Interview with Grimm’s Silas Weir Mitchell

We have quite a few Grimm fans here, and of course, you all love Monroe, the show’s werewolf. So I thought I’d make it Monroe day and bring you a little interview from Silas Weir Mitchell, the man behind Monroe. Check out this interview he recently did.

What kind of research did you do into werewolves for Grimm?
Reading. I’m presently at arm’s length of a book that was written in 1933, on lycanthropy. There are pages of it in Latin and pages of it in middle French, where the werewolf is (believed to be) a real thing.

In France in the 18th century, there was a guy who terrorized the French countryside, running around at night stealing children. And, you know, mutilating them. And what’s our answer to that? One of the ways of addressing that is to say you’re a monster, you’re a werewolf.

And so the research for me was reading these stories sometimes, when these were real. It wasn’t mythological.

I think now we recognize that the werewolf is a myth. Reading stories from a time when the werewolf was a real thing is pretty intense when you put yourself in the shoes of someone who believed that a transformation took place and that a beast roamed the hills.

What attracted you to the Monroe role?
It was a job really. I mean there was an audition for one of the leads in the pilot so there you go. I read the script and I thought it was cool. Now that I’m doing it, what does attract me to the role is the inner conflict.

Did you grow up having a favorite fairytale?
I didn’t really grow up on fairytales per se. There was one book I had as a child called Slovenly Peter. It’s an old German book. It had cautionary tales in it and they were pretty grisly. There’s the little girl who played with matches and what happens if you play with matches. In the book she’s burnt to a crisp – a pile of ashes.

Hurray Monroe!

– Moonlight

About the Author
Moonlight (aka Amanda) loves to write about, read about and learn about everything pertaining to werewolves and other supernatural beasties. She writes for top genre sites like Vampires.com and Werewolves.com. You will most likely find her huddled over a book of folklore with coffee in hand. You can stalk her via her Twitter.

 

By moonlight

One of the writers for werewolves.com, as well as vampires.com.

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