kerry Ehrin: An exciting dynamic of the story is that [his presence] is a ticking bomb present in that family community, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know if Norma’s going to see him. We don’t know [if she’s] going to bond with him. We don’t know if Caleb is full of it and is duplicitous. We have no idea, and it could be any of those because of the history we have of him. The thing that’s so moving to me is Dylan… this kid who wanted nothing more than a family and to belong to someone his whole life [has] finally made strides with his mother for the first time ever and now is faced with this thing that is going to betray her but also has such a tremendous emotional pull on him… a father, an alleged father, showing up, saying, “I want to claim you. I want to be in your life. I want you to belong to me.”
Freddie Highmore: There’s one fantastic scene that I guess I should tease in the widest of possible ways but where everyone … comes together, and that’s going to be this amazing meeting of people.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for both of you this season?
Freddie Highmore: I think as Norman changes over time, one of the biggest challenges becomes … not replaying beats that we’ve already played in the past. Or if you tackle a [familiar] subject, retelling it or acting it out in a different way.
Kerry Ehrin: In a completely refreshed way, yes.
Freddie Highmore: So the third season has been really interesting because of how Norman changes. Scenes in which you have kind of learned how to resolve [issues] in the past, you can’t use; you can’t get out of it with the same emotion… Certain scenes … in the past have ended with Norma on the winning side of the argument, and so the trick this season for Norman was to find a way in which he can start to change that. And gradually bit by bit in every scene between Norma and Norman, we see his small shift, hopefully.
Kerry Ehrin: Honestly, the biggest challenge is not literally killing Vera [Farmiga] and Freddie. We ask so much of them. The storylines we do tend to be very emotionally cathartic while still grounded, but that is such a feat to pull off for an actor. They’re truly amazing, the performances that they do every day. We just marvel at them in editing or if we’re on the set. It really is a tall order, and we’re incredibly grateful to have such amazing talent to do it. But honestly, the biggest worry is: Are we all going to survive this season physically?
Freddie Highmore: Kerry’s also being slightly modest in the sense that her writing especially comes from such an emotional place; whereas, we, acting, live with the characters every day on set and then find it reasonably easy to detach from that and go home without this feeling to write more or to come up with new ideas. And so I think for Kerry, whose writing is so exceptional, it’s more the tireless way with which she goes about it that’s even more impressive and how you manage to also live in this world constantly for such a long period without going mad yourself.
Kerry Ehrin: Well, don’t make any assumptions (laughing).
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