As we enter the final two episodes of Bates Motel, fans are feverishly wondering what the endgame will hold for Freddie Highmore's Norman Bates. When we left off, in Episode 8 ("The Body"), Norman's Mother persona had violently taken control, having physically knocked Norman out in order to puppet his body. Was this the last we'll see of Norman as Norman? And if we do ever get Norman back, what will he be like?
As we head into Episode 9, "Visiting Hours" -- airing Monday, April 17th -- I had the chance to speak with series star Freddie Highmore about the state of Norman's mind, the fun challenge of playing Mother in these final episodes, and his first experience as a director.
"'Are we ever going to get Norman back?' I think is the question at the end Episode 8," Highmore shared. "Will we ever see the return of Norman, or will it be Mother taking him over until the very end, whatever that may be? But it's exciting at this stage because we've got past Psycho and no one knows where the story is going to go."
"The future is completely open and nothing is set in stone," he continued. "These last four episodes of Bates Motel are really the first time we are able to experience something without any sense of expectations really, in terms of the source material. And that can become its own beast, whatever that is."
Right now, in the story, Mother has assumed control in order to save Norman from the police. But she still has to pretend to be Norman. Highmore explained how enjoyable that was to play. "As an actor it doesn't get more fun than to play Norman, but with Mother taking over and pretending to be Norman. So it's this bizarre performance that has to be genuine enough to, some extent, convince the sheriff, but also because it's Mother who's doing it there are those moments of humor that are almost winking at the audience that she can't help sneak out. Where she wipes away a tear or brings another tear out or says things like 'My mother was always right.' She's too clever for her own good. Finding a balance in all of these scenes was such great fun."
Back in Season 4, Highmore actually wrote an episode ("Unfaithful"), but for Season 5 he sat in the director's chair for last week's "The Body." It was an experience he'll never forget. "It was great to get to direct," Highmore said. "I was obviously incredibly grateful before to get to write, and spend the two seasons as part of the writers' room, in seasons four and five, and directing was incredibly rewarding and exciting. And I don't think as daunting as people might think, just having had an amazing group of writers and actors and crew to work with. Everyone. Absolutely everyone was so supportive that it couldn't have been a better place to do it for the first time. And the script was something that really appealed to me and it felt like one of the more exciting and challenging and intimate Bates Motel scripts, which certainly called out to my sensibility as a director. It was character driven and we had loads of long nuanced scenes to play out and to find various beats in."
Highmore then mentioned that because Bates Motel had so much of an origin story quality to it, it never had to be tied to the source material in a specific way. "I guess having gone past Psycho, it was then up to us to do absolutely everything. There was a great freedom to do anything with the characters and move it past the iconic Anthony Perkins version, and to move it deeper and deeper into him, into Norman, by the very end. And his internal struggles and psychosis. And that's what I loved so much about the way Kerry [Ehrin] and Carlton [Cuse] wrote that sixth episode ("Marion"), because it was Psycho but from Norman's point of view. In the Hitchcock film, you just saw him go up to the house and come back down, but here you stayed with him and heard his conversations with his mother. The stuff that was just up to our imaginations before."
Bates Motel's "Visiting Hours" airs Monday, April 17th on A&E.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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