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).
Q: Given that we know a lot of things about where Norman ends up in Psycho, would you say things like learning taxidermy were very significant to establish Norman’s character?
Freddie Highmore: Yes, taxidermy becomes more important as the season goes on, and we’ll have to see what he ends up [stuffing] by the end. But I don’t know… the trick I think, as Kerry’s spoken about in the past, is in not making those moments that are present in Psycho seem overt or really noticeable when you’re watching it. And of course part of the joy, like when we see Norman as Norma, is knowing, “Oh, this has an extra creepy value because it will reappear in Psycho the film.” But at the same time it should never be sort of gratuitous or simply put in, in order to cause that, to cause that little wink to the audience; and so I think what Kerry balances so well is never making those moments in Norman’s progression seem out of place within our show but at the same time allowing them to have the power that comes from referencing Psycho.
Q: Norman’s spying on Annika was one of the more “normal” things that he’s done so far. Can you talk a bit about how their friendship, or whatever it is, might evolve?
Freddie Highmore: Yes, it is interesting that Norman’s action of looking at Annika through the window isn’t necessarily a trait unique to a serial killer. It wasn’t that he sought her out or aimed to do it. He merely kind of stumbled upon the open window and peered in and was slightly transfixed. And I guess we slightly have to ask ourselves what would have happened had Norma not come down and caught him in the act, as it were. Would Norman have just sort of realized that he was being slightly pervy and gone upstairs back to the house, or would he have gone around and tried to break into her motel room?
Q: There are a couple of new characters coming into the show this season. How are they going to stir things up? The show seems to be really about relationships, and it starts with Norman and his mom and kind of works its way up from there.
Kerry Ehrin: Well, one of the really interesting things in structuring this show that Carlton and I have faced since day one is weaving together two worlds that you wouldn’t think go together. And part of that is these dark secrets that exist in White Pine Bay and are told through various peculiar characters that emerge from the society. This year we have some amazing actors. Ryan Hurst plays such a cool character who’s this kind of bent mountain man; he does such a brilliant performance. You don’t quite know [about him]. He feels threatening… but at the same time … Dylan does not know what to make of him. He definitely brings some mystery and trouble with him.
And then another really wonderful character is played by Kevin Rahm, and this is a very prominent head of a very exclusive, elite hunting club. Very old school, high buy-in. He’s just such a great antagonist. He’s a really fun character. He is a bad guy that really likes himself, that enjoys his life and his senses and his body and dresses great. And Kevin Rahm just is so amusing in this role and so great. And then it also takes a darker turn because he’s someone who grew up with [Sheriff] Alex Romero, and the storyline reveals a lot about their own history growing up together but also Alex Romero’s history, and he’s this great stoic character who we know nothing about. So we get to peel back some layers and look inside, which is really fascinating.
Freddie Highmore: We need to say, though, you called him [Nestor Carbonell] “Alex Romero” because I don’t think any of us have really referred to him as that on set. Nestor’s “Sheriff Romero,” or we just call him “The Sheriff,” especially in the fifth episode of the season [which Nestor] directed for the first time. It’s absolutely amazing. And so it certainly amused us just to see him in his sheriff’s outfit, directing away. He was very much the sheriff/director.
And then the other relationship to tease in this season is the one between Norman and his fictional version of his mother that he conjures up… [it] entices him and repels him various times into or from doing things. And that’s a really interesting dynamic, the way that Norman … starts to struggle with knowing whether he is talking to and whether he’s interacting with this fictional version of his mother or the reality.
Q: In the movie we really didn’t know Norman’s mother; she was already dead. With the series you have kind of a wider latitude as far as both of those characters. You might be boxed in, in some ways, but you also have a lot of freedom in other ways.
Freddie Highmore: Yes, Carlton and I from the very beginning wanted to tell a story about Norman’s mom that was different than what you hear in the movie because what you hear in the movie is from Norman when he’s completely gone crazy. People carry many different versions of their parents inside of them from different memories and different times that you went through with them. And we definitely wanted to broaden out the scope of who this woman was and then [do] the same thing with Norman. He’s really in many ways such an endearing person, and the concept that someone who had a good heart was trapped in this situation and in this body and in this circumstance was so compelling… It opens up so much storytelling that we were always excited about and continue to be excited about.
Q: In the first episode you touched on Norman’s grandmother, and she was literally crazy. Will we learn any more about that in terms of how maybe it’s all hereditary?
Kerry Ehrin: That’s an evolution, but… I can’t really say more than that. I’m sorry.
Q: Norman’s relationship with his mother has changed quite a bit, but they’re still very close at this point. How will that relationship be tested as we continue into the third season?
Kerry Ehrin: What’s emerging between them is an awareness on Norma’s side that he is more controlling in a way, and on Norman’s side [there] is an awareness that she has chinks in her emotional armor. And so we get to kind of spin that in emotion and see how that plays out. Sometimes Norman and Norma remind me of those paint things at a carnival where you pour paint in them and then they spin around and the colors fly out. Then they make like these amazing abstract art things. And I feel that’s sort of [like] Norma and Norman… you get them in a specific psychological place and then you let them go and you see what happens. And there’s a lot of spinning out this season between them.
Freddie Highmore: I think that maybe one other interesting thing is though there will be this increasing separation between the real Norman and the real Norma, there will also be, by the end of the season, almost a complete convergence of the two at one moment where you’re almost not entirely sure which person it is…
Q: Freddie, is it any different for you to act with the imaginary Norma as opposed to the actual character?
Freddie Highmore: I think it’s interesting. We’ve experimented in many ways this season with how Norman himself is behaving – which comes a lot from the writing – how he’s behaving in those moments with this vision of her and whether he’s purely imagining her there in front of him, whether he is imaging himself as her, whether he’s talking out loud using her words, or whether he’s merely listening and hearing them. And from what perspective do we see those scenes? Is it purely from Norman’s perspective, or is it from the kind of third person storytelling that we’re used to in most television shows? So they all sort of play a part … when we’re doing those scenes between Norman and this vision, this mother, this Norma character. But there’s also a new sense of freedom to be found in them because it isn’t … the reality, and so that opens up exciting new possibilities for how both Norman and Norma can behave.
Kerry Ehrin: And also the hallucinations to him are incredibly real, and I think that the big goal is to get people to go on a journey with Norman. If you’re crazy … [or] imagining… I guess I shouldn’t use the word “crazy.” If you are imagining something that isn’t there, to you it is incredibly real, and that’s what you want people to be inside of, that part of it. And it’s actually really exciting to get to develop the fictional, the hallucinatory version or versions of Norma… that’s a pretty exciting thing to get to do.
Our thanks to Freddie and Kerry for their time and to A&E and NBCUniversal for coordinating the interview.
“Bates Motel” Episode 3.02 – “The Arcanum Club” (airs 3/16/15)
Norman (Freddie Highmore) and Norma (Vera Farmiga) fixate on Annika’s disappearance. Norma learns about what The Arcanum Club really is. Dylan (Max Thieriot) and Caleb (Kenny Johnson) encounter a new neighbor (Ryan Hurst).
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