| QUITE A BIT |
| Written by Megan Lohne |
| Tuesday, 27 March 2012 13:04 |
 Bitsie Tulloch has had quite the year. Her show Grimm has just been renewed for a second season. Caroline and Jackie, the independent feature she co-produced and starred in, is hitting the Tribeca Film Festival next month. And on top of it all she managed to be a part of a little ol' art house Oscar Winning film called The Artist. TS: Firstly, congratulations on Grimm being renewed for a second season! BT: Oh, thank you, we're really excited. We're very happy. BT: Yes, they're amazing. I couldn't be happier. They are just the best showrunners, they're the sweetest guys. They're so thoughtful and smart and clever and definitely it's the closest cast I've ever worked with. I mean anytime they come into town we all go out to dinner. Whenever they're in LA they have big parties at their house and everybody goes over and watches the show together. It's really special.
TS: Did you watch Buffy when you were younger?
BT: I hadn't, but it's funny on days I wasn't working I started watching Buffy on Netflix and was obsessed to the point where I would end up being late to set or something because I needed to finish this one Buffy episode.
TS: Grimm is a genre show much like Buffy. What's your favorite part about having genre fans? BT: The fans are very committed. They're so diehard. They're also really intelligent and they ask really thoughtful questions. If I'm not shooting or at an event, I'm at home on a Friday night at 9pm so I can live tweet with the fans. And it's pretty cool to have such incredible fans and people who are so excited for what you do, and it's nice that we have a really loyal fan base. The episodes are getting better and better and they know that.
TS: You have a really interesting name and I read that you're nicknamed after your grandfather? BT: Yeah, that's true. It's funny because my first name is Elizabeth which is my grandmother's name, so I was named after her. But everybody said I was very close to my grandfather when I was little before he passed away. Everyone called me Bitsie as a nickname, and pretty much from the time I could walk people started calling me Bits or Bitsie so it's not actually a derivative of Elizabeth. I don't really feel like an Elizabeth. The only time I ever get called Elizabeth is if my big sister is yelling at me, so it's not necessarily my favorite thing to hear.
TS: When did you know you wanted to go into acting? BT: I started acting really late, about twenty three or twenty four. I was very academic and planning on going to a masters program after college but I had a really tough year and decided to take a year off. I ended up in LA and there was a friend of mine who was scared to go to acting classes because she was nervous about it. So I'd go with her and, as the story would go, she's not an actress at all anymore and I never looked back. I fell in love and decided to pursue that instead.
TS: So, you were in The Artist. What was it like working on a silent movie? BT: You know it was really cool, it was different. I had to watch a lot of silent movies in preparation and it's a lot of gestures and the expressions are obviously so much more important because you don't have the benefit of using words. And the director (Michel Hazanavicius) was just such a pleasure to work with. He always had music from the twenties and thirties blaring to really just get all the crew and actors in the mood. All of my scenes were with Jean Dujarin and he was just so delightful to work with. It's pretty crazy to see how far it went, thinking it would be an art house hit or something. But I think it was just such an amazing movie and I'm happy that it's won all of the accolades that it has.
TS: If you could be any person in any play or book who would it be? BT: There's a play I love called Night Mother. I know it's kind of depressing but I do really love that play. So, maybe down the road I would play Jessie. Everytime I read it, it's just so moving.
TS: It's so fascinating because Grimm is on TV and so is Once Upon a Time. Fairy tales are really taking the media by storm. Do you think there's any reason behind that? BT: You know it's funny someone was saying that there's a fairly direct correlation between fairy tales and the economy over the course of the last few centuries. People want to go back to mythology and fairy tales more. It makes sense, you know, you don't necessarily watch a show that reminds you of your daily life. You want to get lost. And it's so much more of an escape. The good thing about Grimm is that it's one world so you really can imagine that this is real. They are fairy tales and you have these creatures and everything, but it's taking place in one world
TS: If you could work with anyone, who would it be? BT: Cate Blanchett obviously.
TS: Have you ever been starstruck? BT: I was at a birthday party in December and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were there, and I don't really get star struck around them. It would probably be honestly some director I'm obsessed with like Woody Allen and then I would probably be quaking.
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