A big and much-needed hit for ABC and broadcast TV this season has been The Good Doctor, starring Freddie Highmore as an extraordinarily talented and autistic medical wunderkind. Highmore had only three days between moving from his long-running Bates Motel series, in which he played the iconic Norman Bates, to the new series, as he told me when he visited our Deadline studios to appear on this week’s edition of my video series The Actor’s Side.
Only 26, Highmore is already an industry veteran having starred in high-profile projects as a kid including Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, both opposite Johnny Depp. In this episode we talk about those early films, his showbiz break, how creepy it was playing Norman Bates (and how he still misses it in some ways), and of course his transformation into The Good Doctor. I also ask him about how a very young kid managed to get his first movie role in something called Women Talking Dirty.
