Interview: Silar Weir Mitchell, “Monroe” on NBC’s Grimm, Talks About His Role on the Show

Silas Weir Mitchell as Monroe.

On November 3, 2011, I had the pleasure of participating in a conference call with Silar Weir Mitchell, who plays Monroe on NBC’s new show, Grimm. He spoke about playing a werewolf, where his inspiration for the character came from, and what we can expect to see going forward, among other things. I was able to ask a few questions, which are immediately below. All of the questions are in bold to differentiate them from Mitchell’s answers. We began by discussing our mutual hometown, Philadelphia, PA.

Hi Silas, greetings from your home town of Philadelphia.

SWM:  Oh wow, you’re in Philly, where?

I’m in South Philadelphia actually, near the stadiums.

SWM:  Very cool. I’m sad the Spectrum got demolished, I had some good times in that building.

I’ll bet you did. Tell me are we going to – are you going to be able to keep your werewolf tendencies under wraps going forward or are we going to see your inner beast popping out every now and then?

SWM:  Oh the inner beast pops out every now and then.

That’s cool, well it seems to me that your character has quite a sense of humor, are you like that in real life?

SWM:  I have a very, very good sense of humor, yes, ask any of my friends. No, you know, I don’t know how to answer that really. I mean you know I like to laugh and I have a sense of humor about myself, let’s put it that way you know. I don’t take myself too seriously.

Well that’s a good thing to have, don’t you think?

SWM:  I do. I think that you know what did Ken Kesey say, lose your laugh, lose your footing?

(I continued with my final question, which I’m sorry to say, seemed to rub Mitchell the wrong way.)

I was doing a little research on IMDB in preparation for this call, I came across a posting on the message board from someone named Simon Roper. Do you recognize that name?

SWM:  Yeah, I don’t really have any comment about that at all.

Well my question was do you have any creepy fans…

SWM:  I don’t really have any comment about it at all.

No, I don’t want to ask you about him, I just want to know if you have to deal with crazy fans with him a lot.

SWM:  I guess you could say it’s part of the job, that’s really all I want to say.

(Moving on to the other questions…)

My question is, it’s a two partner [sic] I guess, could you elaborate more on your character and will we learn more about your character’s background in future episodes?

SWM:  Well to elaborate more on my character basically I suppose everything you hear in the pilot is – you know that’s pretty much as far as we get, you know? I mean I’m a Bluebod and I am sort of a reformed Bluebod, I’m trying to live as a human on the straight and narrow.

And we will definitely learn more about my character in future episodes. But as far as sort of family history we’re not getting into that yet, we do learn about the clock maker and you know.

But it doesn’t get too much into my history or anything.

Was wondering maybe if you could perhaps tell us a little bit about your experiences shooting the pilot episode for Grimm and maybe what were some of the initial challenges you found stepping into this role?

SWM:  Well shooting the pilot was both – it was really, really exciting and it was really, really challenging. I mean you know we have – you’re allowed more time to shoot the pilot than a normal episode, almost twice as much time.

So you can be more deliberate, but you also don’t have an infrastructure that’s kind of set up which you do once you get a production up and running.

So it was challenging just on the level of the production value that NBC – that we were going for, you know that – so that was hard to try to make it as the best thing as possible without having a production infrastructure that had been working together for a while.

So that was a big challenge. On a production level for me specifically it was just the idea of you know I’ve been on a lot of series but I’ve never been sort of the central sort of pillars of the narrative really.

And I found that to be challenging in its own right knowing that a lot was riding on it. You know that was challenging. But luckily we all have a great time working together. It was a really – it’s a great environment to work.

So everything kind of came out well I’d say.

I’m a big fan from Prison Break as well and I noticed that there’s a similar dynamic at play between Monroe and Haywire, like how do you relate to both on a personal level?

SWM:  Well you know I don’t even want to talk about Prison Break because it’s just a completely different animal. There’s really no comparison for me except in the fact that being an actor and the way I work I work you know – I would do the same thing if I was playing Hamlet or if I’m you know doing a commercial.

It’s just how I work. So yeah, I don’t really – I don’t know what the – the only way to compare the two is to say that the same actor is playing them, you know what I mean?

Hi, can you tell me, talk a little bit about your (price), same position is going to become kind of a quote unquote buddy fixture, can you talk a little bit about your process when establishing a relationship with your costar?

SWM:  My process as an actor?

As an actor, just to establish that kind of close relationship you guys are going to have to have to really make the chemistry work.

SWM:  Yeah, there’s – that is – I can only talk about this case in particular but we’re very lucky in the sense that we love working together and I have a lot of respect for David and I think he’s sort of – I think he’s very well cast and I think he’s just a lovely guy.

And he’s a smart guy and we like working together so establishing a rapport on camera is not difficult because we have a very good one off camera.

And so do you – so you don’t do anything special like hang out a lot more, do your lines together, any of that kind of thing?

SWM:  We see each other all – you know we have coffee every now and then, you know I mean everybody – you know you sort of run lines once in a while if you have a big scene but we – one doesn’t do anything calculated necessarily in order to create a rapport.

One either has one or doesn’t I think and we do. And that’s a very lucky thing. They cast this show very well, they got the right people in and I think that part of getting the right people in involved you know the chemistry.

And somehow they managed to put a group of people together that has great chemistry. And I don’t know how you do that.

I don’t know if you can calculate that or not but in this case you know it worked well, the pairing of people. You know we all dig working together, we’re all very happy to be here so it’s not hard.

You know we don’t have to fake anything.

I was wondering I’m glad to hear that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Monroe this season but is there any chance that we’re going to be seeing any of his bad wolf suppressing yoga techniques?

SWM:  Did you say yoga techniques?

Yes, yes. You said you were into the yoga in the pilot.

SWM:  It’s really more Pilates, I don’t know if you picked that up in the pilot.

So is it Pilates, I’m sorry, is it – will we be seeing any Pilate techniques?

SWM:  Yeah, I think that you know I mean I think that it’s not out of the question that you’ll see some of the techniques that I employ to keep myself together, Pilates among them. That’s a fair statement I would say.

Good, great. You do a great job and you’re hilarious, I love the character.

SWM:  Thank you very much, it’s lovely to be here and be working and we’re all really hoping that this baby has some legs.

Hi there, I so enjoyed watching the pilot, I actually screamed so loudly I terrified all of my coworkers in the office when I was watching it.

SWM:  Wow, that’s high praise.

It was, it was pretty epic. So in terms of how you use your body, how you use your physicality for this role, sort of the werewolf tendencies that come out, can you speak a little bit to that?

SWM:  I don’t really know what the question is. I don’t mean to be rude, I don’t know what you – what’s the question?

So like I felt like you know when you’re transforming into sort of your werewolf side taking over, your shoulders are a bit more hunched, do you have sort of a sense of what your body does to make that really happen?

SWM:  Oh I see what you’re talking about, you’re sort of wondering about what I’m doing physically when I morph.

Exactly.

SWM:  Well yeah, I mean there’s a thing that happens, and yeah. I mean that’s what – I mean you just said it the shoulders hunch a little bit, there’s a little of you know – there’s a little bit of a facial – you know moving – since you know if the morph was expressed in my foot, my foot would do something.

You know what I mean? But because it’s my face then my head does something.

Can you talk about how you got involved in the show in the first place?

SWM:  Yeah, I worked with Jim Kouf, K-O-U-F who is one of the creators and writers of the show along with David Greenwalt but I worked with Jim Kouf on a movie that he wrote, directed and produced called Fork in the Road in 2007 I believe.

And we just hit it off, you know we had a good working relationship and you know he and I have a sort of – I understand his sense of humor and I was auditioning for a role where they expected a different kind of – really in their minds when they wrote it envisioned one kind of person that this character was.

And Fern Castle who is the casting director thought that I might be an interesting kind of other way to go. And you know casting directors try to do that, they try to give you the choices that you think it’s going to be and then they always bring in sort of the black sheep.

Just to say you know what about this idea and a lot of times I’m the black sheep, I’m the sort of what about going this way kind of guy. And it doesn’t really work out very often because people have their hearts set on kind of one thing.

In this case I was the way to go and it was the opposite of what he had anticipated and so I sort of struck a nerve with him and we had a great time then henceforth working on the project and so you know when this came along, they just called me in.

You know I think that they said oh this guy would be good because we saw him, you know we worked with him before. So that’s how it went, you know it’s just I happened to know Jim.

My question was what actually attracted you to the role of Eddie Monroe and the show Grimm? Like were there any – was there anything particular that you really, really liked about it?

SWM:  Okay first of all it’s not Eddie Monroe, it’s just Monroe. Somehow in some very, very early draft of the script some – the name Eddie got out there but it’s not Eddie Monroe just for the record, that’s you know for everybody.

It’s just Monroe. And as far as what attracted me to it, what attracted me to it was it was a job really. I mean there was an audition for one of the leads in the pilot so there you go, you know what I mean?

Like I didn’t seek it out, I got the call, hey there’s an audition for this thing and I read the script and I thought it was cool. That having been said, what does attract me to the role, certainly I would have auditioned for it probably otherwise.

But given the fact that I’m doing it what really does attract me to the role is the inner conflict. I mean it’s – you know that is rich territory for an actor to have that kind of secret, you know?

Not only to have a secret but to have a secret that you’re trying to you know deal with on a daily basis. It’s not just oh you know – it’s not just a secret from the past.

It’s a secret that in every breath you’re trying to maintain. And that’s really fun to play, I also think the mythological elements of the story are very compelling.

Because I really feel like in a lot of ways the creature elements of the show quote unquote, creature stuff is really to my mind an expression of the sort of mythological underpinnings of not to get high falutin’, but really of the human psyche.

We all live in a world where there are monsters, monsters are real, you know and you look at sort of murderers and people who are on death row and people who have done terrible things you know like the Richard Ramirez’s of the world and the Sons of Sam and those people.

And I feel like the creature elements of this show in a lot of ways are addressing that sort of mythical darkness that because if you bring myth into it you have – you can discuss it in broader terms and not just make it about you know the procedural element which is a huge part of the show.

Long story short, I think you know the mythology and the inner conflict.

I wanted to ask, you know a werewolf is a character we all know but very few actors get to be one. I’m wondering what kind of research you did or if there were any tests in werewolves that influenced you know your character?

SWM:  The research I did was really reading. I’m presently at arm’s length of a book that was written in 1933, it’s one of the classics, this is no joke, on lycanthropy and werewolfism and all that.

And it was written in – let me see here, yeah it was written in 1933. And you know it’s got like – there are pages of it that are in Latin and pages of it that are in like middle French, it’s really fun.

Because the werewolf, like I was saying to the last caller about the mythological elements of this, the werewolf is a real thing. I mean there are stories that are not just like occult lore where you know in France in the 18th century, you know there was a guy who terrorized the French country side running around at night stealing children.

And you know mutilating them. And what’s our answer to that? Who do we – you know what is that? And one of the ways of addressing that is to say you’re a monster, you’re a werewolf, you know?

And so the research was for me was reading these stories sometimes when these were real. It wasn’t mythological then. I think now we recognize that the werewolf is a myth.

But the research of reading stories from a time when the werewolf was a real thing is pretty intense when you really put yourself in the shoes of someone who believed that a transformation took place and that a beast roamed the hills.

That’s pretty intense.

I love the show and Monroe is absolutely my favorite part of it, I really enjoy what you do with it. I was wondering if there’s any make up involved in your transformation at all or is it entirely CG?

SWM:  No, it’s not, it’s both. It’s – the idea is that it’s CGI on top of makeup but you still can tell that it’s my face. I mean there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it but the three ingredients really are prosthetics, computer graphics and my face.

And – because the idea is that when someone morphs, they don’t just turn into a werewolf like generic or you know someone is like a – you know I don’t know, a beetle creature or you know whatever.

They don’t just turn into a beetle, they turn into their beetle, you know what I mean?

They turn into what they would look like as this creature so they really make an effort to fuse the prosthetics and the CGI in such a way that you can tell that it’s me underneath it.

And that they do that with other creatures that are coming down the pike.

Which totally makes sense if they’re supposed to be you know human looking to everybody else all the time. So…

SWM:  Yeah, those are the rules, you know that you know I mean it really is to me if you think of it in terms of a murderer or a – you know whatever, kidnapper or something that they look like a human.

You look at Charles Manson, you see a human. But if a Grimm looked at Charles Manson they would see the beast that the guy is underneath the human mask.

That’s only if you have the perceptive powers of a Grimm.

It’s such a great process, just real quick what’s the prosthetic process like for you?

SWM:  Long, that’s what it’s like. It’s like long.

What you can you tell us about the upcoming episodes of Grimm and if you have a favorite fairy tale that was covered?

SWM:  All I can tell you is the episodes get – they get sort of deliciously dark and creepy. And NBC is letting us go there so to speak which I think is fantastic.

I didn’t really grow up on fairy tales per se. I kind of grew up on – there was one book that I had as a child which I’ve mentioned in other interviews which was called Slovenly Peter.

It’s also known as Shock Headed Peter and it’s an old German book, forget what the German word is for slovenly or shock headed.

But it’s – I forget right now, you’d have to hypnotize me but it would come to me. Anyway, it had cautionary tales in it and they were pretty grisly. You know and the idea was you know the cautionary tale of what – you know the little girl who played with matches, you know?

And what happens if you play with matches, and in the end of the story she’s burnt to a crisp, she’s like a pile of ashes. So that was sort of the German fairy tale book that I had, it wasn’t Grimm but it was grim if you know what I mean.

I was really interested in knowing what was your biggest challenge? Or did you find anything in the pilot when you were filming it to be a really challenging – you know did you have a tough time with any of it?

SWM:  Yeah, the thing that was the most challenging was it was really practical. It wasn’t some – it wasn’t like a challenging in an aesthetic sense, it was just the challenge was knowing that you’re shooting a pilot that you really it’s a – you really want to do well.

And you know from an actor’s point of view it’s lovely to be employed, it is lovely to be employed in a part in a role that you find rich. It is lovely to be employed in a role that you find rich working with people that you actually like, okay?

So you got all these things lined up, then you have to shoot a six page scene in four hours, you know what I mean? And so that was the only challenge.

And that’s – you know for the record that is a lot of pages in and not a lot of time. So to me the greatest challenge was even though we had more days than we would normally shoot the pilot, I found the challenge to be living honestly and having fun keeping the stakes of the thing at bay, i.e. wanting it to be good and get picked up and all that jazz.

Just trying to get through a very long scene you know without rushing it and making it – still making it good. So the challenge was a very practical one.

Did you find that your background in theater helped you with that?

SWM:  I think that – not in any more than it usually does you know, I mean it’s just that that background is just there and that’s just part of my makeup.

But I don’t think in this particular instance I was calling on that, no.

I just wanted to know, I know that you’ve played a lot of like disturbed characters before and yes, Monroe has his sort of dark obviously history. But I feel like he’s more of an endearing sort of fun character, has that kind of been a nice change for you? Or is something interesting for you to do as an actor, sort of changing up some of your typical type of roles?

SWM:  I think that’s a great question and I appreciate that awareness of yours. But yeah, it is, it’s lovely to play someone who is not crazy, any more than the next guy.

I mean that might be debatable, you know I mean some people might say well he is a little crazier than the next guy but you know not in a kind of the way you’re talking.

I mean Monroe, you know Monroe is definitely a unique person, you know. But not crazy in the way that you’re talking and it is nice to have that change, to not play someone who’s you know feverishly disturbed you know.

And I guess not too…

SWM:  Or evil for that matter.

Yeah, and not to be necessarily typecast in one role to sort of be getting a little bit more trust in your abilities of changing it up I guess?

SWM:  Say that one more time I kind of lost you.

Oh it’s okay, I just said you know it’s nice to have that someone interested in you to do something a little bit different than what you’re known for doing.

SWM:  Yeah, no absolutely and that’s what I was talking about earlier when I was referring to Jim Kauf and how I – we get along really well, we understand – I understand his sense of humor and he writes to my sense of humor.

And so that really is a good fit and that helps with the characterization a lot.

Silas I really enjoyed the pilot and I do love your character and I was wondering, I know the show kind of centrally is located around Portland. But do you think they will be going in other areas or other cities or towns?

SWM:  You know Portland has so much going for it I would be surprised if we went too far afield but I wouldn’t put it out of – you know it’s not out of the question that we will go farther outside of Portland than we’ve gone.

But I don’t see us sort of you know shooting in Eugene or something, I don’t know why we would really do that.

But you know what I mean, is that what you mean, like would we shoot in another town or something?

Yeah, like for example if the storyline for whatever reason say something unusual happens in another town and they ask him or your expertise and you say go to that town or something like that.

SWM:  You know I wouldn’t say that’s out of the question at all, but I certainly – I don’t think it’s something that we’re – that I don’t think that the writers are kind of aiming to do that right now.

I think Portland is so varied in its various environments, I mean really it has a downtown, and then 15 minutes you’re in the literally in a rain forest, you know in an hour you can be at the beach.

In an hour you can be on Mount Hood and it has lots of different neighborhoods. You see what I mean, so there’s so many various types of looks and places to shoot that I think it’s not something that they’re sort of hell bent to do, you know what I mean?

Because we’ve got it all here.

Can you talk about the conflict within Monroe and what you like about his struggle to contain his aggression and what he’s capable of?

SWM:  Yeah, I mean capable of extreme violence, first of all. And keeping it under wraps is you know – I mean look, it’s a universal struggle you know? And that way Monroe is no different than anybody else.

Hi, so I was just wondering, are they open with kind of your input on the script and the character and all that or is it kind of like you know you go word by word with what’s there?… No, I just said are they open to interpretation with like the lines and the scripts and things?

SWM:  Oh the lines, yeah, they’re very open to that, they’re very open to that. It’s not like it’s you know it’s not like working with David Milch. You know who David Milch is?

No, sorry.

SWM:  David Milch is the creator of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and Deadwood.

Oh okay.

SWM:  Do you know those shows?

Yeah, yeah.

SWM:  He is someone who is a brilliant writer but he’s also a real stickler for word for wordness. These writers are not like that, at least they’re not like that yet.

All right.

SWM:  So there’s plenty of leeway to you know move things around if you need to, if you feel as though – you know what I mean, it’s not like willy nilly but it’s certainly they’re more sticklers for uh’s and duh’s.

Hi Silas, thanks for taking the call today and spending time with us. I want to know, the pilot was pretty shocking as far as the shock factor is you know scare factor, I don’t know what to call it from the very first scene. So – and it kind of made me to wonder what frightens you?

SWM:  That’s an interesting question. Well I’ll tell you when I was a kid what frightened me, there was – it really had to do with the power of suggestion.

And I lived out in the country and summer nights you know sometimes you wind up sort of far away from the house suddenly and it was dusk and then it was dark and you had to get back home.

And it’s pretty scary you know walking through the woods alone at night when you’re little. And one of the things that really scared me was if I started thinking about the guy who was chasing me or the guy who was in the woods, if I started thinking about it, it was scary.

But really if I started behaving as though the guy were really there and I started running, and if I started running the behavior of it actually made me really scared and I would have to get home immediately.

So that was one of the things I remember from my childhood that as I think back on it was very apropos of Grimm was sort of running through the woods.

Because if you just went slowly and calmly and realized that it was just in your imagination and walked you would be fine. But as soon as you actually start running you’re done.

That’s true, I totally get what you’re saying, it happens to me a lot.

SWM:  Yeah, it’s like if you – you know the imagination is very powerful weapon and you can use – and people use it against themselves all the time.

You know you see people imagining things that are terrible or think – you know what I mean, you can use the imagination in a lot of ways and humans a lot of times use it against themselves.

And that’s one of the examples of you know people like you know you can scare yourself, you know? If you went to bed every night imagining that there was a guy with an ax in your closet you would start believing it eventually.

With that, the call ended. Don’t forget to tune into Grimm, Fridays at 9/8c on NBC to learn more about the magical and mystical characters in the original Grimm fairy tales. Follow the series on Twitter @NBCGrimm, and LIKE its Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/NBCGrimm.

Photo by: Eric Ogden / © 2011 NBC. All rights reserved.

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Linda

Love TV, movies, and books--mostly mysteries, with a good love story thrown in every now and then. I have four adopted dogs who I adore. I love trying new recipes, and enjoy eating what I make. English language perfectionist. Reading in bed, Italian food, warm weather, the beach, all types of games = favs!

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