Rihanna takes on iconic role in Bates Motel series
Rihanna takes on Janet Leigh’s role of Marion Crane – the woman who was on the run in Hitchcock's Psycho – in TV spin-off Bates Motel
The fifth series of Bates Motel, the TV show inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's classic shocker Psycho, will feature Rihanna as woman on the lam Marion Crane. The first trailer for the show’s final season gives us a glimpse of the singer in the role as she rocks up to the Bates Motel on a dark and stormy night to be greeted by disturbed hotelier Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore).
Rihanna is stepping into the shoes of Janet Leigh, while Highmore is playing the role that Anthony Perkins made famous in the 1960 horror. Those who’ve been keeping up to date with Bates Motel will know that events haven’t run exactly as they do in Hitchcock's film, so there’s no guarantee that Rihanna’s Crane will meet the same grisly end in the Bates Motel shower that Leigh’s character famously did midway through Psycho.
The show’s executive producer, Kerry Ehrin, confirmed we’ll get to know much more about Rihanna’s Crane. “We’re taking threads of that story and definitely using them so it’s recognizable, it’s just where we go with it is very different,” Ehrin told Entertainment Weekly.
In fact, expect something completely different. In the film, Bates’ relationship with Crane doesn’t go beyond tea and sandwiches in his parlor and then spying on her in the shower through a specially installed peephole. In Bates Motel we’ll get a full-blown (and presumably dark) romance.
“It’s tough to be in a situation where you’re in love with a guy, and for whatever reason, he keeps stalling,” says Ehrin. “You still have all this hot sex with him, and he’s saying he loves you, but he’s stalling. The internal story of that, for a woman, is a really interesting one.
“We never really got to see that in Psycho, you just see the outside of that more. It was trying to do a story about a contemporary woman with some edge, with some expectations, who isn’t perfect, who isn’t always perfectly sweet, who is in that situation, but we’re rooting for her to get what she wants.”
Take a look at the trailer in the player above