Anthony Marcus Shalhoub (shə-LOOB; born October 9, 1953) is an American actor. His television work includes the roles of Antonio Scarpacci in Wings and detective Adrian Monk in the TV series Monk, for which he has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series and three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
He has also had a successful career as a character actor, with roles in films such as Barton Fink (1991), Big Night (1996), Men in Black (1997), The Siege (1998), Galaxy Quest (1999), Spy Kids (2001), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Cars (2006), 1408 (2007), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014).
Shalhoub is the ninth of ten children, and was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father, Joe, was from Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as an orphan at the age of ten. Joe married Shalhoub’s mother, Helen (née Seroogy), a second-generation Lebanese-American, and founded a family grocery chain, starting with a store in downtown Green Bay.
Elizabeth Natalie "Bitty" Schram (born July 17, 1968) is an American actress most widely known for having played Sharona Fleming in the television series Monk.
Born in Mountainside, New Jersey, Schram studied at the University of Maryland on a tennis scholarship and graduated with a degree in advertising design. Having known for a number of years that she wanted to act, she pursued roles in both film and television as well as Broadway theater. The role that initially brought her note was Evelyn Gardner, the Rockford Peaches' right fielder, in the Penny Marshall directed film A League of Their Own. Schram's character was the focus of the now famous line uttered by manager Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), "There's no crying in baseball!"
During 1993-95, she appeared in the original Broadway production of Neil Simon's Laughter on the 23rd Floor.
In 2002, Schram landed a major role opposite Tony Shalhoub on the USA Network series Monk. She was released mid-way through the show's third season. The network stated they had "decided to go in a different creative direction with some of its characters". MSNBC reported that "some members of the series' supporting cast, including Schram, Ted Levine and Jason Gray-Stanford, attempted to renegotiate the terms of their contract[s]" and cited Schram's departure as evidence of the industry's "hard line against raise-seeking actors who aren't absolutely essential to the show." Levine and Gray-Stanford remained on the show.Natalie Teeger, played by Traylor Howard, replaced her character as Monk's assistant. Schram made a guest appearance on one episode of the show's eighth and final season, entitled "Mr. Monk and Sharona".
Jason Gray-Stanford (born May 19, 1970) is a Canadian film, television actor and voice actor. He is best known for having played the hapless Lieutenant Randy Disher in the TV program Monk. He last (May 9, 2013) appeared as hospital staff attorney Scott Henderson on the TNT medical drama, Monday Mornings.
Gray-Stanford earned a BFA degree from the University of British Columbia in theatre. He has done extensive dubbing work for various Japanese anime movies and series, and also contributed background vocals to Russell Crowe's 30 Odd Foot of Grunts album Gaslight. He played Deputy Bobby Michan in the 1999 movie Mystery Alaska and appeared in the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind, both starring Crowe. He appeared in the 2006 Clint Eastwood film, Flags of our Fathers as Lieutenant Schrier.
He was the voice of Kento Rei Faun in the anime Ronin Warriors, and the original English voice of Raditz and Cui in the Ocean Group dub of Dragonball Z, as well as the voice of Shinnosuke in the English dub of Ranma 1/2 and the voice of Joe Higashi in the Fatal Fury OVAs and film. He also appeared on an episode of Stargate SG-1.
The following is a complete episode list for the criminal dramedy television series Monk. It premiered on USA Network July 12, 2002 in the United States and ended with a two-part series finale on November 27 and December 4, 2009. The complete series has a total of 125 episodes, including three 2-part episodes and four Christmas specials.
The first four of these webisodes were also released on the Season 5 DVD.
Monk is an American comedy-drama detective mystery television series created by Andy Breckman and starring Tony Shalhoub as the eponymous character, Adrian Monk. It originally ran from 2002 to 2009 and is primarily a police procedural series, and also exhibits comic and dramatic tones in its exploration of the main characters' personal lives. The series was produced by Mandeville Films and Touchstone Television in association with Universal Television.
The series debuted on July 12, 2002, on USA Network. It continued for eight seasons, with the final season concluding on December 4, 2009. The series held the record for the most-watched scripted drama episode in cable television history from 2009 through 2012 (broken by The Walking Dead) with "Mr. Monk and the End – Part II", its series finale, with 9.4 million viewers, 3.2 million of them in the 18–49 demographic. It won several awards including eight Emmys.
Adrian Monk (Shalhoub) was a brilliant detective for the San Francisco Police Department until his wife, Trudy, was killed by a car bomb in a parking garage, which Monk then believed was intended for him. In a later episode, he discovers the bomb was truly meant for Trudy. He later believes that Trudy's death was part of a larger conspiracy that she had uncovered during her time as a journalist. Trudy's death led Monk to suffer a nervous breakdown. He was then discharged from the force and became a recluse, refusing to leave his house for three and a half years. Until the final episode, Trudy's death was Monk's only unsolved case.