Rihanna checks into Bates Motel

Singer to star as Marion Crane on hit show

RIHANNA (pic) has been cast as Marion Crane – the role made famous by Janet Leigh – in the fifth and final season of A&E’s Bates Motel.

The announcement marked the big news from the Comic Con panel for Bates Motel, eclipsing the news that Vera Farmiga would still be very present in the fifth and final season of the show (even though her character has been killed off ) or that the fifth season would be its last.

After playing a video with Rihanna announcing the news, the biggest question was how this casting coup came about.

“I read this article in which she said she was a fan of Bates Motel,” executive producer Carlton Cuse explained.

“We asked and she said yes. It was awesome. We’re really excited about it. It really feels very much like the version of the character that is different from the movie.”

In the film Psycho, which serves as the loose inspiration for the series, Marion Crane checks into the Bates Motel, where she has the misfortune of crossing paths with motel owner Norman Bates.

Her shower scene – where she gets stabbed to death – has become one of film’s most iconic.

“We wanted her to very much be her own character and we felt in order to do that we needed to find someone who was very, very special to play Marion.”

Of plans for the show’s final season, Cuse said he and Ehrin wanted to explore Norman Bates post-Norma’s death.

“The final season of the show would really be Norman in his full blown psycho pathology more like the character in the movie but that doesn’t mean that Norma will not have a role. In fact, she has a huge role but she’ll be Norman’s imagining of her.”

During the panel, a new scene showing Norman tending to a dead and frozen Norma in a freezer in the house’s basement was also shown as a preview of season five.

With Norman so far off the deep end now, should viewers see him differently than in previous seasons? Ehrin doesn’t think so.

“Ideally you want to be on the ride with Norman because we’ve never been on the outside looking in ... part of the goal of the season is to really create a fabulous, hallucinatory mother.”

Cuse also said not to expect Bates Motel to end the same way as the Hitchcock film ends.

“I think that would be a real letdown and uninspired on our part.” — Reuters