The Point Radio: Vera Farmiga – One Talented Mother On BATES MOTEL
Transcript
The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub, the second season of Bates Motel is set to roll on the A&E network and in the center of an all Emmy-nominated actress, the delightful Vera Farmiga, who's here to talk a little bit about the character behind the actress. Plus, Heroes returns and Archie goes YA. Let's get to The Point.
This is The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio. A&E's Bates Motel is back for a second season and in the middle of it all, Emmy-nominated actress Vera Farmiga, who plays Norma Bates. I asked Vera how she took this whole thing as an actress. Does she look at the role one script at a time or does she want to know more about what's ahead for her character?
You know I'm still figuring what it is that is part of my process. You know I've never had the luxury of a second season. I've done three series before and they all never had the opportunity to go beyond 13 episodes in the first season. So I know first season I did feel a little disabled. Not that I couldn't ask because I remember Carlson asking me do you want some more clues? And I wanted to sort of take it an episode at a time and not get ahead of myself.
So for me, but in hindsight, in the experience of season one, I felt, oh man, okay now in hindsight, especially having sort of a big bomb land in the last episode, for me it was impossible to dig as deep initially with the root of this new character. I just had to, like it was like, I felt like Norma Bates was this like huge voluptuous shrub that and that I just had to trust in this kind of shallow root system. And sometimes I felt like
I was like showing up to fix this toilet and my toolbox has been like packed by the wife. That's why I just reveled in the opportunity of a second season. You know it's, television is a much slower process to discovering that background history, the personality, the psychology, the character's goals, and there were so many unknowns. And also it's like, the cast is so much closer. There's an intimacy. There's a level of like sportsmanship now that we can throw harder
jabs at each other. There's a deeper level of trust that has been and loved. It's been established between us and Carrie and Carlton and between the actors. And so it's interesting developing a character over TV time. And yeah, I mean certainly, but that's my own fault because at the same time I wanted to pace myself with the information that was coming at me. But I think second season I did ask for more clues. With Bates and last summer's conjuring it seems like a lot of
Vera's more recent roles have taken more of a darker turn. Is that a trend in her career? There's a lot of darkness in Bates Motel, but again there's a lot of joy and you know the things like for me, I don't know, I've always looked at things and I choose to look at it through the lens of positivity. And I think our story is, yeah, this is a story about dysfunction, it's dark, but it's a story about commitment and love and family and resilience and loyalty. I don't know,
but if you look at like the, I don't know, now close to 50 films that I've done, it's only like five of them that are actually like certified horror stories. Everything else is, you know, is maybe the most successful projects in my career have been psychological thrillers and horror, sort of twisted dark. But the object is like you stand the light into the darkness, you know, of our character's hearts. I mean that's how I always look at it. So I am attracted to the
thwarted and the wacky, the unorthodox, but I love infusing it with lightness. Vera told me that more than likely this season, Norma won't be ending up with a love interest on the show. Yeah, I mean obviously she's proved from first season that she's totally over anxious, she's too involved, you know, I mean this is a woman who's been abused by her father, abused by her brother, discarded by men, unneeded by her older son, you know, she clings the one
man that has been her protector, her confidant, her consolation, the light in her life and it's, it is Norman and she's totally too involved in him. She's unable to cut the cord, man. The issues of like women survivors of childhood sexual abuse, it's really complex and, you know, it impedes ability to trust, especially if you, like Norma, who, man, these demons are within, these poisonous feelings that she has are embedded so deep in her psyche and she's never uprooted them. She just
like, you know, she has this vault, this burial chamber that she just like, well she squashes all that sadness and stress and torment. She's totally preoccupied with Norman because, I mean, imagine it for yourself. It's like, you know, the faint-heartedness, the doom when you suspect that there's something not quite right neurologically with your child. It's not a job for the faint-hearted. So like all her, every ounce of energy really is trying to, you know,
it's her struggle with raising Norman, this atypical child, doing it and the single parent. She's got her own painful history also to contend with. She's got this like, rampart that she's built, the walls of Constantinople. Is Norma really becoming unravelled? Yeah, yeah, because I think what's happening, you know, she's built this brick by brick and it's not, you know, it's, it's, the ramparts not so fortified anymore. Somebody comes to knock him,
you know, she is, the reason for moving out to White Pine Bay is to put as much real estate as possible between her and her past and these people that have been a part of, you know, this, look, all of this has developed sort of really complicated psychological issues, like, like depression that she squashes and low self-esteem and fear and guilt and that, all that trauma, which she hasn't dealt with. Oh man, you know, all these stressors,
like these, these, these, she's got pretty significant stressors that affect her parenting capacities and also affect her, her, every other relationship that, you know, that she can take on. I mean, the way I feel like she's kind of driving the bus from the backseat. In the beginning when she was approached about being on a TV series based on such an iconic movie, I asked Vera if she ever had any reservations. I'd be lying if I didn't have like some reservation
about it when I, when initially was presented with the offer, I thought there is so many things that can go wrong and we're, we're, we're being tethered, you know, we're bothering these characterizations and these plot points from like deep, arguably the most successful horror film ever. You know, at the same time, what assured me, I saw Freddy's audition tape and any skepticism, any trepidation, any fear I had, any vanish when I, when I saw his, his, his audition tape, it just,
it wowed me. I, I saw it. And then, then it became to me a story, now it wasn't, it's not, at the heart of the story is this relationship between mother and son. So all that being said after a successful first season, is Bates Motel the show starting to distance itself from Psycho the movie? For that question, I approached series co-creator and showrunner Carrie Ihern. From the very beginning Carlton and I
wanted to honor the movie but not be beholden to it. So I think at this point, the world of Bates Motel has definitely become its own organic world. So while we're, we're still conscious of the film and obviously there's certain tent poles, let's say, the film, the film suggests, we don't, it, it, it kind of has become its own, its own beast at this point. New episodes of the second season of Bates Motel run right now on
A&E. You can always find out more and see some sample clips too at A&E TV dot com. It's set for all the very latest in pop culture starting right now. Taking inspiration from Fox bringing back 24 as the limited event series, NBC is reviving Heroes. Heroes Reborn will be a 13 episode miniseries event set for NBC next year and Tim Crane will be behind it as well, although there's no word on yet whether any of the original cast will return. There's a small teaser trailer
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claims that a very busy 2015 has had them have to make a few changes in schedule. A lot of cool and varied stuff to pick up this week in the comic store starting right at the rack with Dark Horse, a new title called White Suits which is by Frank Barbary and Toby Cypress. You might remember Toby from some work on Predator a few years ago. It involved incidents that took place during the cold war with Russia that affected the world today in a big way. From DC if you're into the Batman
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of different ways comic book locator services where you can start. Do that at 1-888-COMIC-BOOK. Look at the big link we have right on the front of the ComicMix.com website or go to a site called findacomicshop.com. That's it for another podcast we're back a couple of times every week in all the usual places. First in the iTunes podcast directory and on websites like ComicMix.com and Michael Davis World.com too. In the meantime follow us 24-7 on Get The Point Radio the world's very first
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