‘Bates Motel’ season 3: Freddie Highmore on playing Norman like Anthony Perkins
Bates Motel Executive Producers Carlton Cuse, Kerry Ehrin, stars Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga spoke with Observer.com about the third season of Bates Motel, A&E’s Psycho prequel. Highmore confessed to his prep, but never feeling tied down to the Hitchcock classic.
“I’ve re-watched Psycho before every season and in some ways tried implementing what Anthony Perkins brought to the role, especially as the show continues. But certainly, I don’t think any of us feel tied to or constrained by [the original] Psycho or to any performance that came before.”
The creative team talks about the struggles between Norma and her son and Highmore says that’s a focus in season 3.
“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. But I don’t think that will stay that way. Norman will seek to take more and more of a 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.”
Highmore really reveals his maturity as an actor when answering what season 3 challenges were present.
“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 the same subject, retelling it or acting it out in a different way. So that the third season has been really interesting because of how Norman changes. Scenes in which you have kind of learned how to resolve in past, you can’t use, you can’t get out of it with the same emotion. And so you know that in certain scenes in the past with Norma and Norman where Norma was 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 make this small shift.”
Check out the full interview HERE
