Freddie Highmore Interview: ‘Bates Motel’ Season 3 and Norman’s Journey

Freddie Highmore Interview on Bates Motel Season 3
Freddie Highmore stars in A&E’s ‘Bates Motel’ (Photo by Cate Cameron Copyright 2015)

Season three of A&E’s popular drama Bates Motel finds Norman Bates, played by Freddie Highmore, continuing down the road to becoming the serial killer portrayed by Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Even more twisted than seasons one and two, season three kicked off on March 9, 2015 with new episodes airing on Monday nights at 9pm ET/PT.

As the new season gets underway, Freddie Highmore and executive producer/writer Kerry Ehrin took part in a conference call to discuss what fans of the addictive series can expect from season three.

Freddie Highmore and Kerry Ehrin Interview:

How difficult is it to get into character?

Freddie Highmore: “I don’t consider myself to be very similar to Norman. […] This season was more 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 it’s 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 where 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 we’re very much playing with the game of control between him and Norma and the power struggle which is really delicious.”

At this point, how much influence does the original Anthony Perkins performance have on your performance and how much are you trying to just sort of completely make it your own?

Freddie Highmore: “I guess potentially now they are less comparisons that are made to it because people see the Norman on Bates Motel as being his own entity as opposed to necessarily the precursor to Anthony Perkins’ version. But at the same time 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, because I’ve always seen that the end of Bates Motel not necessarily as the end of Psycho but the end of Norman is a lot closer to Anthony Perkins’ version than the boy that we saw at the start. But certainly I don’t think any of us feel tied constrainingly to Psycho or to any performance that came before.”

The motel itself is new version built in Canada but does working around that atmosphere add to the creepy feeling, both as an actor and as a writer?

Freddie Highmore: “Yes, it does. I think 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 come into view with your own memories and events that took place in Bates Motel. Like from 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 in last season. 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.”

Now that Norma knows about Norman’s blackouts, do you think she’s going to ever let him back out on her own? Is she going to try and keep him more under control?

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’s a terrifying ordeal for Norma. And, yes, her instinct is to keep him as close as possible.”

The shower scene of Norma looking in on Annika (played by Tracy Spiridakos) looked very familiar. Can we expect any other shower or bathroom-related scenes this season?

Freddie Highmore: “Definitely. There’s definitely another occurrence. [It’s a] really interesting bathroom season in many ways.”

Kelly Ehrin: It is a different bathroom, though. We got a new bathroom set this year, which is amazing. I know it sounds stupid to say that we’re excited about a bathroom set but it’s such an amazing design and we got to film some really pivotal scenes in it. It’s inside the Bates house. And there’s some huge scenes in it, yes.”

Was there a moment or a scene where you really felt like Norman clicked for you and you really just got him as a character?

Freddie Highmore: “No, I wouldn’t say that there was one particular scene that has defined him. I guess the scene in the woods just right at the end when Norman kind of looks up and looks into the camera. That’s the kind of two sides of Norman, really.”

Kerry Ehrin: “When you were doing the evil face, you mean?”

Freddie Highmore: “The evil face…but that build-up of him with mother Norma appearing and helping him to pass the test because I think really you need to do two things in order to know who Norman is because there’s this bifurcating of his personality that continues in the third season even more and so you need to understand that.”

Kerry Ehrin: “I mean, literally the first day of filming it felt like they were completely inside embodying the characters in such a true way. It was kind of amazing.”

Can you preview what’s to come for Dylan and Norman’s relationship?

Freddie Highmore: “I guess you see 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. I think 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.”

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: “I guess we’ve seen in the first episode how Norman wants to try and date Emma [Olivia Cooke]. I guess the reasons behind that become clearer as the season goes on and it is entirely, 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: “Emma in general has done some growing up as Norman has and 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. I think as she grows older and she has to deal with the reality of her health, which clarifies a lot of things in life when you have a crisis like that, she starts to mature. Part of her story this year is her starting to understand things about Norman that are concerning to her.”

Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore in  'Bates Motel' (Photo by James Dittiger)
Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore in ‘Bates Motel’ (Photo by James Dittiger)

It’s very hard to have a likeable anti-hero as your main character. It was done successfully with Dexter. How are you doing that with Bates Motel to make sure that people still feel connected with Norman?

Kerry Ehrin: “Well first of all you cast Freddie Highmore…”

Freddie Highmore: “And then you have Kerry writing…”

Kerry Ehrin: “…who is incredibly likeable. When you write these things, we love the characters and, in a way, actors have to love the character they portray in a way because they have to do the best version of it from that person’s point of view. I think 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.

He’s been through a lot. He’s been through a lot that people would have a lot of sympathy for, empathy for. You know, a 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: “And at the same time, it’s one thing to be a bad guy. He does become, in spite of his best intentions, I think he does become one over the course of the entire show but moving towards that in the third season. 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 as now we can start to make us challenge whether we were right to get on his side and to start supporting him in the first place.”

Given that we know a lot of things about where he ends up in Psycho, would you say things like learning taxidermy were very significant in establishing Norman’s character also?

Freddie Highmore: “Yes, taxidermy is every more important as the season goes on and we’ll have to see what he ends up taxidermying by the end. But I don’t know. It’s the trick I think, as Kerry’s spoken about in the past, is in not making those moments that are present in Psycho seem really noticeable when you’re watching it. And of course part of the joy like when we see Norman as Norma is knowing, ‘Oh, we know that this is also [from the film].’ It 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 little wink to the audience. So I think what Kerry sort of balances so well is never making those sort of 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.”

What can you tease about what’s going to happen for the rest of this intense season?

Freddie Highmore: “There’s this power, 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 on some level equal. But it won’t 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. 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.”