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Trailer and Stills Provide First Official Look at Rihanna as Marion Crane in “Bates Motel”
A&E’s “Bates Motel” returns one last time on February 20th.
A contemporary prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the small screen’s “Bates Motel” has since 2013 been leading up to the events of the classic film, and in the upcoming fifth and final season, this iteration of Norman will come face to face with iconic victim Marion Crane. This time around, Crane will be played by Grammy-winning singer Rihanna, and the character’s story will be told across multiple episodes. Of course, Marion didn’t last very long in the 1960 film, but the episodic format will allow the character to be more fleshed out than ever before.
Today, Entertainment Weekly scored the first official look at Rihanna as Marion Crane, which comes courtesy of two stills and a brand new trailer. They also teased what we can expect.
Executive producer Kerry Ehrin told the site:
Norman is in an incredibly intense and interesting place that we’ve built him to when that sequence of episodes starts. It’s this collision of Bates Motel storytelling and then Marion Crane showing up into that. He’s in a very fragile and lonely place, and Marion Crane is a charismatic woman, she’s super present when she’s with him and she’s very attractive — all those things are exactly what he needs right at this moment.
Meet the new Marion Crane below!
Season Five of “Bates Motel” picks up almost two years later and finds Norman (Freddie Highmore), a grown man now, living a double life. Publicly he’s a happy and well-adjusted member of the White Pine Bay community, but at home Norman struggles; his violent blackouts continue to increase as Mother (Vera Farmiga) threatens to take over his mind completely. Meanwhile, Dylan Massett (Max Thierot) and Emma Decody (Olivia Cooke), since leaving White Pine Bay, have been living their lives blissfully unaware of Norma’s death and Norman’s full on descent into psychosis. Unfortunately for them, they will soon find themselves drawn back into Norman’s insanity, while a vengeful Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell), who is currently incarcerated for perjury, hungers for a chance to destroy his stepson and avenge the murder of his one true love, Norma Bates.
New faces find their way to the Bates Motel this season to further complicate Norman’s life and threaten to unearth his dark secrets. Viewers will finally meet the iconic Marion Crane, played by Rihanna. In addition, a new couple in town, Madeleine Loomis, played by Isabelle McNally (“House of Cards”), and her husband, Sam Loomis, played by Austin Nichols (“The Walking Dead,” “Ray Donovan”), as well as Sheriff Dana Greene, played by Brooke Smith (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ray Donovan”), become entangled in Norman’s life, causing a chain of events that could blow the lid off his secret life. Lastly, fans will be greeted by familiar faces when Caleb Calhoun (Kenny Johnson) and Chick Hogan (Ryan Hurst) return with agendas of their own.
“Bates Motel” is produced by Universal Television for A&E Network. Kerry Ehrin and Carlton Cuse serve as executive producers for Cuse Productions and Kerry Ehrin Productions. Tucker Gates, Vera Farmiga, and Tom Szentgyorgyi also serve as executive producers on the series.
The best part about engaging with collaborative genre fiction on the internet is that anyone can get in on the action, with worldwide accessibility often resulting in absurd story beats that wouldn’t be possible if any single person was responsible for the entire narrative. And while Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film is definitely the young filmmaker’s own unique take on the infamous creepypasta, it’s fun to see other creators join the Backrooms sandbox now that the big screen adaptation is getting ready for a record-shattering opening weekend.
As if cleverly timed releases like Puppet Combo’s The Backrooms game weren’t enough (not to mention that Scary Movie poster poking fun at Parsons’ flick), McDonald’s official social media accounts have now released an analog horror video of their own celebrating the liminal terrors of the McRooms – complete with a familiar purple surprise at the end of the footage.
While it’s funny enough to see the world’s most recognizable Fast Food giant engage with internet-borne Found Footage thrills seemingly out of the blue, the video is actually referencing a long-running gag among the Backrooms fandom where creators jokingly talk about there being a fully functional McDonald’s restaurant hidden somewhere in level 0 of the infamous liminal labyrinth.
Now, would it be too much to hope for a moist-carpet-flavored McShake to tie in with the film?
Backrooms is now playing only in theaters from A24.
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