Television

How Grimm’s Bitsie Tulloch & Company Kept Her Surprise Return a Secret

Rowell

Published

January 29, 2016

It was nearly a year ago — March, 2015 — when producers of NBC’s supernatural drama Grimm gave Bitsie Tulloch a call and gave her the news. “We’re releasing a [story] outline where Juliette dies,” they told her. Luckily for Tulloch, she had already gotten a heads up and had already known of her character’s fate.

Because she’s an awesome person and is close with a lot of members of the crew (who get the episode outlines before the cast), she had already been tipped off. Knowing this, producers contacted Tulloch. “Just so you know,” they said, “we know that you’re friends with everyone. And so they’re probably going to tell you.”

The phone call wasn’t all bad news, however, telling her not to worry. “You know you’re not off the show,” they assured her. “Our idea is that you’re going to be reborn as – and sort of reworked into a Nikita-like character.”

A couple months later, the Norberto Barba-directed season finale aired, which featured the tear-jerking (at least for me) moment where Juliette dies.

Now comes the hard part: How are they going to keep Bitsie’s return under wraps? It was no easy feat, but a few clever tricks were employed to fully sell the idea that Nick’s former girlfriend-turned-Hexenbiest was gone for good.

In a conference call with the press, Tulloch explained that one important aspect of keeping her return a secret, was to skip the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con, which she said she was really bummed about.

“I love Comic-Con,” Tulloch said. “I love the panel. I love seeing all the fans. But also like, it just would have been too obvious I think that I might be coming back to the show if I had gone to Comic-Con. So that was the situation where it’s like I just had to take one for the team and stay in Portland.”

When production on Grimm Season 5 started, the crew had a serious meeting about being tight-lipped about the big secret. Tulloch revealed that her absence on the show was originally planned to be a shorter one, saying that one of the show’s producers wanted her to return in Episode 3. It was ultimately decided that in order to convince the fans that she was off the show, her surprise comeback had been held off until Episode 6.

Although she was gone for just four episodes, she says “it felt like a lot longer for me — and I think for the cast — because all of us sort of had a hard time not being able to talk about it.”

Bitsie added that there were “lots of layers” to keeping the secret that she says were a lot of fun, including filming Season 5 privately to avoid prying eyes. “[I was] almost exclusively filming on the stages so that I can be hidden in case somebody’s taking photos of me out in Portland shooting,” she explained. “So it was a lot of stage work.”

On scripts and call sheets, her name went from “Bitsie Tulloch” in third position to an alias, “Elizabeth Andrea,” [her legal first and last name] down to 10th position. This change was implemented “so nobody would guess that it was me in case somebody got a hold of the script. And also so that background actors or guest stars wouldn’t know that I was still on the show.”

In addition to that, her cast chair with her name on it was taken away; her name on her trailer was blacked out. “I mean there was no sign of my name anywhere,” she said. “So everybody was taking it seriously.”

On the online side, Bitsie’s gallery photos and biography were removed from the Grimm page on the NBC official and press websites, which prompted me to say, “Dang, she really is gone.”

The toughest challenge for the actress, who is the most active on social media out of the whole cast, was not being able to interact with the fans on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for nearly seven months.

“I love interacting with the fans,” she said. “I also love to always Tweet behind the scenes photos while I’m on set of cool stuff that’s going on. When I did post a photo, I would say I was visiting someone on set. Like, ‘Oh, visiting David.’ And one of the things that actually sort of saved us in a huge respect is the fact that I’m dating David Giuntoli in real life, too. So a lot of people just assumed when they would see me out and about in Portland or knowing that I was still in Portland, they just assumed that I was still there because I was dating David, not because I was filming.”

Promos for Season 5 began airing on NBC, which showed shots of a funeral scene and Juliette in a casket, further selling the point that Juliette is in fact dead. Thankfully, it was all just a dream, so we still held out hope that she would be back.

When OMFGTV visited the Portland set in November for the 100th Episode Celebration, I was really hoping that Bitsie Tulloch would be in attendance. Even though she was no longer on the show [at least we thought], she was a really big part of the series having played Juliette for 89 episodes, and it would not have been the same without her.

During that time, the show was just a couple episodes away from her return, and when doing press interviews that night on the set, she did hint at a possible comeback in a few interviews, saying, “You know what? It’s Sci-Fi. Anything could happen.”

One of our favorite interview lines she gave that night: “I’ve been reading David’s scripts, so I know what’s going on with the show.” Teehee.

“I would say very pointedly that Juliette is dead because she effectively is. But I never said, ‘I’m not coming back to Grimm,’ because I didn’t want to flat out lie. I would say, ‘I know. It’s such a bummer, but yes, Juliette’s not coming back,’ knowing what was happening. The only thing that wasn’t revealed was that I am also a current and have remained a cast member the whole time.”

Which brings us to the fall finale, which revealed Bitsie Tulloch’s surprise return!

We learned from ABC’s LOST to avoid reading the opening credits to prevent being spoiled as to returning cast members. Remember that episode where Walt made a shocking return at the end? Because the actor’s name was listed in the beginning, we knew it was coming.

What Grimm did was save Bitsie Tulloch’s credit for the end of the episode, which we felt was a very smart move. Her name was the very first to show up and with no title attached because she is still very much a series regular.

Thanks to all the clever tricks, misdirections, and a tight-lipped cast and crew, Bitsie Tulloch’s secret return was successfully pulled off without a hitch, from Juliette’s death in the Season 4 finale, up until Eve’s reveal in the final seconds of last month’s fall finale.

We’re glad to have you back, Bitsie!

Grimm airs Fridays at 9pm on NBC.

Photo Credit: Chris Haston; Scott Green/NBC