Witwer plays a Blutbad named Maximilian, who is a tortured soul serving as the main attraction at a carnival. With each performance he grows increasingly closer to sacrificing his humanity as he loses control to his bestial side. In this exclusive interview, Witwer briefly discusses what led him to briefly jump networks from Syfy to NBC.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I have to be honest - I was a little surprised to see you on
Grimm.
SAM WITWER: They just called me up to do it. I'm close with Dave Giuntoli, and he said, "Hey, you wanna be on
Grimm?" My response was, "An excuse to hang out with Dave? Sure. No problem, let's go do that."
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: So you're a vampire on
Being Human, a wolf in
Grimm...I assume the next role will be a ghost so you hit the
Being Human trifecta?
SAM WITWER: Yeah, I've gotta be honest, I think Sam Huntington does the wolf thing better.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: You're so used to being on your own show, what's it like to come back into a guest-starring position?
SAM WITWER: Very, very different, because it's such a different show. It's funny, but when I arrived there they kind of thought, because I'm on
Being Human, that I would automatically know what to do. The truth is, I had
no idea how to perform on that show until people kind of guided me to it. Silas Weir Mitchell was very helpful, so was Dave and so was the director. I was kind of, like, "Don't make the assumption that all supernatural shows are created equal. I have
no idea what this is all about." Even though I'd seen it, I didn't really know how to
do it until I had some help.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What does that mean? What did you have to have help in doing?
SAM WITWER: On
Being Human my job is to basically play a heroin addict. Okay, I get it. On this, it's a whole different language and I was, like, "Dude, I have no idea what you're saying." Then they said, "Don't you understand, when you transform, you morph." "What do you mean morph? What the f**k are you talking about?" They're shouting all of these terms at you as if they mean something, and you're, like, "Dude, no. You actually have to explain this." So it was challenging for that reason.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: There are moments when you see Max fighting back the urge to kill. Was there something there that was akin to Aidan's struggles on
Being Human?
SAM WITWER: I guess that seems the easiest in terms of knowing what it was supposed to be. The rest of it was kind of confusing.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Anything interesting to you about the character?
SAM WITWER: I'll be honest, I just took the gig to hang out with Dave. I didn't even know what the character was when I said yes. All I said was, "
Grimm, cool. I want to hang out with Dave." I asked the producers if what I was doing was what they wanted, they said yes and we were good. So I went and did
Grimm. In terms of the character, he was the conflict in this case. There really wasn't a lot of opportunity to get to know him. It was basically to create the conflict for the audience. That was the job.
Next week, in a far more in depth conversation, Sam Witwer discusses the end of
Being Human.