With fantasy legends and fairy tales arguably more popular than ever NBC offers Friday night audiences classic fables inspired by The Brothers Grimm, reinterpreted by series co-creators and genre masters David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf, on Grimm.
Last week both Executive Producers took questions in a conference-call, I was lucky to be a part of, celebrating the series’ strong Friday ratings and previewing some exciting guest appearances coming up throughout the month of February.
Will & Jake Grimm authored a little over two hundred stories, but as David Greenwalt explains, “Some of them are a little hard to adapt. Our conceit is that all the writers of fairy tales were in fact some kind of profilers.” Still, with such pop-culture prominence of late one can’t help but wonder about the underlying cause for the recent resurgence of fairy tale and fantasy fare. “Two words,” David (amusedly) surmises, “Public Domain – at least from a business point of view.” Continuing, “People love these stories, and there’s a reason they’ve been handed down in both written and oral form all these hundreds of years and they still have an appeal. On Grimm, we’re not only fracturing old fairytales, we’re telling stories about what’s going on today framed in a fairy tale context.” Jim Kouf adds, “It gives us the opportunity to explain human behavior in a very bizarre way.”
Having the Grimm lore to draw from doesn’t necessarily make the writer’s job any easier by the way, to the contrary, in one sense it makes their job doubly complex. Jim acknowledges, “The biggest challenge is to have two explanations for everything. Something that could’ve happened in the real world and something that, you know, has a Grimm story.”
David Greenwalt confesses, “I love taking a procedural show and just having a guy turn into a Blutbad, you know, or a Bauerschwein. It’s just so much fun because it feels like I’m watching a regular kind of procedural show and then suddenly there’s critters. We’re going to explain war and famine and all the ills of the world – and it’s all because of these crazy critters out there.” Jim jumps in, “They’re called Wesen.” “Yes, that’s all the different creatures – all the different Grimm creatures are called Wesen. And it’s pronounced Vesen. But people don’t know that so I call them ‘critters’,” Greenwalt reveals, “and they’re not all bad. Some of them are good.” “It’s a pretty deep mythology and we’re just cracking the surface right now,” Jim teases. “It was kind of the plan all along to bring in more mythology as we get deeper in the series,” David admits, “but we don’t want to bring in so much that your average everyday viewer can’t watch the show. So there’ll certainly be a case of the week if not a monster of the week every time, but in these back nine, you’re going to see a lot more of the personal and back stories of everyone. I love it when there’s an emotional resonance in the stories.” Kouf eagerly promises, “We’re going to start revealing stuff.”
February will not only bring more action, intrigue, and monsters to the party, it’ll also usher in a succession of talented actresses providing our monster-hunting heroes some rather formidable and beautiful opponents. Amy Acker and Valerie Cruz both guest star this month, and, Bree Turner will soon be joining the cast as a recurring guest (read more about it here). Greenwalt confirms, “The addition of Bree was really important to us and she’s got a great role.” Kouf adds, “The female characters in the Grimm Fairy Tales, and all fairy tales – some of them are some pretty bad women.” Valerie Cruz (Alphas, Off the Map) plays a doctor with a monstrous secret tonight in a story about homeless siblings, Hanson and Gracie, titled “Organ Grinder.”
I asked if we might see more ‘Buffyverse’ thesps guesting on Grimm as the series progresses towards its (hoped for) second season? I specifically mentioned the recent event-casting of James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter on Supernatural reuniting the pair for the first time onscreen since they last shared credits in Joss Whedon’s ‘Buffyverse.’ “I’d love to work with Charisma again – any of the old gang. We’ve actually been thinking about how we can get Tony Head onto the show if he’d want to do it, we’ve thought quite a bit about that.” David Greenwalt continues, “We have Amy Acker coming on in a couple weeks to play a kind of Black Widow like you’ve never seen before.” I took a moment to personally lobby David & Jim to bring back Jaime Ray Newman’s (Angelina Lasser) character as often as possible to which David replied, “Well, there’s a reason she went off into the night.” Kouf enticingly interjects, “We didn’t kill her.” Responding to a subsequent questioner Greenwalt further shares, “A little down the line, probably in April, we have Azura Skye (American Horror Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) coming on playing a bird-like creature with many hidden talents and gifts.”
* Social Media Update: Immediately following this Q&A session I tweeted Charisma sharing David’s (above) quote. Soon after C.C. tweeted the brief (though telling) reply, “D.G. was Cordy’s champion.”
Given the pairs’ previous professional association with writer-director Joss Whedon (The Avengers), the possibility of Whedon’s potential involvement with Grimm was most definitely addressed. “He’s got to come do one for us. I mean, of course, we’d love to have him write, direct or do craft service, you know” David joked.
With even more supernatural-themed shows set to debut soon on multiple networks, it’s natural to wonder if audiences may be in danger of fantasy overload? Are Grimm’s co-creators concerned that like programs will result in a fairy tale glut? Kouf scoffs at the thought, “I don’t think it really matters. Our job is to keep the writing strong and the shows strong, and hopefully we’re delivering good entertainment every week. That’s our job.” Greenwalt humorously reinforces Jim’s answer, “I think if a show is good is what matters. The rest doesn’t really, you know, matter.”
Lastly, on the subject of renewal David Greenwalt concludes, “Well, we’ll do twenty-two episodes total this season. We’re shooting Episode Sixteen as we speak. We’ve got plenty of mythology waiting for Season 2, and we’ve got plenty of good things to come. We’ll find out sometime between now and May,” proclaiming proudly, “it looks not unpromising at this point.”
Preview tonight’s riveting episode (below) then watch Grimm tonight at 9/8c on NBC. After screening the embedded clip discover which type of Wesen you are by taking Grimm’s creature personality quiz here.
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