The Point Radio: Dark Creepy Fun On BATES MOTEL

The second season finale of BATES MOTEL is a few days away (Monday at 10pm ET on A&E), and Norman himself, Freddie Highmore (plus EP Carlton Cuse) talks about just how dark it will be and where the show will pick up for season three. We also continue our look at daytime talk TV with the man who has been on top for decades, Maury Povich. Plus it’s time to play Who’s Who in the new STAR WARS film!

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Transcript

The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub. The second season of Bass Motel wound up in an even deeper and darker place than the first. We talked to Norman himself, Freddie Highmore, and showrunner Carlton Hughes about exactly how they ended up there and what's ahead for season 3.

Plus our look at daytime TV talk continues with a guy who's done it for, well, a couple of decades or more, Maury Povitch. And it's time to play Who's Who with the new Star Wars cast. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio.

As the second season of the A&E series Bass Motel wound up, the characters ended up in an even darker place than they were at the end of last season. Actor Freddie Highmore, who plays Norman Bates, came from a child acting career with films like Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And I asked him how he evolved into a role this intense.

And I've always remained, I guess, relatively distant from the sort of film while growing up. Well, whenever I wasn't doing one myself since I carry on sort of going to normal school. And right now I'm just a couple of weeks away from doing my final exams at university. And so having always combined acting with my studies and always kind of lived back here

in England, I think that's given me a kind of nice sense of distance in terms of not falling into the pitfall that you mentioned. In terms of evolution, I guess you become more aware as you get older of how lucky you've been to have sort of been on these fantastic sets and also aware of, I guess, the learning process that goes on kind of subconsciously just by being on the set from a young age

and learning from actors. I think I've never been from been to sort of acting school myself. I guess you become more aware of the things that you learn and traits in other actors that you seek to sort of replicate or ways that they've approached certain scriptural material that you find inspiring.

So I guess it's that recognition of being lucky and also kind of maintaining this certain distance from that, which has always been rewarding. Finally, I guess for the yeah, Norman Bates certainly is different, but I never saw the transition from a sort of child actor to a young adult or adult actor to be particularly problematic in the sense that I just saw it as a natural thing.

As you get older, you start to play all the characters. And so I wouldn't say I'm kind of doing anything different now than I did before. It just seemed natural to me. As the directions of the show and the movie continue to branch off, I talked to executive producer Carlton Cuse who told me how this is all evolved from his point of view.

I was a huge fan of the movie. I think it's, you know, it's kind of been the pantheon of nearly perfect movies. And so I was actually, you know, very afraid about making a show that would sort of fall in the heavily in the shadow of that. And so, you know, right from the get go when Carrie Erin, my partner on the show and I

started working on it, you know, the very first sort of first and most important decision that we made was to do the show as a contemporary political, which I think put the show in a different place than the movie. I think if we'd done it as a period show, it would always be, you know, kind of in the present shadow of this amazing masterwork that Hitchcock made.

And you know, for us, what we really want to do is just take these characters, you know, take the idea of, you know, it's like Tom Stoppard took, you know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and you know, and brought them to life, you know, from, you know, these two minor characters from Shakespeare and gave them their own existence. You know, we took these two major characters from this Hitchcock movie and we sort of displaced

them into a different time and gave them their own existence. And I think one of the things that's been really rewarding is the show is gone to a second season. And so I think people are really beginning to see that, you know, Bates Motel is, you know, is really its own thing.

It was inspired by the Hitchcock movie, but it's really an original show taking some elements from the original Hitchcock movie. But our goal is to tell a wholly new story. I was curious how Freddie plays Norman, how he differentiates his character from the way it was portrayed in the films that have come before.

In terms of a sort of narrative arc, it's something that Carson will know more than me. I've never seen the sort of end of the show from my perspective being Norman arriving exactly at sort of Anthony Perkins' performance. And so, after maybe a sort of certain things taken from that, it wasn't the sort of end

goal of mine to kind of have my Norman end up in the motel acting exactly like Anthony Perkins did. At the same time, I guess being on a TV show, one of the sort of rare luxuries that I've got is knowing where Norman ends up. And so, whilst sometimes you, I imagine, I guess this is my first TV show, but you sort

of are a slightly uncertain as to where your character is going to go and the terms he's going to make. And so there's that excitement, but from my perspective, it's constant build towards ultimately Norman going psycho. And whether that's necessarily sort of in the sense of the original movie, I don't think

so, but there's definitely that build towards a climactic moment. After two seasons, it's safe to say that fans of the show are heavily invested in Norman and Norma Bates, all hoping, honestly, they don't end up the way we think they will. And I ask Carlton to comment on that. You know, I think that I'm very happy to hear you say that because I think that's the key

to a great tragedy. And tragedy is a great storytelling form. It works extremely well for Shakespeare. It works extremely well for Jim Cameron, Titanic as a tragedy. And in that movie, you're sort of hoping, you can hope that Leonardo Cappi and Kate

Winslet don't meet their inevitable fate. I think that that tension between sort of your expectations as to what's going to happen to these characters and what's actually occurring now on their journey is that traumatic tension, I think, is the essence of what we are trying to accomplish as writers. And I think that Freddie and Vera are, no one could do a better job than the two of

them executing that. We do foresee that there are some bad things that loom ahead, but it would be, I think it would actually rob the audience of the enjoyment of the journey to be too specific about how we're going to play that out. I mean, certainly we think that a literal resuscitation of the events of the movie would

not be fully satisfied. So as we head into the next season, any more new actors, especially transplants from Lost? There were so many wonderful actors on Lost. I don't think there's anyone on Lost. I would not want to work with again.

I mean, they're all so great. I just think it just so happened that when we were creating Cher from Arrow as a character, Nestor popped into my mind and it was just he so vividly encapsulated everything that we wanted in the character. But I really actually never think about that.

I don't think about intentionally taking someone from one show and using them in another. Hopefully it will happen that a character that we create might lend itself to being cast by someone else from Lost. I would soon be open to that, but I don't have any plans immediately to add anyone else from Lost.

You can catch up on what you've missed right now with Bates Motel at AETV.com and season three begins in 2015 on the A&E Network. It is what we do, bringing you the very latest in pop culture. This fall Disney will release another version of their Disney Infinity game, this time with Marvel characters.

The Marvel Super Heroes Disney Infinity will feature original storylines written by Brian Michael Bendis and contain 20 actual figures of Marvel characters, including the Avengers, with more Marvel and Disney characters to be announced later. Disney Infinity Marvel Super Heroes will be released for PlayStation 3 and 4, Xbox One and 360, the Wii, the PC and the iOS platforms again coming in the fall.

It's official now that the original Project Greenlight is coming back to television. The series will return to HBO with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon again as executive producers, and the show will continue its original premise, searching for a first-time director and a project that works. Why bring it back?

Well, Affleck said that because Project Greenlight was actually ahead of its time in the beginning, and technology is now caught up with the concept. Fox has canceled the sci-fi series Almost Human, even though it ended up in its finale with well over 5 million viewers. It premiered to have almost twice that though a few months earlier, which apparently isn't

the highest standard for Fox. However, fans online have started a petition at Change.org, hoping its sci-fi may pick up the series. Finally, some news, but following that, a whole bunch more speculation. The cast of the new Star Wars movie, Star Wars Episode VII, was announced, and there

was even a photo circulated on the web of the new cast at the first official day of the script reading. However, no particular parts were attached to any of the actors, including people like Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, and Andy Serkis. Of course, along with that, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels,

Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker will also be, according to the report, reprising their well-known roles. And as I said, lots of speculation as to who will be who, especially for the Emmy nominee Adam Driver and Andy Serkis, known for a number of parts, in Planet of the Apes. AOL has announced some 16 original news shows to premiere throughout the rest of this year

on their AOL On Network, and they include things like Making a Scene with James Franco, where Franco recreates favorite film scenes with a twist, Kevin Nealon's Laugh Lessons, where he teaches comedy to kids, and a show called That's Racist that explores the different forms of racism and where the origins came from. There's a lot more on the list as well.

You can check the full run of what will be coming up on the network on AOL, keyword AOL on network. No need to get dressed up to go out to see the new Joss Whedon film. In fact, you don't have to get dressed at all. Joss is releasing his film In Your Eyes direct to online.

It'll turn up on Vimeo with every showing costing the viewer about $5. In Your Eyes, in the words of Joss, is a paranormal love story. And of course, it's Joss' second online project, the first being Doctor Horrible, back in 2008. Street Fighter fans should be excited about a new Kickstarter-funded live-action web series.

It's called Street Fighter Assassin's Fist. It'll debut online in May and be available only on Machinima. It's fan-made, but again was financed through Kickstarter and will be based on most of the familiar aspects of Street Fighter. Along the lines of last year's Sound of Music, Fox is planning a three-hour live production

of Grease in cooperation with Paramount TV. It'll be set for the network sometime in 2015, with casting being announced later this year. Tamori Povich has been a mainstay of daytime talk TV, and it's really hard to remember when he wasn't there. But I was curious as to how it all started for Maury.

Well, you know, it's very interesting. I mean, if we go back to my history, I mean, I have been in the business for decades now, and I started out as a news reporter and a sports reporter. And then in Washington, D.C., my hometown, I started talk shows. And so I ended up doing news and local talk shows all around the country in Washington,

where I grew up, and then Chicago and Los Angeles and San Francisco and Philadelphia. And then I went back to Washington in the early 1980s. And this, you know, unknown Australian comes into the country and buys my station. And his name is Rupert Murdoch. He starts a company called Fox.

He brings me to New York. And we start this show called The Current Affair in 1986. And that kind of put me on the national map. And so, you know, The Current Affair was a very cheeky, a very brave kind of news tabloid show that ran every night at 7, 730 in the evening, and it became a huge hit.

And out of that, in 1991, I started doing talk shows, first with Paramount, and then with NBC Universal. And that's what I've been doing for the last 24 years. So I mean, my background basically is news. But as far as I'm concerned, the stories we do on our show are the stories that are part

of the American fabric. Has the show evolved over the years? It has. There's no question about it. I mean, we weren't doing, when we first started, we weren't doing paternity testing, we weren't

doing lie detector tests. The only theme that really has carried all the way through these 25 years is the one thing we deal with in terms of out of control teenagers. That is an issue that is, you know, I don't know when we haven't had that issue in this country where kids decide at a very young age that they know better than their parents,

they run the streets, they want to get, the women want to get pregnant because they want some unconditional love. So the whole question of teenage pregnancy and youth getting into trouble. That theme has run throughout the 25 years. But I would say the last 15 years, we've used the paternity testing theme and the lie detector

tests and they have become the signature themes of the show. As always, with so many great shows, I was curious about what Maury's favorite moments were. The show that pops out as the most memorable, and that happened actually twice on our show. There's a woman who comes on, she has twins, and she's accusing this guy of being the father

of her twins and he has denied it. And the twins are here too old. And he has consistently denied that he was the father. And people have to understand, I don't know the results of any of these DNA tests or lie detector tests until I opened the envelopes.

I decided many, many years ago that I didn't want to know anything more than the audience or the guests know because then I don't want to be able to skew my questions. I don't want to know anything more than the audience knows or anyone else. So when I opened up the envelope in this instance, I told this young gentleman, you're the father of one, but not the other.

And I was absolutely dumbfounded. I didn't know that could happen. I turned around, looked at my producers, and they told me that the doctors say that the million to one shot with fraternal twins, it doesn't necessarily, there is a possibility that there can be two fathers.

And it's happened twice on the show. The show's been renewed through 2016. It's not going anywhere. So I asked Morrie for a little tease about things that were coming up. What we do is we try to take a theme and put layers on it and different aspects.

Now we have in the coming season, our big may sweeps. What we have is it's not only the woman and the man and the woman accusing the guy of being the father, but the guy might say that this girl slept with my brother too or mothers of each family coming on. So we kind of have all these layers involved in this one story and the drama just keeps

building. And I think that's what the viewers are going to find out in the May sweeps. After entertaining us for so long, I was curious, is there any other job Morrie would like to do? I really kind of lived all my dreams.

I mean, I've done everything in this world that I would ever want to do. And I think the greatest dream that came true in my life is meeting a young woman named Connie Chung and falling in love and being married to her for almost 30 years and raising this child with her as well as my other two children from a previous marriage. I've done everything I can except all I want to do now is just continue to shoot my age

in golf. The Morrie Povich show continues every weekday. Check your local listings for times in your area. That's it for the podcast. We're back in a few days.

And if you thought Bates Motel ended in a way that, well, left you a little unsettled when you find out what's going to happen on Blacklist. We talked to Red Reddington himself, James Spader, coming up in a couple of days and maybe even a sneak peek at what's going to happen when he takes over the role of Ultron. All that and more right here with the podcast that you get for free in the iTunes podcast

directory and on websites like ComicMix.com and michaeldavasworld.com. Meanwhile, we cover pop culture 24-7 with great programs you can hear anywhere on GetThePointRadio.com. That's the link for your desktop. However, if you want to take us along on any mobile device, Apple or Android, all you need is the free app, iNet Radio.

See you back here in a few days.