Monk: Tony Shalhoub Recalls the USA Detective Series

Remember the defective detective? Recently, Monk star Tony Shalhoub spoke with the AV Club about his experience on the USA Network series.

Created by Andy Breckman, the comic-drama starred Shalhoub as Adrian Monk, a private detective with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. The cast also included Bitty Schram, Jason Gray-Stanford, and Ted Levine. The series ran for eight seasons before ending in 2009.

In the interview, Shalhoub said Monk was originally set at ABC:

That was at a time, when we first started that, when there were some big changes going on at USA. Kind of a changing of the guard, if you will, but they were in the process of rebranding their network, and the show happened to be a part of that rebranding. The script and the pilot had originally been at ABC. I think that’s kind of common knowledge. But it started at ABC, and they couldn’t quite get the right people involved there, so it kind of languished there for a number of years. And then one executive leaving ABC and going over to USA asked to take it over there and see if they could make it work. And then it came to me, and—well, again, it was a life-changing opportunity, and I feel so grateful that I had it, because it was an enormous amount of fun.”

He added that he didn’t know about the series finale twist until a few weeks before:

I honestly didn’t know ’til a few weeks before I got that final two-parter. I didn’t honestly know if they were going to maybe kill me off. That idea was always floating there in the ether. Again, it was one of those situations where I didn’t press them to tell me. I was willing to go with whatever they felt was best. But I’m glad it came out the way it did.”

Shalhoub also said he wouldn’t turn down a Monk movie in the future:

That does get bandied about now and then. It’s not really up to me, but, yeah, I never say never. It was a fun character to work on.”

What do you think? Did you watch Monk? Would you watch a Monk movie?