Bates Motel season 5 bosses talk Rihanna casting before debut
On Monday night, Bates Motel will feature the debut of Marion Crane… and with that, we’re here to discuss the Rihanna casting!
Bringing on the singer was a very bold move for the show to make, largely because they were deciding to entrust one of the most important roles in the Psycho mythology to someone who is far more known as a recording artist than an actor. Rihanna has acted before, but it’s still somewhat risky. Yet, there were a couple of things that probably helped executive producers Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin to make this casting move. For one, Rihanna is a big Bates Motel fan and had said so in interviews long before the offer was made to her. Also, they had to know that bringing her on would give the show a different energy, and provide plenty of publicity to go along with it.
In speaking about the casting to TVLine, Ehrin offered up the following:
“She’s an exciting presence … She’s very charismatic. She brought something very unique to it. Above everything, we wanted it to feel new and unique to the retelling of Marion.”
Meanwhile, Cuse added that “there is a long history of singers being successful as actors, from Frank Sinatra to Barbra Streisand. And we bet that she would be able to do a great job with it [and] spin the role in a way that was going to be completely modern. And we were very happy.” All in all, the show didn’t have any reason to doubt that Rihanna could pull off the part, and they seem to be absolutely confident in what she brought to the table after the fact.
Given that we’re nearing the end of the series, we are at a time when almost every little thing that the show does matters. With that, we’ll just wait and see precisely how the writers are able to pull this off, and deliver a Marion Crane story that feels similar to the Alfred Hitchcock story, and yet also different. For example, we know that we’re getting so much more context with this part than we ever got in the movie.
What do you think about the Rihanna casting, and are you excited for Monday’s Bates Motel episode? Be sure to share in the attached comments!