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COMIC-CON NEWS: BATES MOTEL Panel with Freddie Highmore & Vera Farmiga – Updated

Saturday, July 20, 2013. 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Room 6A

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  • Bates Motel panel opened with a missing Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates) . His absence is explained in the video gag reel, where Highmore drops by the writers room during the hiatus only to learn he has been written out of the show in season 2 to give Emmy nominee Vera Farmiga (Norma Bates) more screen time. Joke. Co-showrunner Carleton Cuse drops Freddie off at the original Psycho house on the Universal lot where  he ends up killing a Norman Bates impersonator, carrying out the body and stuffing it in the trunk of a car in front of a tour bus. The gag reel ends and Highmore joins the panel.
  • Freddie Highmore (Norman) thinks his relationship with Norma is “dodgy”. Vera Farmiga (Norma) thinks it’s “loving” but she does find it exhausting screaming “Norman” all the time. Her hardest scene in season one — telling Norman about incest with her brother. A brother who might make an appearance in season two, accordng to Cuse.
  • Carlton Cuse hinted at new romance for Norma and Norman but “not with each other, OK?” “ he clarified. “Not yet.”
  • One of the shipper fans would like to see Sheriff Romero (Nestor Carbonell) and Dylan (Max Thieriot) together or at least shirtless together in some scenes. While Carbonell and Thieriot are open to love interests perhaps not with each other.
  • Someone asked what will happen with the proposed bypass around Bates Motel. Cuse assured them that season 2 won’t be all “town meetings”. There are bigger issues, like did Norman kill Miss Watson in the cliffhanger season finale? We don’t know for sure yet.