When season 4 of Grimm ended, Juliette’s dead body was seen lying on the floor, and the producers confirmed that she was dead dead. Then during the season premiere, her body was missing and many of us wondered could she still be alive? The answer to that question was teased to us before the show went on Christmas break last month. We saw a woman looking like Juliette wearing a blonde wig, so is it her? Tonight at 9p on NBC, we will finally get some answers, and I recently was on a conference call with Bitsie Tulloch where she answered how she kept the news a secret for almost 9 months.
Back in March, the producers called to break the news to her about the fate of her character. She shared with me how it all went down, “There’s kind of a funny story because I in particular, I’m close with a lot of the crew. And at various points over the proceeding four years, I would like call the producers and say, ‘Well, where are we going with this storyline?’ And they’re like, ‘How do you know about that?’ And I would say, ‘Well, I’m not telling who, but somebody told me.’
“So I had certain members of the crew who would just like flat out tell me because they will see an outline for an episode before the cast sees the script. So what end up happening is the producers were releasing the outline to the crew and you know the production crew up in Portland that afternoon. The conversation went down in March.
“They’re releasing an outline and they had to call me because they knew the second the crew got a hold of that outline that they were going to be telling me, calling me and being like Juliette dies. Do you actually die? Are you off the show? And they didn’t want me to think at any point that I was actually dead.
“So they called me and they said, ‘Just so you know, we know that your friends with everyone. And so they’re probably going to tell you, you’re going to get called. But we’re releasing an outline today where Juliette dies. But don’t worry, you know you’re not off the show. Our idea is that you’re going to be reborn as a sort of reworked into a Nikita like character.’
“So that’s how that conversation went down. And then it was fine. And I was just curious to read about then new character and what she was going to be like.”
Her character has been gone for six episodes, and she shared with us that the producers debated how long to keep her off of the show. One scenario was when Nick woke up in the season premiere after attending her funeral; they wanted that be a dream and everyone would be questioning where is the body. One producer wanted her back in the third episode. Then they decided to wait until the sixth episode for her to return, and that was the longest they were going to wait.
Then when it was time for her to return to show, and the producers now had to keep her presence on the set a secret so that no one would leak the information.
She explained one of the ways they did that, “On the scripts, typically it would say Juliette, Bitsie Tulloch in third position. And when this new character came about, we had to basically come up with an alias which was my legal first and middle name which is Elizabeth Andrea. And then they bumped me down to like positon 10 or someone so nobody would guess that it was me in case somebody got a hold of the script.” Not only was she using an alias, her name and her dog Henry’s name were removed from her trailer door, so everyone would think she was gone gone. When it came time for filming, she filmed on closed sets.
That was how they kept her presence quiet on the set, but what about if she was seen walking around Portland where they shoot. They had an excuse for that too. She confirmed on the call that she is dating her former lover on the show, David Giuntoli in real life. If she was seen walking around town, she could just tell everyone she was up there to visit her boyfriend.
And that is how she kept her reappearance on the show a secret. It worked because I had no idea she was coming back to the show, did you?
Tonight, you can find out how and why she is back on the show. Let’s just say, it is due to the new deadly threat that is threatening everyone in Portland. This is the most dangerous threat that they have ever faced on the show and I am not sure how they are going to get out of this situation…
