Edited by Joe Hummel

We took part in a conference call with Tony Shalhoub and Bitty Schram about both her guest appearance and the final season of USA's Monk. Tony told us about aspects of the character, his affect on the OCD community, and his favorite guest star, Bitty Schram.

On researching the role:

"Well, the psychologist that I spoke with and had sessions with just gave me a lot of information and a lot of reading material. And that combined with some videos that I was able to find, videos of people who suffer from OCD, I was able to kind of build the character off of that information. It was really kind of standard research that you would do for prepping for any role, really."

On the Monk series finale:

Well, I can't tell you too much other than the writers have - they're going to solve the Trudy mystery and have... resolution there. But I'm really not at liberty to give away too much of that information. And after eight years on Monk, it's had a devastating effect on my memory, so even if wanted to, I probably couldn't tell you because I really don't remember how it goes.

What was it like working with Bitty Schram (PCM interview) again?

Well, that was fantastic. It was great. It felt like we just picked up right where we left off and we didnit miss a beat. And the only difficulty for me was that I look a lot older and Bitty looks exactly the same.

Bitty added, "Oh, yes, absolutely. It was honestly like I never left. I swear, it's exactly what he said. It's a bizarre phenomenon, but it's true."

Tony: "Bitty and I both looked at each other while we were doing the first scene, which is the scene - the first day was the scene where she returns. And we just looked at each other and laughed because it just felt like no time at all had passed."
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