Vera Farmiga admits she wasn’t entirely sold on playing the infamous Norma Bates in the prequel to Hitchcock’s Psycho, Bates Motel on A&E. Now a possible Emmy contender, Farmiga expresses how playing Norma helped her get in touch with a deeper level of herself.
AwardsLine interviewed Farmiga, who is a wife and mother of her own. When asked about if she was looking for a TV project specifically when Bates Motel approached her, she responded, “If I’m going to step away for 18 hours a day, there better be some sort of a paycheck or spiritual salary being offered.”
Farmiga says the role of Norma caused her to reflect deeply on her own life. “{The role} made me reflect so deeply on the love I feel for my children. I was craving a deeper level of, I don’t know, virtuosity. The writers presented me with this deeper level of sophistication, the creation of Norma, and I pounced on the opportunity.”
Norma Bates is an iconic character in Psycho that we do not learn too much about in the movie other than the complex Norman has with her even though he killed her and maintains her dead body. The character of Norma on Bates Motel allows us to explore the real relationship between Norma and Norman, and Farmiga plays a convincing overbearing, psychotic mother.
“It’s the great American tragedy, and we know where that story inevitably leads. And it’s grisly. It’s grim. It begins and it ends with dissonances, but in between I want to strike all those beautiful chords that make the story so complex.”
Check out some Bates Motel spoilers to see what’s in store for Norma and the rest of the family when season two airs in the fall.
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