After what will have been eight spectacular seasons, Monk is finally packing it in... and you can bet he's doing so as neatly and methodically as possible. It's a sure bet, truly, that the final season will leave no loose end untied. Tony Shalhoub (the actor responsible, over the past eight years, for the portrayal of Adrian Monk himself) certainly intends to do his part to ensure this. This week Good Prattle has for you a conversation with him for your reading pleasure.Hello. It’s such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.
I was wondering, what’s the lasting impression you want audience members to take from watching your show and watching you? That’s a great question. I think, if I had to choose one thing, I would say that I would want people to take away this idea that sometimes people’s problems or neuroses are really the things that are kind of a blessing in disguise, and even though there’s, you know, sometimes there’s pain associated with these things that sometimes in the face of adversity with obstacles to overcome, people can really kind of soar and find their higher selves and I think that’s what we’ve tried to do on the show is we’ve portrayed this character as someone who turns his liability, his liabilities into assets per his life. And that there’s – and I hope that when we get to the end – I don’t know this for sure, but I hope when we get to the end of season eight that we’ll have seen some real healing from Monk, and I believe in that. I believe that there is healing and that there is change, and that all of those things are – they are just really, really key to all of our lives.
I wondered if you had any input into the new changes of Monk, because from the ads it seems that he’s sort of looser and more comedic. And I wondered if you have a preference for comedy or drama or horror? I don’t really have a preference, to be honest. In fact, my preference, my only preference is to have a lot of variety and diversity in the material that I work on. I’ve been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that’s why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I’m really – it’s what I set out to do as an actor originally.
You talked about the character and what he sort of means, but in terms of the pantheon of great television series, what sort of legacy do you think this show leaves, and what do you sort of take away from it in that regard? Well, I think one of the things that will be remembered about this show, I hope will be remembered, is that at a time when there was, in a lot of television, especially with the onslaught of cable and in a period where television is kind of redefining itself, that there were precious few shows on the air that were suitable for a wider audience, like a younger audience, you know, people in their 30’s and then people like elderly people in the 70’s and 80’s. That there was a show that all those different demographics could tune into and appreciate, and would appreciate on their own level. And I think there aren’t a lot of shows like that. There haven’t been a lot of shows like that in the last decade. And I hope that that’s something that people will focus on and remember for a long time, you know, that it’s still possible to do interesting stories and good comedy without having it have to be all exclusively adult themed kinds of things or super violent or with language that some people might feel is inappropriate for younger audiences, and that this show was kind of able to stand out and do that.
One time you mentioned that you’re the only one at your home who knows how to absolutely – the only right way to load the dishwasher, which struck me as a kind of Monk thing to say. I’m not the only one in my home. I’m the only one in my community, I think, my entire neighborhood, I’m pretty sure.
Who knows how to load the dishwasher right? Well, have you found that the longer you play Monk, that the differences between you, Tony, and the character has eroded, which is to say, have you become more like him, and he more like you, over the years? I would say yes, absolutely. I mean, I resisted it for a long time. I wrestled with it. I fought with it. I was in denial about it and all of that. But inevitably, you know, there have been some – you know, as I said, in interviews too. I feel like I’ve been infected in some way by this character. Tendencies, you know, minor tendencies that I’ve had in my life prior to Monk have just kind of ballooned and expanded and it’s inevitably. I mean, I just, there’s no point in trying to – I’ve given up trying to resist it. I’ve had to just surrender to it. I mean, I’m hoping that when Monk is over that I’ll have some period of recovery, but I’m not holding my breath.
How is the final season structured? I mean, the season premiere seemed like a very standard, great, hilarious episode, but when do we kind of get into the wrapping of things up? What the writers have in mind is to do, as you said, our normal standalone episodes for the first… I would say 11, because we’re doing 16, as usual. So the first 11, I would say, are going to be standalone, and then the last 5 is when we’ll be kind of connected. They’ll have a connected tissue, and we’ll start to get into the wrap up, not just of Monk, but of some of the other characters as well. Then what they want to do is the final two episodes, number 15 and 16, it’ll just be one story, a two-part, you know, aired in two segments. Just to follow – that episode, I mean that two-part will involve the wrap up of Trudy’s murder, you know, the solving of Trudy’s murder.
What was the deciding factor to make this season the final season? I think there were a lot of things at play there. I mean, long conversations that I had with Andy Breckman, you know, one of the co-creators and the main writer. We’ve been talking all along about how many seasons to do, how many episodes that he had in him, you know, as the writer. He, at one point, said that he didn’t think really he had more than six seasons, and then he kind of got a gigantic second wind, and we did the seventh, and we weren’t sure when we were doing the seventh if the network was going to go with us on the eighth. But to make a long story short, we all kind of agreed that the eighth season would be it for all of us. I think it will have 124 episodes by the end of the eighth season, and I think we’re all ready to resolve the storyline and move on to other things. We certainly don’t want to go too long and have the quality start to wane and just limp to the finish line. We want to go out while we’re still really, we feel really that we’re doing great work and delivering really strong episodes. We want to go out on a high.
How many of the old faces for past episodes are we going to see as a way of saying good-bye this last season? Well, I’m sure you’ve probably read because there’s been a lot of publicity about Sharona coming back. Bitty Schram is going to come back for episode – I believe it’s episode number 12, which will start shooting in September. And they want to bring that character back and kind of wrap it up and kind of give that a good send off. A lot of people really missed that character and the dynamic between Monk and Sharona. And so we’re all looking forward to that. Of course, we’ll see Harold Krenshaw comes back, one of my favorites. He’s the other OCD patient who is always kind of in competition with Monk, played so brilliantly by Tim Bagley. He’s going to return for at least a couple of episodes. And, well, that’s it. I mean, of course, Dr. Bell the psychiatrist will be in a number of episodes. I don’t think – people have asked if we’re going to see Ambrose. I don’t really think that's in the cards simply because that’s … John is so busy. It’s difficult to schedule him in. I mean, if I had my way, we’d do kind of what Seinfeld did and bring back almost every guest star there ever was on the show, but ours is going to go in a different direction.
I was wondering if you had a favorite guest star over the years and maybe a favorite you’ve worked with so far this year. It’s so hard for me to pick a favorite because there have been so many great ones, and I’ve had the chance to bring friends of mine on the show, I mean, people that I’ve worked with in the past like Stanley Tucci and John Turturro and people that I’ve always wanted to work with like Laurie Metcalf. But I have to say, of all of the seasons, and of all of the guest stars, the most thrilling for me was last season working with Gena Rowlands on "Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door". She was such a tremendous influence on me when I was a student and studying acting. I was a devotee of John Cassavetes movies and the movies she did even separate from him. I was the one who actually when we were casting that particular episode, "The Lady Next Door", there were a number of names on the list, and I pitched her name. And I was stunned and thrilled to find out that she wanted to do it. And then working those eight days with her was just, you know, I felt really, when we finished that episode, I felt like I could retire, that I had done everything I needed to do now. She was so gracious and so good, and of course she’s been nominated for an Emmy for that episode too, so I will hopefully see her at the Emmys in September.
Being from Wisconsin, how did you make your way from Wisconsin to Hollywood, and do your Midwestern roots impact your acting at all and how? Boy, I think so. I think they do. I went to college on the East Coast in Portland, Maine. I went to graduate school at Yale Drama School. I worked in the theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts for years, and moved to New York, and then to Los Angeles. I mean, that’s kind of the – that was kind of the roadmap of it. But I also come back to Wisconsin every year, and I have family here, of course, and I don’t know. I just think there’s a – you know, this place kind of was a fantastic place to grow up and kind of keeps me kind of grounded and keeps me somewhat humble just to kind of return to it. Yes, I think it just keeps me balanced. I still have great, great friends and feel like it’s home.
So have you learned anything from your years with the character of Adrian Monk, and do you think Adrian has learned anything from you, from Tony? I think yes. I think I have learned something from Adrian. I think I’ve learned to – sometimes, you know, hyper-focusing on things is actually a good thing to do. Not all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be as kind of fixed – you know, get as fixated and as obsessed as Adrian, but sometimes, you know, I’ve found that it’s really helpful to look at things in my own life with the same kind of sort of relentlessness that Monk does, just turning something over and over and over and trying to see it from all angles, and not being too quick to judge something or label something. So in that sense, I feel like I’ve gained a little real life wisdom. What has Monk gotten from me? Boy, I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I feel like Monk has maybe become a little more – because I was playing the role, maybe Monk has become a little more open to others and embraces to the level, to the degree that he can, embraces other people’s point of view. I feel like I’ve been that kind of a person in my life, open-minded.
How involved were you with the development of the character of Monk? Well, I wasn’t really there when the character was created. The script was around for a number of years before it came to me, although I do feel that I’ve had some significant input. When I came to the project, the script and the character was somewhat different, and I had long conversations with Andy Breckman about kind of morphing the character more towards to what I wanted to do, more to my strengths. The original script that I read was somewhat more – was a little more slap sticky, and I wanted to emphasize the kind of darker aspects of this character and more … and so that was a conversation that a lot of the producers had in the beginning. And I think Andy did such a great job morphing what he had originally written to fit me and what I wanted to do.
You’ve already talked about how, through the years, you’ve become more similar to Monk, and I was just wondering if, in your own life, you found some of his compulsions entering your life in small ways and, if so, kind of what they were. Well, you know, they take so many different forms and kind of crop up at the oddest times really. Sometimes I feel like – there are moments when I feel like I’m just nothing like the character. But then something will happen, and I’ll just realize that I’m rearranging something on a table at a restaurant, which seems that in that particular moment, seems like it’s absolutely essential that the sugar packets are facing one way and that everything else has to stop until this particular task is completed. Then I realize, what the hell am I doing? I’m channeling the character again. So it would take me about an hour and a half to describe all of the things that occur, but just trust me. It just kind of comes over me in waves, and I have to really, really check myself and try and pull myself out of these things.
Lastly... listen, I know that of course a big loss for your show and for everybody on it was the loss of Stanley Kamel as Dr. Kroger. Yes.
We know kind of how Monk is dealing with the loss of the character, but how are you and the dealing with the loss of Stanley? You know, it’s been really tricky, and we all speak … it’s almost as if he has never left us because his name comes up in stories, and anecdotes come up about him all the time on the set. And he’s missed, but we try to sort of keep him alive in our – you know, keep in our midst. He was there from the very, very beginning, from the pilot episode, and I have to say, you know, those scenes, those Dr. Kroger scenes in the pilot were so important, just in terms of my process, my discovery of who Monk was. I think those scenes in particular were the most informative for me and the richest. They really, really helped me to kind of define the parameters of this guy, of my character. So, yes, I kind of carry that with me and have for all these seasons. And now, when I’m in these sessions, these scenes with Hector Elizondo, who plays Dr. Bell, I can’t even go into these scenes without just this little – I sort of do this little internal toast, as it were, to Stanley Kamel because he was the original doctor. I like to think that he’s kind of there in those sessions with me. He is missed.
Monk airs on Fridays on the USA Network at 10pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment