I recently had the opportunity participate in a conference call with Grimm Executive Producers/Writers David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf. These guys have had their hands in a lot of great genre shows, and Grimm looks like it will also be a Buffy-style mix of fantasy, action and comedy. Read on from some interesting thoughts on this new series, which premieres tonight at 9/8c on NBC.
Where did the idea of the extended world of the Grimm fairytales came from?
David Greenwalt: Yes. The – this is originally a Jim Kouf and I were approached by Hazy Mills which is Todd Milliner and Sean Haye’s company and Todd had this great idea about doing the – something in the modern world with the Brothers Grimm. And we flipped for the idea. And we came up with the notion that the how to marry that mythology into the modern world would be by the following. That the original Brothers Grimm were in fact profilers.
And that the stories they were telling were in fact true on some basic deep level. And we came up with the notion that in our world of the Grimm, there would only be one world. There wouldn’t be a fairytale world and a real world. There would just be our world. And in our world lived these creatures who can be seen by our hero. And for example, he can see the big bad wolf and the child molester.
And it’s a sort of a marriage of a police procedural and a mythological fracturing fairytales every week.
There is a procedural element to the show, but is there also going to be a season long story arc, or a big bad?
Jim Kouf: Both actually.
David Greenwalt: All of the above. There will be week to week episodic tales that you can just enjoy like opening a book and reading a fairytale. And there will also be seasonal arks involved in the show as well.
Well, you know, the big bad comes in a little different form in Grimm because we’re presenting some characters that appear to be bad but may actually have some good agendas, you know, a little more mix of good and bad in the characters that Nick, our main character will go up against.
Is your plan to have every episode have some basis in an existing fairytale or you also going to be inventing your own brand new fairytales?
Jim Kouf: All of the above.
David Greenwalt: All of the above. Some will be really clear like, oh, that’s Little Red Riding Hood or oh, that’s Goldylocks and the Three Bears or Sleeping Beauty or whatever. And then some will be less clear of what the specific fairytale will be. But they’ll always be an element of fairytale in the shows.
Jim Kouf: Or we’ll take a story from the headlines and give it a fairytale-like twist to it so you go, oh the real life story has a fairytale like quality to it.
They’ll be 2 fairytale shows starting up this fall. As well as you guys are scheduled up against the 2 other established genre shows, what is it about Grimm that you feel is different? That’s going to set it apart and attract all the viewers?
David Greenwalt: I think Grimm has the power of the genre shows, but its’ also got the power of the procedural shows and the idea of one complete episode every week so that you don’t need a score card to watch the show. You know, you get a complete story every week. Although there will be some mythology but it will be dulled out slowly enough that you don’t have to see absolutely every episode to know absolutely everything that is going on with the show.
Jim Kouf: Yes. Also our show is based in our world. So we’re just explaining a lot of bad behavior with fairytale reasons.
Why is now the right time to be bringing this kind of show out?
David Greenwalt: Now is a good time because it’s always a good time for fairytales. It’s a good time to be scared on a Friday night a little bit and have a bedtime story that kind of, you know, gets under your skin a little bit.
Jim Kouf: These tales get told every year all the time. So it’s not – it just happened to be the time that they would put one on the air. But they’ve never got away.
David Greenwalt: In particular, the ones that are really iconic have been handed down you know, the ones that have lasting emotional residence have been obviously handed down of the years. And we’re taking bits and pieces of these fairytales and using them for our own purposes in the show.
Do you think it’s been a bit of a recent kind of rise in the trend though? You know, we have movies that reinvented the genre as well.
Jim Kouf: Yes. That’s pretty interesting that all of sudden so much of attention was given to fairytales. We’ve been on this one over a year. I don’t know why it’s all of a sudden. I think people are just looking. Yes, I guess they’re just looking for things to remake and books and source material for a lot of different projects. And this got on (unintelligible) guy. So everybody suddenly starting paying attention to the Brothers Grimm.
What obstacles have you had to deal with in producing the show?
Jim Kouf: The biggest challenge is creating the creatures and getting everything done on time because that’s a huge challenge for the production team to. I mean, we can easily write them but it’s hard to design them. Get the masks made while the casting is going on. And then, you know, get all that done in the time frame of the television production.
David Greenwalt: They’re big shows with action and adventure in them. And they’re, you know, they’re a challenge to get them done as Jim just said under a normal television production time.
Jim Kouf: Steve Oster who is in charge of our production in Portland is doing an incredible job in keeping everything on track.
David Greenwalt: We know that because we don’t hear from him that often, so we ‘re very happy about that.
Coming up with stories that resonate in the 2 worlds I think is the biggest challenge. Good simple stories that have some fairytale element to them, an element that can take place in the real world as we know it now in modern day, modern day world. And you know, it’s
Jim Kouf: But it’s challenging to just come up with a good story.
David Greenwalt: … NBC’s been terrific. And you know turning in stories and getting a few notes. And we seem to be on the same page there. And, you know, their interesting themes present themselves in these stories. In the second episode, you know, we see a family that’s living “normal lives.” But the kids want to go back to the old fashioned ways and in fact to an old fashioned kind of hunt.
And you know it’s how much do the parents know about this? And how do you raise your kids? There all kinds of interesting themes in which are exaggerated because of course, these kids want to hunt something to the death, you know. So you think a normal coming of age story and exaggerated.
Were you asked to tone down the violence and put in more comedy, or was this your original approach?
Jim Kouf: That’s kind of us.
David Greenwalt: Yes. That’s kind of our approach to stuff, you know, when we’re writing a really serious scene. We start chuckling about things and we’re writing a less serious scene, we see things that are darker. And that balance was really struck from our original outline and our original script that we wrote for NBC.
Jim Kouf: And the ability to tell the story is from the Grimm point – the Grimm character’s point of view opens up so much for the show because it allows us to, you know, explore our feelings and reasons and all those fun things that most shows don’t do.
David Greenwalt: And our villain is usually have a good reason for what they’re doing. It may be very sick and crazy in our world but in their world it may be as simple as just getting a meal.
What are the chances we’ll see a Comic Book series based on this show?
David Greenwalt: The chances we see a comic book series based on the show I think are very good. And I think there’s terrific room for that in the comic book world. And the big question is will it come before or after the musical.
What are your feelings on the state of horror on TV right now? Is this a good time to bring this type of show to TV/
Jim Kouf: Well ours is not just scary TV because we also have humor in our show. So ours is an odd combination of horror, suspense, classic fairytale story structure, iconic characters and humor. So we’re trying to hit it all. We’re just want to be entertaining.
David Greenwalt: It has all the elements that, as Jim jut said, that, you know, we really like. I think, you know, any time is a good time for a good show. And you know, people love to be scared. And they love to have a little bit of a laughter while they’re being scared it seems to me.
And I just think it’s a really good time, you know, the genre has gotten – has grown. And that’s great because it’s an opportunity to tell different kinds of stories and more kinds of stories. So for that I think it’s a terrific time to be on the air with this.
Why do you think that the world of fairytales has endured so long and drives peoples’ imaginations now?
David Greenwalt: Fairytales appeals to people of all ages and you know, and it appeals to people in different ways at different times. You know, the big ball wolf is a cautionary tale for don’t talk to strangers, go straight to grandma’s house.
Jim Kouf: Hansel and Gretel.
David Greenwalt: Hansel and Gretel is
Jim Kouf: Well, you know don’t. Well that’s a cautionary tale for parents who are raising children and don’t have enough money to feed them. Don’t bring them in the woods. You know, it’s a lot of – spoke of the times that people were living in. And you know..
David Greenwalt: There’s a delight in the fairytales that I think of all ages. You know, because when you’re a kid, I mean, (Bruno Betelmein) in Uses of Enchantment talks about how important it is for children not to be protected from this information about the world and what the world is really like. But the fairytales really provide a great way to talk about that kind of stuff and usually the good triumphs, not always. But usually the goods triumphs and the evil is vanquished.
So it’s great to sort of be read a fairytale when you’re a kid and also to read fairytales to children when you’re older. So there’s something about sitting around, you know, the campfire and telling a story. It’s an oral tradition that seems you know ancient and had lasted all this time. We still love these stories.
Some of the creatures in this series have these royal bloodlines that date back hundreds of years. Will the audience ever get to see flashbacks of the original Grimm brothers and these creatures?
David Greenwalt: That’s a great question. I wish. The answer is maybe. We don’t – we haven’t gone that far in the mythology yet.
Of going all the way back. But certainly, these creatures have been around from time to memorial. And there certainly is royalty in our story today. You know, there are still royals around but they like the creatures live among us and have their own disguises and their own agendas.
Do you have like a story bible written that maps the first season or even beyond?
David Greenwalt: Yes and no. We have a book that’s much like the book that’s in the show that tells us of our different creatures and some of their different abilities and a lot of history on each of these creatures. We’re also discovering as we go. You know, we like to be surprised to. So it’s not like we know every move on the board but we kind of know what the board looks like if that makes any sense.
Could you talk about you achieve the saturated look of the show?
Jim Kouf: Part of that’s where were we’re shooting which is Portland. The look of Portland and the surrounding area is that lush, beautiful landscape. And I think we always wanted to give it a film like quality. So David and I both come from the film world as well. So we wanted that – we want it to look like a movie.
David Greenwalt: And a bit like a story book movie. And also we wanted to push when we’re with the so called Grimm characters or Grimm creatures, we wanted to push the look and have, you know, brighter colors and less subdued hues. And then when we’re with the regular “regular normal people”, we wanted it to look a little more like real life. But we love the look of that, you know, the forest with mist in them and the waterfalls and the streams and the rivers and all that great look you get in Portland as well as the story book look.
Could you give us an indication of what episodes 2 and 3 are going to be like?
David Greenwalt: Yes we could give you an indication of episodes 2 and 3. One will involve a retelling of Goldy Lochs and the Three Bears. And one will involve bees. Like thousands of bees. Lots of bees.
Jim Kouf: Well we’re taking little bits and pieces from a lot of fairytales. So you may not actually recognize the fairytale we’re drawing from because some are not that well known. But there’s one called the Queen Bee and it’s not one that everybody can recall immediately. But, so we take bits and pieces from a lot of fairytales and we kind of meld them into real life stories as well.
Could you talk a little bit about the makeup and special effects teams that are on the show?
David Greenwalt: We have worked sort of long and hard to try to get a look to the show for the makeup and the special effects that is expressing something that’s inside the character you’re seeing. You know, there’s not just somebody in a mask but that you’re seeing the sorrow, the rage, the.
Jim Kouf: The emotions manifest themselves in kind of physical characteristics.
David Greenwalt: That’s what I’m trying to say.
Jim Kouf: So you see the child molester. What we think is a child molester is actually a big bad wolf and we see that morph out as they become emotionally aroused. So that’s how you – our main character, the Grimm, can see these characters beneath the humans.
David Greenwalt: And the idea that these creatures, you know, they live among us. But also that these feelings live inside all of us and the best way to express that is when the “creatures” look like the actors playing them. Not just like some fierce person in a mask.
Jim Kouf: But we’re using a combination of onset makeup and CGI effects depending upon what the needs of the scene are. And it’s pretty extensive in some scenes. And we have a really good team. I mean from the design concept of the creatures all the way through the delivery of the CGI work at the end.
David Greenwalt: We have one supervisor and he works with many different people who can construct the initial designs right through to the people who put the special makeup on the set.
When you’re crafting a show like this are you taking a more academic approach to mythology?
Jim Kouf: Well we’re not thinking in terms of how we’re going to teach the series. We’re just at least trying to have a lot of fun. And raise something that’s very entertaining and that people will enjoy and scare and laugh and have a great time. And good solid characters that have emotional flare to them.
David Greenwalt: One of the things that’s really fun about genre is how people project on to genre in different ways of what they themselves are feeling. And you never quite know – that’s why you never quite know what’s going to be successful or not either depending on how people respond to it. And I remember way back when you know, after we’ve done Buffy for a while that they were actually having college courses.
And Buffy is an iconic female character and, you know, that was great. It was a little surprising and it was great. But you can’t – I don’t think you can really take an academic approach to this kind of work. I think you have to say what’s really scary? What’s really fun? What’s a little different that maybe I haven’t seen before? And but people definitely get a lot of power from genre because they can project themselves onto the characters because they’re distanced from the characters.
It’s kind of a strange paradox and one that’s really powerful.
David, you’ve worked on Buffy and Angel. Jim, you worked on Angel and Ghost Whisperer. What draws you to supernatural television?
Jim Kouf: You know we’re just drawn by the stories. We’ve written, because we started our careers together way back when doing Class, American Dreamer, during Secret Admirer and stuff like that that as features. And we’re always just drawn to the story whether it’s a genre or not. You know, genre is just the rules changed a little bit. But you’re still trying to tell emotional stories with real people in them. It’s just you get to have creatures opposed to not.
David Greenwalt: Yes. And the fun of Grimm is, you know, what happens to this young man who’s a robbery, homicide detective who suddenly starts “seeing things.” And at first thinks he’s losing his mind, you know and he’s seeing this critters or creatures within “normal human beings” and that idea really grabbed us like what a great way to tell a stories and what a great way to explain some pretty heinous things that go in in the world that seem inexplicable.
You know, but if you put this lenses of the Brothers Grimm on it, you put this lend of the fairytale element onto the police procedural, you get this kind of new view of things. So we found that very exciting.
Jim Kouf: So every crime has 2 reasons. It has a Grimm reason and what appears to be the real reason.
How is this different from other supernatural shows?
Jim Kouf: Well we’re not really supernatural where there, you know, I don’t – I know the show but I don’t know it well enough to really comment completely on that. We don’t have vampires. We don’t have
David Greenwalt: Yes. We don’t’ have “supernatural creatures.” We have people – we have critters who live within humans that are like you and me and can be seen by Grimms. And
Jim Kouf: They’re living their everyday lives like we are. And you know they have their reasons for doing things.
David Greenwalt: But there’s nobody that is immortal. There’s nobody that can’t be killed and as the hero says in the pilot. He says to the big bad wolf character, he says “Am I going to need silver bullets?” And the guy says “what are you an idiot?” So we’re probably a little more grounded in…
Jim Kouf: Reality.
David Greenwalt: Some version of reality, albeit a esqueued one.
Is there anything particularly from those shows that you worked on before that you wanted to bring to Grimm?
David Greenwalt: Well just the power of genre, you know, that people will project themselves onto their characters. And in Grimm, what’s kind of great about Grimm is there’s something familiar to the tales of Grimm if you will. And something that we all can recognize from either when we were kids or reading to our own kids. So the – it just seemed like a very special idea to mix that with the police procedural. You know, it seems like that would be a casserole.
Do you guys have any particular favorite Book of Grimm stories?
Jim Kouf: Yes. I mean Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood.
David Greenwalt: Little Red Riding Hood and the Usual Suspects. And then there’s some that are just so bizarre, they almost don’t make stories. Like there’s one called “The Land of Schlower Often”. But the things that go on in Schlower Often are interesting and funny and kind of crazy.
Jim Kouf: And we’re not just drawing from the Brothers Grimm, we’re saying that the Brothers Grimm were the profilers in their particular area in Germany, you know, at their time. But we’re also saying anybody that told fairytales had that ability. So we’re going to expand our world here by drawing from whatever fairytales we can find from all over the place.
Why did you pick Little Red to kick off the series?
Jim Kouf: Well we through around a lot of different ideas. And that one was such an iconic story that we thought we could really have fun retelling it in this modern context.
David Greenwalt: It’s just a great natural beginning of you know, I mean, Little Red Riding Hood is skipping through the woods. And in our case, you know, a college student obviously wearing a red hoodie is jogging through the woods. And is just taken by this creature really suddenly and we liked working backwards from that.
How dark are you guys going to go? Are you going to keep it more of a family friendly?
David Greenwalt: Well its’ family friendly if you like to be scared a little bit in their family. And, you know, it’s dark. I mean the actual tales themselves
Jim Kouf: Are gruesome.
David Greenwalt: Are really gruesome. And we’re not going quite that gruesome as the original tales are. But it is definitely, you know, it’s definitely showing a dark underbelly of life, you know, leavened with humor and action.
How will Nick be able to convince those who can’t see this other world that it really exists and that he’s not completely nuts?
Jim Kouf: We haven’t written that scene yet.
David Greenwalt: We still have written that scene yet. This is the crux of the series. He is in a world where almost no one else knows about. But there are characters and there’s a character in the pilot who’s from that other world. And that character is trying to, you know, control his own impulses and to become a better human.
He has a confidant that he can talk to. But that is his problem because he would appear to be crazy and would be locked up. And may indeed be locked up at some point, you know, as we continue on in this series. But there’s stuff – it’s a very hard thing to convince someone of if they can’t see what you’re seeing.
In the pilot Nick’s powers are just emerging, will we see flashbacks where he had glimpses of these powers before then?
David Greenwalt: Well he certainly was a profiler. And in a sense, could see things that other people couldn’t see, you know. But the basic emergence of it is in the pilot. He may have seen them under his bed as his child. We may go way back there. But for the current telling, the great emergence is what happened to him in the first episode.
How are you planning to balance the police procedural and the supernatural elements?
David Greenwalt: Well, if you, for example, if you’re someone who really likes a police procedural, you know there will be familiar elements in the show that will appeal to that viewer who is like, here is a crime. What’s the source? Who really committed the crime? What’s the source? What’s the cause? And what’s the solution?
How do our heroes solve it? At the same time, there a whole other level, you know, sort of cooking at the same time on the stove. That it usually has its’ own explanation in the Grimm world of who these creatures really are and what they’re really up to. And our hero is astride the 2 worlds. He’s got a foot in each world. And he – and you know it’s very difficult for him to balance, you know, what is he going to tell his girlfriend? What is he going to tell his detective partner?
How is he going to use these abilities to solve crimes and yet still have it look like they could have been solved in the normal world. So it’s – I think it’s appealing to you know, hopefully, a broad audience that maybe normally wouldn’t’ be that much interested in one or the other. Or that are interested in one or the other, but want, you know, more meat in the sandwich so to speak.
Why do you feel we as viewers have a such a curiosity about things unknown and the fantasy aspect?
David Greenwalt: I think it’s really hard to explain what the heck is going on in the world and the idea that there’s actually creatures living among us who express the very strange emotions and impulses that we all have inside us to actually make that answer perm orphic in a way as to the enjoyment of watching a story where you want to be entertained but you kind of want to learn a little something too.
You want to be, you know, scared, entertained, made to laugh a little bit. So I think that, you know, the power of these age old tales is kind of endless.
How is the chemistry on set then between the cast members?
David Greenwalt: We’ve been incredibly fortunate. Everybody’s happy to be there. And the fun of shooting in Portland and Portland is like another character to the show. And you know, it’s good to have everyone in the same place that’s maybe outside of Hollywood. It doesn’t look like a show that could be shot anywhere else. Certainly not in LA or New York, you couldn’t shoot this show. So it has its’ own little clubhouse kind of feeling. And the actors have been tremendous. Just really terrific.
Are we to assume these characters, for example, the big bad wolf, are just symbolic archetypes?
Jim Kouf: No they’re actually real people with real problems. And we actually, in the show, are telling their point of view as well. So you hear I’m the big bad wolf and there’s not – there’s many of them. We call them blue pods and their blue pods in the plural. And they have a point of view that they’re doing. And their behavior, from their point of view, is not all that bad. They accept it as normal.
David Greenwalt: And our one big bad wolf running character regular in the show is a vegetarian. And he does Pilates and he goes to church. And he’s trying to fight his grimmer impulses. So they run the whole gambit, the whole spectrum so that they’re not always evil or bad. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re innocent but they’ve gotten themselves into a situation which our hero has to help them. So they kind of run the gambit that humans do. And each one is different. They’re not all the same. They can’t just be categorized as generically the same.
One more thing, these creatures, when they were little, they’re parents told them stories about the Brothers Grimm and to be afraid of the Brothers Grimm. So these creatures, when they recognize our character as a Grimm profiler/hunter of these creatures, some of them get very freighted because they’ve been told of these
Jim Kouf: Because they’ll slay them.
David Greenwalt: Yes. That they’ll slay them so. So there’s many points of view in this show.
Will there be other recurring or regular characters from the Grimm world?
David Greenwalt: Absolutely.
Jim Kouf: Yes. There are. Some of them won’t be in every episode. But there will be arks for them and we’ll build on their characters a little bit here and there.
David Greenwalt: They’ll be some that are simple as a refrigerator repair man who comes to your house, you know, so that like I said they come from all walks of life.
If you could get anyone on the show as guest stars, who would you have, and what parts would you give them?
David Greenwalt: That’s a good question. Well Ernest Borgnine.
Jim Kouf: And Marlin Brando
David Greenwalt: And Marlin Brando. Anybody who wants to play with us really, you know, would be. You know, and certainly some people from my own past of Buffy and Angel I’d love to see some people from there and really, just about anybody. And, you know, I start naming names then it’s like I picking favorites.
Jim Kouf: We’re just trying to create great roles that will attract, you know, strong actors.
Is there going to be an attempt to reform other creatures like Monroe is already reformed? Or is that rarely going to be an option?
Jim Kouf: Well not all creatures are bad to begin with.
David Greenwalt: No some of them are good and they run the gambit just like you and I and the people in the world of good, bad and indifferent. So, Monroe has had to fight his nature because he’s a blue bad because of the blue bad family he comes from. But not everybody is out there doing dastardly things. Most of them are just trying to pay the rent and get on with their lives.
Could you talk about the background of the writing staff?
David Greenwalt: We have a staff of 8 other writers. And we’re all working together to, you know, bring the show to fruition. Well there’s some people from CSI, and [others from] sort of humorous things and procedural things.
Jim Kouf: Nobody’s got the genre experience that we have. But, you know.
David Greenwalt: Yes. We just wanted people who could write you know “good stories”. And you know, we’re kind of filling in the blanks.
What are the challenges and joys of creating a serious mythology based on essentially a fairytale mythology?
David Greenwalt: Well the joy is that there’s something familiar in it. And there’s something in reversal in it.
Jim Kouf: And again, part of the fun of that is telling it from the Grimm character’s point of view because the Grimm fairytales don’t really give us the big bad wolf’s point of view.
David Greenwalt: And the challenges are what is happening in each episode that is a crime that could occur in our real world. And it also has some kind of Grimm meaning to it that they do in their world. And that’s a challenge because you have to have a couple of stories for every story.
What resources have you used for the fairytale source material?
David Greenwalt: Well I can tell you the tremendous amount of books that we’ve read and we have on our shelves. But that would be showing off. And mostly, we come at it from the inside of the stories. You know, we either find a crime that we think could be turned into a fractured fairytale or vice versa. And we actually try to tell it from inside the stories as opposed to understanding high (unintelligible) and academic things from outside the stories because that doesn’t really help us with the essential cores of the stories.
Do the Grimm Fairytales exist in the world of the show?
David Greenwalt: Yes. But they’ll take place in the here and now. And families who’ve dealt with this stuff, sometimes, you know you have a third generation bear or wolf or something that’s been civilized. You know, but there may still be elements in that person’s family of wanting to go out and hunt. And that’s, you know could be a conflict in the family just like in America how immigrants come here and try to become American but they still have their past.
Jim Kouf: I don’t think the characters when they’re going – solving their crimes reference the Grimm fairytales when they’re solving the crimes because it’s an actual crime for them to deal with. So they’re not going, you know, gee this is just like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The Grimm books that [Nick] has are the original stories that were handed down from the Grimm brothers and passed on and added to by generations of Grimms. So there more like profiles, criminal behavior and creatures. So that’s what he’s got. He’s got ancient book to refer – to reference.
David Greenwalt: So that’s the research material. But your question, yes the Grimm fairytales, that book does exist in the world of our show. That could be on a shelf somewhere. But what he’s using is very specific profiling source material that’s been handed down to him through his family.
Could you talk about Monroe’s character arc for the season?
David Greenwalt: We’re talking about a very interesting character who is – he comes from a family of “big bad wolves”. But as he says himself, he’s not that big and he’s not that bad anymore. And in a way, his character is the most human of any of the characters because he’s the one that’s most battling his instincts.
And he might have an instinct to go after a little girl in a read hoodie. But he’s learned to not do that. And he’s learned – like I said, he’s a vegetarian and he, you know goes to Pilates classes. He takes certain, you know anti-depressant drugs that help keep him in shape. And he – he’s going to go through all kinds of things in this season, not just one big overarching ark.
But he is helping a Grimm which is going to create a lot of trouble for him.
Jim Kouf: Because he becomes the one confidant that Nick has. And he’s reluctant at first to help. But as the requirements of the cases get more complex, Nick has to rely on him repeatedly and that will cause Monroe some personal suffering in the near future which he’ll have to come to terms with as well.
Will there be other Grimms besides Nick?
Jim Kouf: Oh, yes.
David Greenwalt: There’s certainly other Grimms out there. He’s just not in contact with any of them nor has his aunt been in contact with any of them.
Jim Kouf: Because there’s an organization that is out to kill Grimm. So it’s kind of underground.
David Greenwalt: A little dangerous to be – to gather in public.
Will we see fairytales from other sources such as Hans Christen Anderson or even the original more gruesome versions of these tales?
Jim Kouf: Yes. We’re saying that the Grimms were the profiles in their territory at their particular time. But anybody who told fairytales actually had the ability to see these characters. So they’re kind of related to the Grimms. So we will draw on fairytales from all over the world.
David Greenwalt: [In the original Cinderella}, the stepsister had their eyes pecked out. And in fact, we have a character who gets his eyes pecked out. We nod to that. And at some point we’ll do a Cinderella. Some kind of a retelling of Cinderella for sure with ways you’ve never seen it before.
What was the casting process like, and did you already have some people in mind?
Jim Kouf: The only one that we had in mind was Silas Weir Mitchell who plays Monroe.
David Greenwalt: Because Jim had worked with him before and from the beginning was saying you got to see this guy for this part. And when we saw him, it was like, “oh yes, who else could possibly do this part but Silas Weir Mitchell.”
And David Giuntoli came through the casting process as did Russell Hornsby. But it was clear when those guys came into the room and read that there’s something very special about these 2. And then there was something special about those 2 together. We really saw them as partners. And Russell has a lot of depth and a lot of strength and power to what he does. And David is terrific. He’s got charm. He suffers well which is always a thing you look for in these young stars.
Jim Kouf: We have a good supporting cast with Bitsie Tulloch and Sasha Roiz.
David Greenwalt: We actually created a part for Reggie Lee. We liked him so much we created a part for him as Sergeant Wu in the series.
Jim Kouf: [As for Kate Burton as the aunt,] wait until you see the second one.
David Greenwalt: Yes. She – wait until you see the second one.
