'Grimm' Postmortem: Bitsie Tulloch Says Don't Hold Your Breath For a Nick-Juliette Wedding

Warning: This post contains storyline and character spoilers for this week’s episode of Grimm.

With a new prone-to-punching prince in Portland, a possible Grimm-hexenbiest baby on the way, Captain McChesty suffering debilitating hallucinations, Juliette and Nick living apart on account of her going full witchy Wesen, and only five more Grimm episodes left, it sure doesn’t seem likely that Season 4 of the fairy tale franchise will come to a happy ending. In fact, the damsel/demon in distress herself, Bitsie Tulloch (Juliette), told us as much in an exclusive phone interview from the Oregon set.

Tulloch warns that the witching hour is far from over for her character, Adalind’s second pregnancy may very well be the last straw that pushes her into full biest mode, and wedding bells will not be ringing in this year’s May finale. She even hints that Julienard might be back in session and promises that the events of the finale “will alter the course of the show going forward.”

You’ve been playing Juliette for years now. She went from girlfriend in the dark to monster-fighting team member to hexenbiest. Has it been exciting to go through such big changes in the last couple of seasons?
I’ve really enjoyed it. The character got a little bit of flak in Season 1 because she was mostly passive, for lack of a better word. But it was necessary to serve the storyline and to create the conflict of Nick hiding everything from her, because he didn’t really understand what was going on. Season 2 was fun playing up the amnesia and the love triangle with Captain Renard. For Season 3, Nick had let her in on everything and she became part of the Scooby squad. I was excited when they gave me scenes where I was geeking out on research, because it reminded me of Alyson Hannigan’s character on Buffy.

And now this twist was unexpected. They called me early on and said, “Just so you know, Juliette is going to the dark side.” I was like, “How dark?” They were like, “Pretty dark.” As he said it, there was a little voice cracking, so I knew they were really going to change stuff. It was a great idea to make the new villain be someone that we’ve grown accustomed to being stable, kind, and reliable for the last three and a half years. Now she is the opposite of all of those things.

Has being a character that needs makeup and effects affected your routine?
One of the common misconceptions is it’s me in the makeup. If it’s me, it is all done via effects. When it’s a fight scene, it is my stunt double who is in full prosthetics. We simply do not have time in the day for me to get into full makeup. We quite often shoot 13-hour days, and that doesn’t include the hour and a half it takes to get me into basic hair and makeup. Prosthetics would add another four hours. The digital side is almost seamless these days. They add latex to our faces and these yellow dots, and the effects guys go in afterwards and make Juliette a hexenbiest. It’s not that time-consuming. It probably adds only 10 or 15 minutes to each scene. Overall, it is more about psychologically having to get into character.

How would you describe her mental state currently?
She does not like this, does not want this. She wants her life back. She’s pissed. She’s blaming everybody. If she had known this was going to happen, she would have never gone through with the spell for Nick to get his powers back. She was basically told it was mostly safe and that there wouldn’t be any too crazy side effects. She did it because Nick wanted to be a Grimm again and because Monroe and Rosalee were the target of hate crimes.

But what you will see the rest of the season is the push and pull. If there is really truly nothing I can do about this, either I need to disappear from the face of the earth or I need to embrace it. Maybe she will just go ahead and embrace this new psyche.

Photos: Check Out More Pics From This Season of ‘Grimm’

It’s understandable why she’s pissed. She was on the fence about the whole Grimm thing before the spell. And now she’s basically become his worst nightmare.
Completely. It feels like everyone has basically been using her to get what they want, and no one truly appreciates the sacrifices she’s had to make. She’s always been basically strung along for the ride. This is clearly not something she ever wanted.

The scene this week where she comes home to gather her things: She was actually pretty mean to Nick and spitting venom. Is that a byproduct of being mad, or is being a witch starting to change her?
It’s definitely the latter. The longer they’re racing to find a cure and they can’t, the further away she moves from her humanity. Her behavior becomes more and more monstrous. Again, it isn’t her fault. She’s under a spell. She’s fighting it a little bit right now, but at some point, if there is no cure, she might as well embrace who she is, which is now a villainess person. She is a threat to everyone around her now.

It’s a fairy tale show. Do you think/hope everything will go back to normal?
I have to say I am having a lot of fun with this and the fans seem to be having a lot of fun with this new villain that is quite possibly the last villain anyone would have predicted. We have had stuff be relatively easily cured in the past, and I think they really want this to be nearly impossible, if not impossible, to fix.

It makes you wonder if Juliette and Nick will ever find their happy ending.
This is the main primary romance in the show, and I think they are not going to let us be happy until the series ends. I just don’t see it happening anytime soon, because conflict creates great television and we already have one couple who is deeply in love and stable. If everybody was just happily engaged in nice, normal romances, the show wouldn’t be compelling.

I keep hearing from fans: “We really like you as a hexenbiest, but are they going to end up together? We are still going to get a wedding out of them, right? Don’t let the showrunners forget that we want to see a marriage.” I try to let them down easy that they shouldn’t hold their breath. I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.

Given that she is going dark and living in Renard’s house, will that love triangle rear its head again?
They are not staying away from anything. Juliette’s feeling a little vulnerable right now, she’s living with him, and she needs his help. And he’s kind of a slut. So it’s very possible. Sleeping next to a Grimm is dangerous for both of them. What if she accidentally morphs and he has the natural instinct to kill her? What if she can’t control her powers? They are each other’s archenemies. The more she can’t envision having a future with Nick anymore, the more she’s gonna say, “Screw it,” and do her own thing.

People got really jazzed over the mini brawl earlier this year. Might we see another showdown between Juliette and Adalind before the season is through?
I don’t know that there will be a bigger showdown between them, only because Adalind is terrified of Juliette and not going to go anywhere near her. But there will be more Juliette showdowns with other people where she exhibits her strength and power and enjoys saying, “You should know that I could kill you if I wanted to.”

They have intimated that Adalind’s new baby might be Nick’s from the spell sex. Can’t imagine what Juliette would do with that news.
I think you can imagine that she isn’t going to be terribly excited about it. She’s definitely not offering to throw the shower. That’s coming up in a couple of episodes.

The end of the season is really cool. There’s a new royal in town, and basically all hell breaks lose when Juliette finds out about Adalind’s new pregnancy. She is beyond livid, almost murderous. The penultimate episode, which we’re filming right now, and the final episode of Season 4 change everything. Stuff happens that we haven’t done before, and it completely goes on its head into Season 5. I don’t mean that lightly. I know everyone always says, “It’s a crazy finale.” But this is a crazy finale, and it will alter the course of the show going forward.

Grimm airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on NBC.