Monk Cast Bios
Adrian Monk was a rising star with the San Francisco Police Department, until the tragic murder of his beloved wife, Trudy, left him shattered and wracked with phobias, obsessions and compulsions. His extreme case of obsessive-compulsive disorder cost him his job, and for a time rendered him virtually unable to function. With the help of therapy and the support of his loyal friends and devoted personal assistant, Monk's condition has improved, but his many fears – including germs, heights, crowds, and even milk – pose daily challenges for Monk and the people around him. Yet despite his condition, Monk remains a brilliant detective. Though his approach to homicide investigation is unconventional, Monk's vast intelligence, gift for crime scene analysis, and legendary powers of observation have earned him a reputation as one of the best detectives in San Francisco, if not the world. Monk dreams of regaining his badge, and in the meantime continues to work as a consultant and private detective, taking on even the most impossible cases and continuing to investigate the most personal unsolved crime of all: the murder of his wife.
Natalie Teeger is Adrian Monk's devoted personal assistant, a strong, self-reliant single mom whose tough love proves to be exactly what Monk needs. Though often frustrated and confused by her boss’s peculiar behavior, Natalie remains a caring but firm assistant and friend, pushing Monk to overcome his debilitating fears and compulsions. The fiercely independent former bartender (and member of the wealthy Davenport family) shares a special bond with Monk, having also tragically lost her spouse, and she and her teenage daughter, Julie, have become a surrogate family for Monk. With her no-nonsense attitude, knack for investigation, and ability to challenge Monk, Natalie has become much more than just a sidekick to the brilliant detective.
Captain Leland Stottlemeyer is Adrian Monk's former partner and boss, the longtime friend who was ultimately forced to let Monk go from the San Francisco Police Department when his obsessive-compulsive disorder began to dangerously interfere with his work. Though often annoyed and baffled by his friend's behavior,
Stottlemeyer recognizes Monk's brilliance and frequently calls upon his
old partner to provide unique insight into cases that have San
Francisco's finest stumped. And although it can drive Stottlemeyer
crazy to know that he'll never be quite as brilliant a detective as
Monk, the divorced father of two remains a loyal friend.
Lieutenant Randall Disher is Captain Leland Stottlemeyer's second-in-command and employed at the San Francisco police
force. He is characterized as a naïve, loyal, overly ambitious but not
necessarily bright assistant to Stottlemeyer. His far-fetched theories
and comments about the cases Monk works on are a running gag of the
series. Apart from his truly ridiculous theories, which often involve
defying the very laws of physics, Disher appears rather competent
within his own range of abilities. He has proven himself to be
trustworthy, courageous, and capable of providing valuable insights
into the cases they tackle. Indeed, in the pilot Mr. Monk and the Candidate
while there was a naive aura about him -- and somewhat resentful of
Monk --he was not depicted as much as a bumbler as he would be in later
episodes. A running gag is the awkwardly ceremonial way in which he
delivers news to Stottlemeyer, asking him to guess what it is or sit
down for it. His feelings towards Monk change from the pilot episode of
the series. In the pilot, he was not only skeptical of Monk, but he
seemed to find Monk a joke. Disher calls Monk "the defective detective"
to his captain upon meeting Monk. What appears as his jealousy of Monk
in the beginning becomes admiration as their relationship develops.
However, he was still bumbling, as he had his gun pick-pocketed by Monk
during a frantic scene. 
Julie Teeger is the daughter of Adrian Monk's assistant, Natalie. Julie was introduced to the show during the third season (episode 10, "Mr. Monk and the Red Herring")
where she bonded with Monk after he rescued her pet fish. In that
episode she is 11 years old. Since then, Julie has appeared in several
episodes of the show, usually in minor roles. In "Mr. Monk Goes to a
Fashion Show," Julian Hodge (Malcolm McDowell) invites Julie to participate in a fashion show. Natalie
forbids it, partly because Julian criticized her fashion sense, and
Julie runs away to be in the show. Julian Hodge was discovered to be a
murderer by Adrian Monk. In "Mr. Monk and the Big Game", Julie and her friends on the high
school basketball team hire Monk to investigate when their coach is
found dead in the locker room following a practice. They (correctly)
suspect that this was no accident. Natalie temporarily coaches the
team, with Monk as her assistant. Natalie and Julie fill the gap left when Sharona
left Monk and went with her son, Benjy, to remarry her ex-husband. She
plays a critical role in the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Birds and
the Bees," in which Monk has to give her "the talk" when she starts
dating an older guy. A T-shirt with a picture of her previous boyfriend
is the clue to a double murder, making her have an even more integral
role. In the season 6 episode, "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies," it is
revealed that Julie has received her driver's license. Also, it is
revealed that after the murder of the other two Julie Teegers in San
Francisco, she is the only Julie Teeger for 1,000 miles. In "Mr. Monk
is Underwater," it is stated that her age is seventeen.
Dr. Charles Kroger was Monk's beloved psychiatrist. Stanley Kamel died at the age of 65 in 2008 after suffering a heart attack, and as Monk was on hiatus as of April 2008 (Due to the WGA Strike). In May 2008, it was announced on the official Monk website that Hector Elizondo would portray Adrian's new psychiatrist, Dr. Neven Bell.
Perhaps the most tolerant of all of Adrian Monk's friends, Kroger is a psychiatrist who serves as the closest thing to a rock for Monk. While he does engage in talk therapy, he does not prescribe an SSRI medication, which is commonly used by psychiatrists to treat OCD, because when he did, in the episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", although Monk lost many of his phobias, he also lost his ability to solve crimes. Kroger is instrumental in trying to get Monk reinstated as a detective, while discussing his problems and progress as a person. Most of Kroger's scenes help move Monk's character forward. Similarly, Dr. Kroger has also (usually unintentionally) helped Monk solve several cases. In "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink" he temporarily quit after his maid was murdered, since the police thought that one of his patients was responsible.
Kroger is also the subject of an ongoing feud between Monk and Harold Krenshaw, another patient with similar problems. While very forgiving, even Kroger gets fed up with Monk from time to time, most heavily demonstrated in one episode (Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect) where Kroger came back from vacation and saw Monk standing outside his home. Kroger simply instructed the cab driver to just keep driving and kept his head low to avoid Monk. On another occasion in Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike, when the city stopped collecting garbage, Monk sent his garbage to Dr. Kroger's house. When questioned about it, Monk denied it before Kroger told him it was specifically sorted, boxed, and written in his handwriting.
On the other hand, there have also been several cases in which Dr. Kroger has been the only person capable of getting through to Monk during difficult situations, such as when Monk was brainwashed by a duplicitous cult leader played by Howie Mandel (Mr. Monk Joins a Cult).
It was revealed in the 15th episode of Season 3 ("Mr. Monk and the Election"), that Kroger is married and has children (a son), and is also Jewish. In the first episode of Season 5 ("Mr. Monk and the Actor"), Monk wants to take up the entire week with therapy sessions. Kroger says he does not like working on the weekends so he can spend time with his wife and kids. In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink", it is revealed that he has a wife, Madeline, and a rebellious adolescent son, Troy, who denies that he is their child.
Kroger has a stormy relationship with his son, and was forced to take a paternity test three times at the "request" of his son. Troy calls his parents by their first names and knows Lt. Randy Disher from possibly being arrested. Disher asked if Troy had kept out of trouble, to which Troy said "no". Troy later appears in the Season 6 episode "Mr. Monk and the Buried Treasure". In this episode, while skateboarding with two friends, he finds a map leading to what he assumes is money. He and his friends ask Monk to help them, saying it is a school project. Monk agrees to help them, and they eventually find it. Monk, however, later discovers he's been tricked and tells Troy to come with him back to where the buried treasure was, leading to them temporarily being trapped in Troy's car. By the end of the episode Troy has a better relationship with his father.
Prior to the beginning of season 7 Stanley Kamel died suddenly of a heart attack, and the same explanation was used to explain Dr. Kroger's departure from the series. Monk is understandably quite disturbed by the event, but manages to recover with the aid of his new psychiatrist, Dr. Neven Bell. 
Dr. Neven Bell
is Adrian's new therapist beginning in the Season Seven premiere (Mr.
Monk Buys a House) after Adrian's original therapist, Dr. Kroger, died
of a heart attack. This character was introduced after Stanley Kamel, who played Dr. Kroger, died of a heart attack between production of Seasons Six and Seven.
Though Adrian is skeptical of his new therapist at first, Dr. Bell was able to win his confidence though several small gestures (such as having Adrian's favorite bottled water available, a supply of wipes handy during their introductory handshake, and Dr. Bell's office containing a painting which previously belonged to the late Dr. Kroger.)
Additionally, Natalie pointed out that Dr. Bell's name (Neven) is a palindrome as a comfort to Adrian. Adrian, however, points out that it isn't a "perfect" palindrome, because of the first "N" being capitalized.
Sharona Fleming is a divorced practical nurse from New Jersey and a single mother with a young son named Benjy. She was played by Bitty Schram. Bitty Schram was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance. Sharona's childhood is only mentioned in one episode. Her father,
Douglas, owned a hardware store and died when she was a child. This
left her mother, Cheryl, to raise Sharona and her younger sister, Gail,
who is an actress and appeared in two episodes. Her trademark is her tan Volvo 740 wagon. What is known was that she had married out of high school but it did
not last leaving her with an infant son to raise on her own. As a
result being a very attractive woman she did some nude modeling under a
pseudonym in Atlantic City. It was something that was alluded to in "Mr
Monk meets Dale the Whale," and would come back to haunt her in "Mr.
Monk Meets the Playboy" when the murderer obtained the photos and used
them to get Monk to back off or else he would publish them. She
later became a registered nurse. Monk was in a catatonic
state for three and a half years until Sharona began taking care of
him. Monk was able to resume detective work and remarked, "She found me
when I was drowning and saved my life." The series started a while
after she took the assistant's job, and just how she got it and what
their early relationship was are never explained, although it is
revealed that Captain Leland Stottlemeyer originally engaged her as a nurse for Monk.
When Monk becomes a consulting detective, Sharona helps out, sometimes doing independent investigations and sometimes even using her sex appeal to get information that Monk cannot. She also does all kinds of things that Monk's OCD and phobias prevent him from doing as she has few such reservations herself. It was revealed in the episode "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus," however, that she has a fear of elephants, due to seeing a girl falling into an elephant pit when she was seven years old. She took up smoking after Monk said "Suck it up" about seeing the elephant, and when Monk asked her to stop the smoking, she herself said "Suck it up." She once, when she was in need of some extra money, took some "pictures," which Lieutenant Disher couldn't resist looking at. She drove a tan 1990 Volvo 740 GLE Wagon, which in one episode was shown to have 200,000 miles. (The counter said 199,999, prompting Monk to move the car forwards and backwards until the number was even) She has 'quit' her job as Monk's assistant at least twice; in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Candidate" and "Mr. Monk and the Billionaire Mugger" (this was due to a pay dispute; she temporarily got a job at a lamp store). Sharona's 'quitting' became a running gag in the show, until she finally left in 2004 to re-marry her ex-husband, Trevor Howe. Sharona was mentioned again after her character left the show in "Mr. Monk Is on the Run (Part Two)", having sent flowers for the presumed deceased Monk and flying in with Benjy to attend his funeral.
