Interview: BATES MOTEL Star Freddie Highmore, Writer Kerry Ehrin Tease Season 3

Popular drama-thriller BATES MOTEL returned for its third season last Monday night on A&E, and this season is gearing up to be the show's most eerie and suspenseful yet. Serving as a prequel to the classic 1960 film PYSCHO, the show centers around Norman Bates' teenage years running the BATES MOTEL with his eccentric, overwhlemingly loving mother.

This week, BWW participated in a conference call with star Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates) and writer Kerry Ehrin. The two teased various storylines we'll be seeing this upcoming season, and discussed the challenges and rewards that come along with working on an intensely dark show.

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Norman is such an iconic character in the horror genre, particularly because of Anthony Perkins' legendary performance. Now that you've been doing the role for three years, how much influence does the original Perkins' performance have on your own, and how much are you trying to make your own?

Freddie Highmore: Now there are less comparisons made to it because people see the Norman on Bates Motel as being his own entity opposed to necessarily 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. I've always seen that the end of Bates Motel not necessarily as the end of Psycho. But the end of Norman in Bates Motel is a lot closer to Anthony Perkins' version than the boy that we saw at the start. But I don't think any of us feel tied to Psycho or to any performance that came before.

Now that Norma knows about Norman's blackouts, will she ever let him out of her sight?

Kerry Ehrin: 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 are terrifying ordeals for Norma. Her instinct is to keep him as close as possible.

Can you speak about the evolution of Norman and Emma's relationship in this season?

F.H.: We've seen in the first episode how Norman wants to try to date Emma. And I guess the reasons behind that become clearer as the season goes on and it is entirely 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.

K.E: And Emma in general has done some growing up since Norman first met her. When they met, she was in many was still kind of a little girl, very idealistic. I think lonely. And she, was really grateful to have this friend in Norman Bates. As she grows older and she has to deal with the reality of her health, which can clarify 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.

Norman and Norma grow dangerously close as the series progresses. What can we expect from the duo in the upcoming episodes?

K.E.: What's emerging between them is an awareness on Norma's side that he is more controlling, and on Norman's side is an awareness that she has chinks in her emotional armor.

F.H.: One other interesting thing is that there will be this increasing separation between the real Norman and the real Norma. By the end of the season, there is almost a complete convergence of the two at one moment where you're almost not entirely sure which person it is.

For Freddie, is it difficult to act with an "imaginary" character as Norman has hallucinations of his mother?

F.H.: I think it's interesting. We've experimented with in many ways this season how Norman himself is behaving in those 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 in using her words or whether he's merely listening and hearing them. But there's also a new sense of freedom to be found in them because it isn't reality. That opens up exciting new possibilities for how both Norman and Norma can behave.

In PSYCHO, we never got to meet Norma Bates, as she was already dead. What was it like to create this character?

K.H.: Carlton (co-writer) 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 we definitely wanted to broaden out the scope of who this woman was and then do the same thing with Norman.

What has been your biggest challenge this season?

K.E.: Honestly, the biggest challenge is not literally killing Vera and Freddie. We ask so much of them. The storylines we do tend to be very emotionally aparatic while still grounded but that is such a feat to pull off for an actor and they're truly amazing. We just marvel at them in editing or if we're on the set.

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