Grimm type TV Show network NBC

In a sense, every day is Halloween on Grimm, with bloodthirsty monsters lurking through Portland in every episode. But tonight’s installment of the NBC show is Grimm’s first overtly Halloween-themed episode, which features a killer with an M.O. tied to the holiday.

The episode takes its title, “La Llorona,” from the spooky Mexican folktale of a weeping woman who drowns her children to be with the man she loves. Nick and Hank are on a case that’s eerily similar to the ghost story, while Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) entertains trick-or-treaters in a house that’s decked out to the max.

It’s been quite a Silas-ful week on TV, from his Tuesday guest appearance on Syfy’s Face Off to tonight, when he and co-star David Giuntoli host NBC’s primetime — the two actors will appear before commercial breaks during Munsters reboot Mockingbird Lane, which airs at 8 p.m, to talk about Grimm, Revolution and Mockingbird Lane.

During a busy day of shooting episode 13 of Grimm’s second season, Mitchell took some time to talk to EW about the last time he dressed up for Halloween, how Nick and Monroe’s relationship has evolved and what it’s been like to delve into a romantic storyline for everyone’s favorite Blutbad.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What did you think of what the art department had done to Monroe’s house for this episode?

SILAS WEIR MITCHELL: Oh my God. If you thought the Christmas episode was some decorations, holy moly. The art department on this show is incredible.

Did you have a favorite prop from among all those Halloween decorations?

Well, there’s the machine they rigged that is just awesome. I don’t even want to give it away. Monroe builds this very cool contraption that scares the hell out of the kids and is sort of funny and gruesome at the same time.

You get to wear a skeleton costume in this episode. When was the last time you dressed up for Halloween?

It’s sort of a busman’s holiday for an actor. But the last time I dressed up for Halloween I had a long, blond wig, a black eye and a blacked-out tooth and some blood coming out of my nose — and this will date how long ago it was — because I went as a hockey mom. I think it had something to do with Sarah Palin. So it was probably about four years ago.

Are there any holidays that you get gleeful about on a near Monroe-on-Halloween level?

No. There is no holiday that I get as excited about as Monroe gets about any holiday. I do like Christmas a lot, though. It just reminds me of being a kid.

In this week’s episode, all the neighborhood kids trick-or-treating at Monroe’s house know him and know his house. What is your idea of the kind of relationship Monroe has with his neighbors?

Monroe is the guy who keeps to himself. He’s perfectly polite but doesn’t really get to be friends with anybody, but then he’s the guy who also busts out the insane decorations. It’s not a happy medium. It’s like opposite sides of a personality where he’s really quiet but then just freaks out over certain holidays. He’s the guy on the block who everyone’s like, “He’s a nice guy, but, boy, does he like Halloween. I don’t really know him, but I know he likes Halloween.”

In recent episodes, you’ve gotten to work with a couple regulars on the show you hadn’t worked with much or at all previously. How was it to finally do some scenes with Sasha Roiz and Russell Hornsby?

Oh, it was awesome. The scene with Russell where I did the Woge thing for him was really fun to shoot because it was just two guys sitting at a table, and then this craziness happens. It’s like this perfectly normal scene where it’s two guys having a scotch, commiserating about X, Y, Z, and then it just takes a complete left turn into Grimmville, which is what’s fun about the show, because it is about the real world we live in, and then this crazy s— happens where that’s not exactly our world, at least not that we see.

And working with Sasha was great. I had done stuff with Russell, but I had never done a scene with the captain, so it was fun to see what that dynamic was. What was really kind of great about it was “Oh, yeah, right, this is how these two guys are when they’re in the same room.” So it was a fun sort of discovery.

Before Monroe’s relationship with Rosalee (and with Angelina), how often did you get the chance to play characters with romantic storylines?

Never. Yeah, it’s really just like anything else. It’s the same thing as playing someone who is in jail or someone who is a lawyer who’s being indicted for securities fraud. It just so happens that it’s a romantic storyline as opposed to a law and order storyline. But it is nice to experience a kind of warm side of a person, the kind of vulnerable, open side of a person.

What do you feel like the status of Nick and Monroe’s friendship is now? Last season we saw Monroe calling Nick out for only ever talking to him about his Wesen cases in that great scene when we find out what Monroe’s favorite color is. How have events of these first eight season 2 episodes brought them closer?

When his mother came, I was a little concerned that this was going to go badly. There was a little bit of a backslide there as far as trust. But then, when it turned out that he kind of overrode his mother’s doubts about me, it in a way actually wound up deepening the trust. At this point, there’s no doubt that Nick is a good guy who’s trying to do good in the world, and he’s kind of being buffeted by some pretty dark forces. And those dark forces are not entirely Wesen-related, so it’s not like everything evil in the world is related to my people. At the very beginning, it was a kill-or-be-killed type of thing going on with Nick and Monroe, and now as the world has kind of broadened out, we see our place in it is a little bit more secure.

There are now people out there who want to hurt Monroe to get to Nick. How is Monroe feeling about that death threat?

Well, I said in the first season I’m not gonna run from anybody.

The Grimm episode “La Llorona,” airs on NBC Friday, Oct. 26 at 9 p.m. The episode will also air in Spanish on Telemundo at midnight.

Follow Emily on Twitter: @EmilyNRome

Read more: