With Season 3 of NBC's Hannibal just around the corner, EAT THE RUDE wouldn't be a fair Fannibal site without some spoilers!!
Check out the collection below in preparation for this week's episode - Antipasto, airing on NBC at 10:00 PM.
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interviews. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Saturday, May 30, 2015
A Week Till Season 3 - Interviews
With Season 3 of NBC's Hannibal just around the corner, EAT THE RUDE wouldn't be a fair Fannibal site without a collection of the American Interviews currently in circulation.
Check out the collection below in preparation for this week's episode - Antipasto, airing on NBC at 10:00 PM.
MADS MIKKELSEN ON THE SLOW BUILD
HUGH DANCY ON PLAYING WILL GRAHAM
GILLIAN ANDERSON ON BEDELIA'S PAST
LAURENCE FISHBURNE ON JACK'S SUFFERING
AARON ABRAMS ON THE RIVETING SEASON 3
SCOTT THOMPSON ON HANNIBAL'S PAST
Unfortunately, the interview of Caroline Dhavernas was taken down after publishing. EAT THE RUDE's opinion is: she probably gave away too much!
SPOILERS: In the interview with Caroline, she revealed that Dr. Alana Bloom has survived the Season 2 Finale and is a new woman. In the re-build, she finds herself collaborating with the Vergers.
Check out the rest of our "A Week Till Season 3" posts for more News on the upcoming Season!
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Collider.com: Showrunner Bryan Fuller Talks HANNIBAL by Christina Radish
Collider: How did Hannibal come about? Was it something you had the idea for, or did the network come to you with this concept?
BRYAN FULLER: How it started was that I was on a fateful plane trip to New York. I had just finished a draft of a script and I was like, “I need to go see some shows on Broadway to cleanse my palate.” I happened to be on the plane with a friend of mine, who randomly was just sitting one row ahead of me and across the aisle. We were catching up and it was like, “Oh, we’re sitting close and we’re chatting!” She was like, “I just got this job to be the CEO of Gaumont U.S. TV, and one of the first properties we’re acquiring is the Hannibal Lecter character. Do you think there’s a TV series there?” Not even asking if I wanted to do it or if I was curious, at all, but I was like, “Yeah, just saying the name Hannibal, I’m curious.”
I read Red Dragon in high school and I was a fan of the Thomas Harris books, so my first question was, “Do you have the Will Graham character?” I feel like Clarice Starling was done so iconographically with Jodie Foster that that’s a pretty bar to reach. You had William Petersen and Ed Norton play Will Graham in previous incarnations of Red Dragon and Manhunter, but I always felt like there was so much more between the lines of Will Graham on the page than had ever been seen in the way that he was presented on screen. He’s such a complex character. What I loved about him, reading him, was that he has personality disorders and he has neuroses, but I felt like I didn’t really see those things as apparently on screen before. I thought, “God, if you have an empathy disorder and you’re putting yourself in the minds of serial killers to catch them, how damaging and traumatizing that would be.”
So, I was really interested in that character and how he existed on the page. I thought, “Well, what if there’s this relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal, that didn’t exist in the books?” In the books, Will Graham met Hannibal twice. He went to his office and asked him some questions, and then he went back again because he had a feeling about something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and that’s when he realized that Hannibal was the man he was after and Hannibal gutted him with a carpet knife, but Will brought him down. So, they only really had two encounters, but there’s that line from Red Dragon where Hannibal says to Will Graham, “Do you know how you caught me?,” and Will Graham says, “Well, because you’re insane,” and Hannibal says, “No, you’re actually more like me than you care to admit,” or something along those lines.
There’s a section in the book where Alan Bloom, who’s now Alana Bloom, and Jack Crawford are talking, and they talk about how Will sometimes picks up the cadence of another person’s speech as he’s talking to them, which seemed to be indicative of some form of echopraxia. We’re all born with mirror neurons. We have a flood of them in our brains and it helps us socialize. When little babies are mirroring what they parents do, or what adults do, or anyone around them, those are the mirror neurons in the brain at work. As we get older and achieve our own identities, those mirror neurons are absorbed into the system and they don’t play as active a role. But, if you have echopraxia, they’re still pretty active and also prevent you from clearly establishing your own identity, or your own identity is a little bit slippery because you can shift in and out of it, depending on who you’re with. So, I just thought, “If he has a little bit of that and he has an empathy disorder and he has all of these things, he’s in danger, in these situations, just psychologically.” That’s a version of a crime story that I haven’t seen, that would be interesting to explore.
Since Hannibal really pushes the boundaries of what’s been seen on network TV, how do you gauge just how far you’ll take the violence on the show?
FULLER: I think it’s what feels right for the story. It’s also what’s right for the genre. Keep in mind that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie, and Hannibal is a horror anti-hero. To a certain point, we have to honor the genre and deliver certain elements of the genre. I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion. So, as a member of that audience, I want to make sure that the other members of the audience are protected in getting certain things out of the show. I don’t think we could do a Hannibal that was too soft because it would have no business being on network television. We’re at a point in network TV where things are changing. Networks have to change because cable is now doing better ratings than most of the network shows, so they have to start adopting more of a cable model and a cable attitude. Networks are hemorrhaging viewers. CBS is always gonna be fine because it knows exactly who its demographic is and how to service that demographic. But, NBC has a great opportunity to be at the leading edge of evolving networks into a hybridization of a network-cable model.
Your three leads – Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen and Laurence Fishburne – are so fantastic on the show. What was your casting process like? Did you have any of them specifically in mind, or were you just open to any suggestions that were brought to you?
FULLER: I didn’t have who Will Graham was in mind. And then, our very first conversation with the network about who this should be was Hugh Dancy. There were three names that came up – Hugh Dancy and two other actors – and everybody said, “Let’s go to Hugh and see if he’s interested.” We just thought that he has an innate likeability and this character is very complex. Like it says in the book, “Fear makes Will Graham rude,” so he is anti-social and complicated and in his own world. You have to have somebody who has an innate likeability, otherwise they’re just going to come off like an asshole, and Hugh has that. You want to be invited into a world by an actor, and Hugh Dancy, as an actor, invites you in to the world that he’s inhabiting. So, that was a very clear, easy choice.
And based on getting Hugh, Mads was interested because they had worked together on King Arthur. They were friends. So, we sat down with Mads and pitched what the show was to him. Even in that very first meeting, he said, “So, this character is a bit like Lucifer. He sees the beauty in the world and in humanity, but is also punitive to those who don’t recognize beauty in the world and in humanity.” If you look at his performance, he is playing Lucifer, as opposed to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal. I don’t think any of us wanted whoever we cast as Hannibal to go anywhere near Anthony Hopkins because you would be slain. There would just be no way to live up to that. So, we had to go a different direction with Hannibal. With Mads, who has this beauty, elegance and grace, and was a dancer, as well as having played several villains in prominent movies we had somebody who was going to bring something so unique to the role. Hannibal Lecter is not American. In the books, he is Eastern European, so he is other and he is different. So, getting a foreign actor to play the role was always at the front of my mind because I wanted to have some indication that he couldn’t be American.
Aside from the fact that the three leads are so interesting to watch individually, watching them interact with each other is just so fascinating.
FULLER: This is a stellar cast. It’s a feature film cast. One of the things that I was really attracted to, about this story, is the bromance between Hannibal and Will Graham. Here are two crazy men, who are so unique in their insanity that they need each other to understand themselves. That felt like a great place to tell a story, and to tell a different version of the Hannibal Lecter mythology. What we had been exposed to was essentially an incarcerated psychopath who had done his villainy, and everybody around him knew what he was capable of. And now, we have him peacocking in the open, and he is functional in society. He has relationships, and not only the relationship with Will Graham, but the relationship with Jack Crawford. I love seeing them friends, at the dinner table, laughing and raising glasses in toasts. And there’s the very touching relationship that he develops with Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), and how he feels very protective of her and responsible for what happened to her. I love that relationship, and the irony that she traded one cannibalistic father in for another, but she just doesn’t know it yet. I find that really satisfying. You get a great sense of a man who never thought he’d have friends or relationships, and then he’s discovering himself in circumstances where he is getting those opportunities and he is taking advantage of them, and we never know to what end. You’ll get an idea by the end of the season. It is fascinating to see someone who is making connections through their psycho-pathology.
When you know where most of these characters eventually end up, is that something you always have to keep in the back of your mind, or do you try not to think about that?
FULLER: It’s a huge gift to be able to know the destination of these characters and know that, in Season 4, we’re going to be telling the Red Dragon story. That’s a buoy that we’re swimming to, in the storyline. So, it’s exciting, on that level, to know that we have a destination, but we’re also mixing things up. Events that have happened in the books will happen, but they may not necessarily evolve all of the players that were involved because we are creating a new introduction to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter that didn’t exist in the literature, and everything has a ripple effect. There will be folks that are hardcore fans of the novels who will say, “Oh, my god, they totally told that story, but they’re telling it with this character instead of that character, even though the events still happen.” I’m hoping that it is as satisfying to fans of the movies, as it is to fans of the literature, and also welcoming to new audiences who aren’t familiar with either of those properties.
Have you already given any thought about if or when Hannibal Lecter’s famous face mask will appear?
FULLER: Yeah, that would be Season 4-ish. We’ve got some fields to play in, before we get to Hannibal incarcerated, in all sorts of ways. We’ll definitely be getting there. Red Dragon was the first book in the series. Imagine that there are three novels that were unpublished, and we’re going to tell those three novels before Red Dragon. And then, we’ll try to sync up with the timeline of the other books.
With the change of gender for the Dr. Bloom role, did you just want to change that role to add a female character, or had you specifically wanted to work with Caroline Dhavernas again?
FULLER: Both, actually. It’s a pretty male world. You have William Graham, Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford, as your three leads. And then, there’s Alan Bloom and Freddy Lounds. Really, the only female character in Red Dragon, besides the blind woman is Beverly Katz, and you only see her for a little bit. So, I just thought that we need more female energy because I love writing for women and it was just too male. The piece needed women. So, when I was first developing the project, I called Caroline and I was like, “Okay, there’s two roles. The bottom line is that I want to work with you, so which of these roles sounds more interesting to you.” She was like, “Well, actually Alana Bloom sounds more interesting to me,” and I was like, “Great, it’s yours!” Then, we were so lucky to find Lara Jean Chorostecki. I had gotten the news that we were going ahead with Hannibal at NBC, as I was on a plane on my way to the U.K. Of course, all over London, at the time, there was Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World stuff going on, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be interesting, if that was our Freddie Lounds,” as opposed to the sleazy tabloid reporter. She’s someone who’s a little savvier and a little more of a political animal, with those great shocks of red curly hair. I just saw Rebekah Brooks so clearly, as our Freddie Lounds. That’s where she’d be going, if she doesn’t get doused with kerosene, set on fire and be in a wheelchair, in Season 4.
Why did you decide to focus so strongly on the relationship between Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and his wife (Gina Torres)?
FULLER: If you’re a Thomas Harris fan and have read the books, you know that Jack’s wife is dying of cancer, and dies of cancer in The Silence of the Lambs. I really wanted to tell that story, and I also really wanted to work with Gina [Torres] again, having worked with her on Pushing Daisies. I was curious how people would react to that, ‘cause it’s a different story for the show. It’s a cancer story. It’s a departure from cannibalism, but it’s all faithful to the canon of the stories and where Jack Crawford would be by the timeline of The Silence of the Lambs. Also, it’s fascinating to see Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), who’s a cannibalistic killer, be so empathetic for someone who is having their life slip away. So, it was interesting to see that color from Mads, and I think Gina is amazing in those episodes.
How do you decide the meals that Hannibal Lecter will make and serve?
FULLER: We have a James Beard award-winning culinary consultant in José Andrés, who’s a world famous chef and has restaurants all over the country. I was a fan of Jose’s from going to his restaurants, and just being a viewer of Top Chef and being educated that way. I’m also a little bit of a foodie. So, one of my first thoughts about doing this was, “I want to work with José Andrés on this project, as the voice of Hannibal.” I called my agent and was like, “How do I get in contact with José Andrés?,” and they were like, “Well, we represent him and he actually just won an award and he’s having a cocktail reception at his restaurant in Los Angeles. Why don’t you come as my date and I’ll introduce you, and you can present the idea to him directly and see what he has to say?”
So, we went to his reception and they introduced me and I said, “Hi, I’m working on this adaptation of Hannibal Lecter as a TV series,” and he said, “Oh, I want to be a consultant!,” before I could even get the invitation out. He was so enthusiastic! He’s so passionate and infectious with his enthusiasm that he immediately pulls you in. He had so many ideas, right off the top. One of the very first ideas that he said to me, right there at the reception, was, “Lungs! You could do the lungs of a smoker. You would clean out the tar from the inside layer of the tissue. The smoke has been in there for awhile, so it gives you this flavor to the lungs. They would be pre-smoked.” It was fascinating to hear his lack of judgement. It was one of those things where it was like meat is meat is meat is meat, which I thought was very fair.
I only eat meat, if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I’m at somebody’s home for a dinner, I’ll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don’t eat anything that walks around and has a face. I’m not doing it for health reasons, and I don’t have too large of a soapbox under my feet about it \because it’s a personal choice. If I go to your home and you’re cooking me a meal, I will eat whatever you put in front of me. So, it was interesting to hear this chef, who is world renowned, speak of eating people in the same manner that he would about eating a pig or a cow or a duck, without any kind of distinction between them as creatures of higher or lower intelligence.
One of the things that I always think about now is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we’re learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you’re eating a pig, you’re essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being. A pig is actually much more intelligent than a four-year-old and much more emotionally sophisticated. I see both sides of the argument about why to eat meat and why not to eat meat, and it was refreshing to talk to José , who also was judgement free, in terms of making the distinctions.
You’re not really sure what to make of Hannibal Lecter for a few episodes. Was it intentional to play on that and make viewers wonder, if he really could be doing such horrible things?
FULLER: No. For me, it was like, “You know who he is.” I figured it was a chip that I could only play so often, so I didn’t want to overuse it. In Episode 3, when he rams Alana’s head into the brick wall, it’s the first time you’re like, “Oh, shit, he’s a bad guy!” Up until that point, he doesn’t really do anything on camera. You see him cooking the lungs in the first episode, but until he acts violently against another character, you realize how ruthless he is and how much of situational ethics come into play with him.
With the great and heartbreaking performance that Anna Chlumsky gave, it must have been difficult to let her go.
FULLER: I thought Anna did a wonderful job in the episode and was our Clarice Starling, but made it distinct from Jodie Foster, in her own way. That’s our The Silence of the Lambs episode, where we’re looking at the archetypes that have been previously established and said, “Yes, these archetypes are in our world, but not necessarily in the roles you’ve grown accustomed to.”
Is there any chance you’ll be exploring romantic relationships with Dr. Lecter?
FULLER: Oh, yeah, we absolutely are going to go there. There are two distinct flirtations that we’re playing with, and the intention is absolutely to go there with his character. I imagine he would be a fantastic lover. Mads and I have talked quite a bit about how Hannibal loves beautiful things, so he would love women and he would love a woman’s spirit. Unless she’s an asshole, she’s not in danger. So, that is absolutely going to be in the cards. I’m excited for those stories and the opportunity to see that other side of the character. We will see him in romantic situation, not necessarily in the first season, but the players are all set up in the first season.
How did Gillian Anderson come to be a part of the show?
FULLER: I loved working with her and writing for her. That was very much a career highlight, being able to work with her. I was such a huge fan of The X-Files. Beyond The X-Files, she was amazing as Miss Havisham (in Great Expectations). She’s a fantastic actress, and she’s great in the show, as Hannibal’s psychiatrist. Originally, the role was written for a much older actress that had retired because of age. Then, as we were talking about actresses and about who was appropriate, the casting person at NBC said, “Well, if you make the character younger, what do you think about Gillian Anderson?,” and I was like, “I’ll make the character younger.” So, I rewrote the character and the retirement hinged not on her leaving the industry because she’s of retirement age, but because of an event. Hannibal Lecter is her only patient because she retired and he is the only one who ignored her retirement. They have a very specific relationship around an event that we will explore over the course of the season, in a very subtle way, keying up a bigger story for them, down the road. What’s fascinating for me about having those actors in a scene is that they each have an icy control to them, but they’re both very sexy. You have these two cool, sexy people in an environment where they are talking about intimacy and deepest thoughts, so there’s this sexual tension that vibrates under their scenes, in a really nice way.
Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me were all great shows that didn’t get as long of a life as they should have. When you saw what happened with Kickstarter for Veronica Mars, did it give you hope about reviving any of your past work?
FULLER: When I saw that announcement, I was like, “Oh, my god, this is amazing!” I emailed Rob Thomas immediately and said, “I have so many questions for you!” He was like, “I’m so swamped right now. Call me in two weeks and I’ll tell you all about it.” They’re slightly different playing fields because Veronica Mars is so much about the wit of the dialogue and the charm of the performers, and the style is a tonal issue, whereas Pushing Daisies is a world that we have to create. Veronica Mars exists in this world, through the lens of film noir, but Pushing Daisies doesn’t exist in this world, so we’d have to build it, which requires a lot more to produce than Veronica Mars would. So, I’m asking questions and seeing what is required and what we could do. It’s a different ball game, and I don’t know if it would be possible. It’s certainly easier to ask for $2 million of crowd funding, as opposed to $15 million. At that point, it begs all sorts of questions like, “Okay, shouldn’t we be contributing that money to a cancer foundation?” So, it’s a complicated issue, but it one that I am actively exploring and trying to find out if it is, at all, possible given what is required for a Pushing Daisies movie. I would love to return to that world, and I would love to return to that cast. It was a very satisfying, creative experience. I love that cast and would love to be on a stage with them again soon. I just have a lot of research to do and a lot of questions hat I need to get answered before I can determine if it’s realistic. But, yes, I would absolutely love it, I would make room for it, and I would make it a priority, if it is possible.
BRYAN FULLER: How it started was that I was on a fateful plane trip to New York. I had just finished a draft of a script and I was like, “I need to go see some shows on Broadway to cleanse my palate.” I happened to be on the plane with a friend of mine, who randomly was just sitting one row ahead of me and across the aisle. We were catching up and it was like, “Oh, we’re sitting close and we’re chatting!” She was like, “I just got this job to be the CEO of Gaumont U.S. TV, and one of the first properties we’re acquiring is the Hannibal Lecter character. Do you think there’s a TV series there?” Not even asking if I wanted to do it or if I was curious, at all, but I was like, “Yeah, just saying the name Hannibal, I’m curious.”
I read Red Dragon in high school and I was a fan of the Thomas Harris books, so my first question was, “Do you have the Will Graham character?” I feel like Clarice Starling was done so iconographically with Jodie Foster that that’s a pretty bar to reach. You had William Petersen and Ed Norton play Will Graham in previous incarnations of Red Dragon and Manhunter, but I always felt like there was so much more between the lines of Will Graham on the page than had ever been seen in the way that he was presented on screen. He’s such a complex character. What I loved about him, reading him, was that he has personality disorders and he has neuroses, but I felt like I didn’t really see those things as apparently on screen before. I thought, “God, if you have an empathy disorder and you’re putting yourself in the minds of serial killers to catch them, how damaging and traumatizing that would be.”
So, I was really interested in that character and how he existed on the page. I thought, “Well, what if there’s this relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal, that didn’t exist in the books?” In the books, Will Graham met Hannibal twice. He went to his office and asked him some questions, and then he went back again because he had a feeling about something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and that’s when he realized that Hannibal was the man he was after and Hannibal gutted him with a carpet knife, but Will brought him down. So, they only really had two encounters, but there’s that line from Red Dragon where Hannibal says to Will Graham, “Do you know how you caught me?,” and Will Graham says, “Well, because you’re insane,” and Hannibal says, “No, you’re actually more like me than you care to admit,” or something along those lines.
There’s a section in the book where Alan Bloom, who’s now Alana Bloom, and Jack Crawford are talking, and they talk about how Will sometimes picks up the cadence of another person’s speech as he’s talking to them, which seemed to be indicative of some form of echopraxia. We’re all born with mirror neurons. We have a flood of them in our brains and it helps us socialize. When little babies are mirroring what they parents do, or what adults do, or anyone around them, those are the mirror neurons in the brain at work. As we get older and achieve our own identities, those mirror neurons are absorbed into the system and they don’t play as active a role. But, if you have echopraxia, they’re still pretty active and also prevent you from clearly establishing your own identity, or your own identity is a little bit slippery because you can shift in and out of it, depending on who you’re with. So, I just thought, “If he has a little bit of that and he has an empathy disorder and he has all of these things, he’s in danger, in these situations, just psychologically.” That’s a version of a crime story that I haven’t seen, that would be interesting to explore.
Since Hannibal really pushes the boundaries of what’s been seen on network TV, how do you gauge just how far you’ll take the violence on the show?
FULLER: I think it’s what feels right for the story. It’s also what’s right for the genre. Keep in mind that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie, and Hannibal is a horror anti-hero. To a certain point, we have to honor the genre and deliver certain elements of the genre. I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion. So, as a member of that audience, I want to make sure that the other members of the audience are protected in getting certain things out of the show. I don’t think we could do a Hannibal that was too soft because it would have no business being on network television. We’re at a point in network TV where things are changing. Networks have to change because cable is now doing better ratings than most of the network shows, so they have to start adopting more of a cable model and a cable attitude. Networks are hemorrhaging viewers. CBS is always gonna be fine because it knows exactly who its demographic is and how to service that demographic. But, NBC has a great opportunity to be at the leading edge of evolving networks into a hybridization of a network-cable model.
Your three leads – Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen and Laurence Fishburne – are so fantastic on the show. What was your casting process like? Did you have any of them specifically in mind, or were you just open to any suggestions that were brought to you?
FULLER: I didn’t have who Will Graham was in mind. And then, our very first conversation with the network about who this should be was Hugh Dancy. There were three names that came up – Hugh Dancy and two other actors – and everybody said, “Let’s go to Hugh and see if he’s interested.” We just thought that he has an innate likeability and this character is very complex. Like it says in the book, “Fear makes Will Graham rude,” so he is anti-social and complicated and in his own world. You have to have somebody who has an innate likeability, otherwise they’re just going to come off like an asshole, and Hugh has that. You want to be invited into a world by an actor, and Hugh Dancy, as an actor, invites you in to the world that he’s inhabiting. So, that was a very clear, easy choice.
And based on getting Hugh, Mads was interested because they had worked together on King Arthur. They were friends. So, we sat down with Mads and pitched what the show was to him. Even in that very first meeting, he said, “So, this character is a bit like Lucifer. He sees the beauty in the world and in humanity, but is also punitive to those who don’t recognize beauty in the world and in humanity.” If you look at his performance, he is playing Lucifer, as opposed to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal. I don’t think any of us wanted whoever we cast as Hannibal to go anywhere near Anthony Hopkins because you would be slain. There would just be no way to live up to that. So, we had to go a different direction with Hannibal. With Mads, who has this beauty, elegance and grace, and was a dancer, as well as having played several villains in prominent movies we had somebody who was going to bring something so unique to the role. Hannibal Lecter is not American. In the books, he is Eastern European, so he is other and he is different. So, getting a foreign actor to play the role was always at the front of my mind because I wanted to have some indication that he couldn’t be American.
Aside from the fact that the three leads are so interesting to watch individually, watching them interact with each other is just so fascinating.
FULLER: This is a stellar cast. It’s a feature film cast. One of the things that I was really attracted to, about this story, is the bromance between Hannibal and Will Graham. Here are two crazy men, who are so unique in their insanity that they need each other to understand themselves. That felt like a great place to tell a story, and to tell a different version of the Hannibal Lecter mythology. What we had been exposed to was essentially an incarcerated psychopath who had done his villainy, and everybody around him knew what he was capable of. And now, we have him peacocking in the open, and he is functional in society. He has relationships, and not only the relationship with Will Graham, but the relationship with Jack Crawford. I love seeing them friends, at the dinner table, laughing and raising glasses in toasts. And there’s the very touching relationship that he develops with Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), and how he feels very protective of her and responsible for what happened to her. I love that relationship, and the irony that she traded one cannibalistic father in for another, but she just doesn’t know it yet. I find that really satisfying. You get a great sense of a man who never thought he’d have friends or relationships, and then he’s discovering himself in circumstances where he is getting those opportunities and he is taking advantage of them, and we never know to what end. You’ll get an idea by the end of the season. It is fascinating to see someone who is making connections through their psycho-pathology.
When you know where most of these characters eventually end up, is that something you always have to keep in the back of your mind, or do you try not to think about that?
FULLER: It’s a huge gift to be able to know the destination of these characters and know that, in Season 4, we’re going to be telling the Red Dragon story. That’s a buoy that we’re swimming to, in the storyline. So, it’s exciting, on that level, to know that we have a destination, but we’re also mixing things up. Events that have happened in the books will happen, but they may not necessarily evolve all of the players that were involved because we are creating a new introduction to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter that didn’t exist in the literature, and everything has a ripple effect. There will be folks that are hardcore fans of the novels who will say, “Oh, my god, they totally told that story, but they’re telling it with this character instead of that character, even though the events still happen.” I’m hoping that it is as satisfying to fans of the movies, as it is to fans of the literature, and also welcoming to new audiences who aren’t familiar with either of those properties.
Have you already given any thought about if or when Hannibal Lecter’s famous face mask will appear?
FULLER: Yeah, that would be Season 4-ish. We’ve got some fields to play in, before we get to Hannibal incarcerated, in all sorts of ways. We’ll definitely be getting there. Red Dragon was the first book in the series. Imagine that there are three novels that were unpublished, and we’re going to tell those three novels before Red Dragon. And then, we’ll try to sync up with the timeline of the other books.
With the change of gender for the Dr. Bloom role, did you just want to change that role to add a female character, or had you specifically wanted to work with Caroline Dhavernas again?
FULLER: Both, actually. It’s a pretty male world. You have William Graham, Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford, as your three leads. And then, there’s Alan Bloom and Freddy Lounds. Really, the only female character in Red Dragon, besides the blind woman is Beverly Katz, and you only see her for a little bit. So, I just thought that we need more female energy because I love writing for women and it was just too male. The piece needed women. So, when I was first developing the project, I called Caroline and I was like, “Okay, there’s two roles. The bottom line is that I want to work with you, so which of these roles sounds more interesting to you.” She was like, “Well, actually Alana Bloom sounds more interesting to me,” and I was like, “Great, it’s yours!” Then, we were so lucky to find Lara Jean Chorostecki. I had gotten the news that we were going ahead with Hannibal at NBC, as I was on a plane on my way to the U.K. Of course, all over London, at the time, there was Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World stuff going on, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be interesting, if that was our Freddie Lounds,” as opposed to the sleazy tabloid reporter. She’s someone who’s a little savvier and a little more of a political animal, with those great shocks of red curly hair. I just saw Rebekah Brooks so clearly, as our Freddie Lounds. That’s where she’d be going, if she doesn’t get doused with kerosene, set on fire and be in a wheelchair, in Season 4.
Why did you decide to focus so strongly on the relationship between Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and his wife (Gina Torres)?
FULLER: If you’re a Thomas Harris fan and have read the books, you know that Jack’s wife is dying of cancer, and dies of cancer in The Silence of the Lambs. I really wanted to tell that story, and I also really wanted to work with Gina [Torres] again, having worked with her on Pushing Daisies. I was curious how people would react to that, ‘cause it’s a different story for the show. It’s a cancer story. It’s a departure from cannibalism, but it’s all faithful to the canon of the stories and where Jack Crawford would be by the timeline of The Silence of the Lambs. Also, it’s fascinating to see Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), who’s a cannibalistic killer, be so empathetic for someone who is having their life slip away. So, it was interesting to see that color from Mads, and I think Gina is amazing in those episodes.
How do you decide the meals that Hannibal Lecter will make and serve?
FULLER: We have a James Beard award-winning culinary consultant in José Andrés, who’s a world famous chef and has restaurants all over the country. I was a fan of Jose’s from going to his restaurants, and just being a viewer of Top Chef and being educated that way. I’m also a little bit of a foodie. So, one of my first thoughts about doing this was, “I want to work with José Andrés on this project, as the voice of Hannibal.” I called my agent and was like, “How do I get in contact with José Andrés?,” and they were like, “Well, we represent him and he actually just won an award and he’s having a cocktail reception at his restaurant in Los Angeles. Why don’t you come as my date and I’ll introduce you, and you can present the idea to him directly and see what he has to say?”
So, we went to his reception and they introduced me and I said, “Hi, I’m working on this adaptation of Hannibal Lecter as a TV series,” and he said, “Oh, I want to be a consultant!,” before I could even get the invitation out. He was so enthusiastic! He’s so passionate and infectious with his enthusiasm that he immediately pulls you in. He had so many ideas, right off the top. One of the very first ideas that he said to me, right there at the reception, was, “Lungs! You could do the lungs of a smoker. You would clean out the tar from the inside layer of the tissue. The smoke has been in there for awhile, so it gives you this flavor to the lungs. They would be pre-smoked.” It was fascinating to hear his lack of judgement. It was one of those things where it was like meat is meat is meat is meat, which I thought was very fair.
I only eat meat, if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I’m at somebody’s home for a dinner, I’ll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don’t eat anything that walks around and has a face. I’m not doing it for health reasons, and I don’t have too large of a soapbox under my feet about it \because it’s a personal choice. If I go to your home and you’re cooking me a meal, I will eat whatever you put in front of me. So, it was interesting to hear this chef, who is world renowned, speak of eating people in the same manner that he would about eating a pig or a cow or a duck, without any kind of distinction between them as creatures of higher or lower intelligence.
One of the things that I always think about now is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we’re learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you’re eating a pig, you’re essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being. A pig is actually much more intelligent than a four-year-old and much more emotionally sophisticated. I see both sides of the argument about why to eat meat and why not to eat meat, and it was refreshing to talk to José , who also was judgement free, in terms of making the distinctions.
You’re not really sure what to make of Hannibal Lecter for a few episodes. Was it intentional to play on that and make viewers wonder, if he really could be doing such horrible things?
FULLER: No. For me, it was like, “You know who he is.” I figured it was a chip that I could only play so often, so I didn’t want to overuse it. In Episode 3, when he rams Alana’s head into the brick wall, it’s the first time you’re like, “Oh, shit, he’s a bad guy!” Up until that point, he doesn’t really do anything on camera. You see him cooking the lungs in the first episode, but until he acts violently against another character, you realize how ruthless he is and how much of situational ethics come into play with him.
With the great and heartbreaking performance that Anna Chlumsky gave, it must have been difficult to let her go.
FULLER: I thought Anna did a wonderful job in the episode and was our Clarice Starling, but made it distinct from Jodie Foster, in her own way. That’s our The Silence of the Lambs episode, where we’re looking at the archetypes that have been previously established and said, “Yes, these archetypes are in our world, but not necessarily in the roles you’ve grown accustomed to.”
Is there any chance you’ll be exploring romantic relationships with Dr. Lecter?
FULLER: Oh, yeah, we absolutely are going to go there. There are two distinct flirtations that we’re playing with, and the intention is absolutely to go there with his character. I imagine he would be a fantastic lover. Mads and I have talked quite a bit about how Hannibal loves beautiful things, so he would love women and he would love a woman’s spirit. Unless she’s an asshole, she’s not in danger. So, that is absolutely going to be in the cards. I’m excited for those stories and the opportunity to see that other side of the character. We will see him in romantic situation, not necessarily in the first season, but the players are all set up in the first season.
How did Gillian Anderson come to be a part of the show?
FULLER: I loved working with her and writing for her. That was very much a career highlight, being able to work with her. I was such a huge fan of The X-Files. Beyond The X-Files, she was amazing as Miss Havisham (in Great Expectations). She’s a fantastic actress, and she’s great in the show, as Hannibal’s psychiatrist. Originally, the role was written for a much older actress that had retired because of age. Then, as we were talking about actresses and about who was appropriate, the casting person at NBC said, “Well, if you make the character younger, what do you think about Gillian Anderson?,” and I was like, “I’ll make the character younger.” So, I rewrote the character and the retirement hinged not on her leaving the industry because she’s of retirement age, but because of an event. Hannibal Lecter is her only patient because she retired and he is the only one who ignored her retirement. They have a very specific relationship around an event that we will explore over the course of the season, in a very subtle way, keying up a bigger story for them, down the road. What’s fascinating for me about having those actors in a scene is that they each have an icy control to them, but they’re both very sexy. You have these two cool, sexy people in an environment where they are talking about intimacy and deepest thoughts, so there’s this sexual tension that vibrates under their scenes, in a really nice way.
Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me were all great shows that didn’t get as long of a life as they should have. When you saw what happened with Kickstarter for Veronica Mars, did it give you hope about reviving any of your past work?
FULLER: When I saw that announcement, I was like, “Oh, my god, this is amazing!” I emailed Rob Thomas immediately and said, “I have so many questions for you!” He was like, “I’m so swamped right now. Call me in two weeks and I’ll tell you all about it.” They’re slightly different playing fields because Veronica Mars is so much about the wit of the dialogue and the charm of the performers, and the style is a tonal issue, whereas Pushing Daisies is a world that we have to create. Veronica Mars exists in this world, through the lens of film noir, but Pushing Daisies doesn’t exist in this world, so we’d have to build it, which requires a lot more to produce than Veronica Mars would. So, I’m asking questions and seeing what is required and what we could do. It’s a different ball game, and I don’t know if it would be possible. It’s certainly easier to ask for $2 million of crowd funding, as opposed to $15 million. At that point, it begs all sorts of questions like, “Okay, shouldn’t we be contributing that money to a cancer foundation?” So, it’s a complicated issue, but it one that I am actively exploring and trying to find out if it is, at all, possible given what is required for a Pushing Daisies movie. I would love to return to that world, and I would love to return to that cast. It was a very satisfying, creative experience. I love that cast and would love to be on a stage with them again soon. I just have a lot of research to do and a lot of questions hat I need to get answered before I can determine if it’s realistic. But, yes, I would absolutely love it, I would make room for it, and I would make it a priority, if it is possible.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
TV Guide: Hannibal Finale Postmortem: Creator Bryan Fuller Answers Our Burning Questions by Adam Bryant
http://www.tvguide.com/news/hannibal-postmortem-bryan-fuller-1067011.aspx
There's only one place to start: Will vomits up an ear! Where did that idea come from?
Bryan Fuller: [Laughs] It was something that I knew was going to happen, even before I started writing the pilot. The last run of episodes was going to [have] Will Graham throwing up an ear, fearing that he had eaten somebody. Initially it was a finger, [but] I just thought, 'There's not as much chew time for a finger as there is an ear.' [Laughs] It was a really great destination to drive to and one of those kind of sparks of inspiration: Will Graham has to feel like he's become Garret Jacob Hobbs in a complete way. And how horrific to think that somehow someone else got inside you in a way that could only mean that you ate them?
It was easy to assume Hannibal had framed Will, but did you think viewers might actually wonder if Will had committed the murders?Fuller: I wanted both of those things. We very carefully only showed pertinent information to the audience. I wanted it to be unclear whether Will could have done these things and also be unclear to Will Graham. Even though he may have the convictions of his investigation, he still has huge blank spots in his memory. But we essentially tell the audience that when Will left Abigail Hobbs, she had an ear. And the last person we saw her with both ears with was Hannibal.
Speaking of what we don't see, how did Hannibal get the ear in Will's stomach?
Fuller: Hannibal is a wily guy. [Laughs] As a storyteller, I have to have an answer in reality. On one hand, I could see a version of Hannibal sneaking into Will's house with an ear on a stick and pushing it down his throat. On the other hand, as a lover of horror and sci-fi and quasi-supernatural storytelling, I love the explanation that Hannibal is a devil. But that was not Thomas Harris' intention. So, he has to have been physically able to accomplish that in some manner. If we did something where it was sort of magical, then I think we would lose our grip on reality. That's something I think is very important to maintain, out of respect for the audience and also the character and his origins. But in my mind, I love the greater mythology of Hannibal being a very punitive devil.
So, is he punishing Will?
Fuller: I think that everything that Hannibal has done to Will has been a radical, unorthodox form of therapy. I would argue that all of the deeds still come from a place of genuine care. He is trying to help Will see himself better and get to a truer version of who Hannibal thinks Will is. Even setting him up to take the fall for these murders has been an act of therapy, in Hannibal's mind.
Are we to believe this was always Hannibal's master plan? Or does he just adapt very well?
Fuller: I think he has a very loose plan, but he's also quite adaptive. He couldn't have predicted when he met Will that he was going to be suffering from encephalitis. But once he smelled that on him, he knew that, "Oh, this is going to be an interesting playing field for Will and his perception of reality, so I'm going to take advantage of it."
Is it troubling how quickly Jack accepts that Will could be guilty of these crimes?
Fuller: Hannibal is playing off of Jack's intrinsic guilt over what's happening to Will. From the get-go, [Jack] knew that he was taking a man out of a classroom and putting him into a dangerous psychological situation. He had no idea how dangerous it was, but the water was getting hot. Jack was aware of the increase in temperature — he just didn't know that it was going to be Will's brain that was boiling over. So, to deal with his own guilt on that matter, it would be very easy for him to go to the place of, "Will did it." All of the evidence is pointing that direction, and clearly he has no reason to suspect Hannibal at this stage. We'll see more in Season 2 of Hannibal's further manipulations of Jack Crawford on that front.
Jack conveniently comes in after Will accuses Hannibal of all the murders. Would Jack have been swayed if he had heard Will's thoughts?Fuller: In Season 2, Jack will be investigating those accusations. I think after Will woke up from getting shot by Jack and before he was put into the institution, he shared his theories about Hannibal. Now it's up to those characters and Hannibal Lecter to either support or deny those accusations in a properly investigated way.
Do you intend to keep Will locked up for a while?
Fuller: He will be incarcerated, and we will be dealing with all of the threads of that. We need to see all of the things happen that would happen in that scenario. Will Graham needs to go on trial for the murders that he may or may not have committed. Jack has to be brought before a review board for his participation in what happened to Will, and Hannibal, as Will's psychiatrist, is going to continue to try to help Will see the truth that Hannibal wants him to see. The ball is up in the air in so many ways for Jack and Hannibal and Will. The fun of Season 2 will be spiking those balls.
Will Dr. Chilton get his organs put back inside himself and be trying to analyze Will's mind?Fuller: Yes. I would love to have a lot more of Raul Esparza and Dr. Frederick Chilton in Season 2. He will be a nemesis of sorts for Will in the institution.
I loved the role reversal at the end. Fuller: When I was breaking the pilot and thinking about where this goes, it occurred to that Hannibal needs to win this round. Hannibal needs to have everyone in the world think that Will Graham is a killer. And therefore, it will be less work to get Will to believe that he is a killer. I had always pitched in every conversation that ... the last shot of the season is that iconic shot from Silence of the Lambs where you're coming down the corridor toward the last cell on the left and instead of finding Hannibal Lecter there, you find Will Graham. It felt very poetic and it felt powerful and it felt full of promise. It promised so much story, and now we get to deliver on it.
From the beginning, you made it clear you were telling your own story, but do you fear that this choice will alienate some of the diehard Red Dragon fans?
Fuller: If you look at the scant two pages that talk about Will Graham's back story, they tell us that Will was so psychologically compromised from investigating the Minnesota Shrike that he had to become institutionalized. So, I feel like I've got a car jack and I've wedged it in between those lines. I've just opened them up for room to tell more between the lines than what you may have anticipated. But we're also sticking to the canon. We will deliver what we've come to expect in Red Dragon of Will Graham, but he'll just have a longer, harder journey to get there. I gave myself room to wiggle, so we're going to see some wiggling in the next two seasons.
Does Will have any allies at this point? Perhaps Alana (Caroline Dhavernas)?
Fuller: I think we'll see shifts in relationships. Will has always felt alone and we've seen him victimized by his isolation in the first season. Now, Will has to step up and defend himself and also be much more proactive as a character because it is his life on the line. The tragedy for Will is that he allowed himself to open up and get close to Hannibal, and now he fears that that is the exact wrong person that he should have been so intimate with. Hannibal has so clearly convinced all of those around Will that Will could be capable of all of this. And Will has convinced everyone around him that he could capable of this by his own behavior.
Can Will distance himself from Hannibal, or will he have access to him as his attending psychiatrist?
Fuller: Hannibal will always want to be close to Will. He sees a great potential in Will as this pure human being, and he's seduced by Will's purity. He's attracted to it, and he's also very eager to conquer it in some way.
Is Hannibal's obsession with Will also an attempt to more fully understand himself? Fuller: Hannibal's absolutely on a journey of self-exploration, and he's fascinated by his fascination with Will. He is curious about this change that's come over him. It's sort of like somebody who is falling in love for the first time and had never felt that was actually a possibility for them. That's a fresh, unexplored territory for Hannibal that is exciting to him and interesting to him. Maybe his ultimate downfall is his attraction and affection for Will Graham.
But for now, Hannibal is on top.Fuller: Hannibal Lecter has won this round, certainly. But one of the exciting things moving forward with Season 2 is that Will has hit rock bottom. One of the great gifts that the universe can give somebody in a tumultuous state of mind is for them to hit rock bottom and be free. Now, Will has nothing to lose, and he will be a very dangerous dance partner for Hannibal Lecter.
A,V, Club: Bryan Fuller walks us through Hannibal’s debut season by Todd VanDerWerff
Highly detailed and spoiler-filled reviews:
Part 1 of 4. http://www.avclub.com/articles/bryan-fuller-walks-us-through-the-first-three-epis,100582/
Part 2 of 4. http://www.avclub.com/articles/bryan-fuller-walks-us-through-hannibals-debut-seas,100644/
Part 3 of 4.http://www.avclub.com/articles/bryan-fuller-walks-us-through-hannibals-debut-seas,100684/
Part 4 of 4. http://www.avclub.com/articles/bryan-fuller-walks-us-through-hannibals-debut-seas,100760/
Comic-Con: ‘Hannibal’ Crew Teases Season 2 Two-Part Opener By Jen Yamato
http://www.deadline.com/2013/07/comic-con-hannibal-season-2-two-part-bryan-fuller-hugh-dancy/
Exec producer Bryan Fuller revealed Thursday at Comic-Con that the crime series’ second season will return in a two-parter followed by a trial in Episode 3. “We have the season arc crafted, and it’s a doozy,” Fuller teased to a packed ballroom. “We just finished breaking Episode 3, and we are breaking Episode 4 now.” The Season 2 openers will act as a pseudo pilot, Fuller said, reintroducing characters who now find themselves in much different places. “Will knows something no one else knows, and it’s a great place to put a character,” Fuller said. “One of the things I was most excited about in Season 2 was seeing Will Graham hit rock bottom.”
:
:
The recap was a reminder of how Hannibal routinely depicts some
of the most extreme graphic kills on broadcast TV. Fuller says network
suits rarely object. Except on the Season 1 episode “Coquilles,” in
which a killer mutilates his victims into angels to watch over him in
his sleep. “We had two people who were nude and we saw their buttocks,”
Fuller said. “They were dead, they were flayed open, and cracked in many
ways. Their butt crack was the least offensive of the ones they were
sporting, [but] the network said no. … I asked why, because of the
exposed spine and muscle tissue and flayed skin? I said, ‘What if we
fill the butt cracks with blood so you can’t see them?’ They said OK.”Fuller & Co. spoke often and fondly of Red Dragon, the 1981 novel by Thomas Harris that Hannibal is adapted from, joining numerous films (The Silence of the Lambs, Manhunter, Red Dragon) that feature the famous Dr. Hannibal Lecter character. “I was going back to that book until the day we finished shooting,” said Dancy. “I read it a couple of times and tried to let it be in the background.” Slade, whom De Laurentiis announced will direct more episodes, wants to film the book’s real ending into the show’s future. Absent co-star Mads Mikkelsen also got love from the panel. “He screen tested because he was not so well known,” said De Laurentiis of the Danish actor, who at the time was most familiar to stateside audiences for Casino Royale. “But I think he really owns the role now.” Fuller described the take on Lecter that won Mikkelsen his vote. “It was about finding an actor who had a specific take on the character,” said Fuller. “He said he didn’t want to play Anthony Hopkins or Brian Cox. He wanted to play Satan.”
Friday, June 21, 2013
More *SPOILER* Interviews for the Finale
Further Interviews with Bryan Fuller, I'm guessing they have *spoilers* for the season finale...
http://ie.ign.com/articles/2013/06/21/hannibal-bryan-fuller-on-season-1s-big-finale-and-whats-next-in-season-2
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/hannibal-producer-bryan-fuller-on-the-season-finale-and-whats-next-for-dr-lecter-and-will
http://www.assignmentx.com/2013/exclusive-interview-more-hannibal-news-with-bryan-fuller-and-pushing-daises-too/
http://screencrush.com/nbc-hannibal-spoilers-bryan-fuller-red-dragon/
http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/hannibal-producer-bryan-fuller-on-cannibal-cuisine-renewal-and-more
http://www.digitalspy.ie/ustv/news/a491414/hannibal-bryan-fuller-on-future-silence-of-the-lambs-is-season-five.html
TV Guide: Hannibal Finale Postmortem: Creator Bryan Fuller Answers Our Burning Questions by Adam Bryant
"Hello, Dr. Lecter."
Those words, so familiar to fans of Thomas Harris' novels and the films they've inspired, closed the first season of NBC's Hannibal, which ended with an inspired bit of role reversal. Instead of seeing special FBI investigator Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) greeting Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) in his famous cell at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, viewers saw Hannibal visiting Will, who had been locked up for a series of murders he didn't commit.
Wait, what?!
Let's recap: After Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl) discovered in the penultimate episode that Hannibal was actually the copycat killer who'd been mimicking her father's murders, Hannibal had no choice but to kill her. However, when Will wakes up from one of his nightmares and vomits up a human ear (!), Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) & Co. become a bit suspicious. They process Will and use DNA evidence to match the ear to Abigail Hobbs. (They also find her blood under Will's finger nails.)
Worse, Hannibal has also turned human remains from his other copycat victims into some of the fishing lures in Will's house. Shortly, thereafter, Will is arrested and although he can't say for sure he didn't kill Abigail, he's determined to prove he isn't a serial killer. So, he breaks out of custody and has Hannibal take him back to Abigail's house. Once there, Will finally realizes that Hannibal could be the real copycat killer, but when he tries to shoot him, Jack shoots Will and has him committed.
So, what's next for Will? Can he prove Hannibal is the real killer or have all his FBI allies turned against him? We turned to executive producer Bryan Fuller to answer our burning questions.
There's only one place to start: Will vomits up an ear! Where did that idea come from?
Bryan Fuller: [Laughs] It was something that I knew was going to happen, even before I started writing the pilot. The last run of episodes was going to [have] Will Graham throwing up an ear, fearing that he had eaten somebody. Initially it was a finger, [but] I just thought, 'There's not as much chew time for a finger as there is an ear.' [Laughs] It was a really great destination to drive to and one of those kind of sparks of inspiration: Will Graham has to feel like he's become Garret Jacob Hobbs in a complete way. And how horrific to think that somehow someone else got inside you in a way that could only mean that you ate them?
It was easy to assume Hannibal had framed Will, but did you think viewers might actually wonder if Will had committed the murders?Fuller: I wanted both of those things. We very carefully only showed pertinent information to the audience. I wanted it to be unclear whether Will could have done these things and also be unclear to Will Graham. Even though he may have the convictions of his investigation, he still has huge blank spots in his memory. But we essentially tell the audience that when Will left Abigail Hobbs, she had an ear. And the last person we saw her with both ears with was Hannibal.
Speaking of what we don't see, how did Hannibal get the ear in Will's stomach?
Fuller: Hannibal is a wily guy. [Laughs] As a storyteller, I have to have an answer in reality. On one hand, I could see a version of Hannibal sneaking into Will's house with an ear on a stick and pushing it down his throat. On the other hand, as a lover of horror and sci-fi and quasi-supernatural storytelling, I love the explanation that Hannibal is a devil. But that was not Thomas Harris' intention. So, he has to have been physically able to accomplish that in some manner. If we did something where it was sort of magical, then I think we would lose our grip on reality. That's something I think is very important to maintain, out of respect for the audience and also the character and his origins. But in my mind, I love the greater mythology of Hannibal being a very punitive devil.
So, is he punishing Will?
Fuller: I think that everything that Hannibal has done to Will has been a radical, unorthodox form of therapy. I would argue that all of the deeds still come from a place of genuine care. He is trying to help Will see himself better and get to a truer version of who Hannibal thinks Will is. Even setting him up to take the fall for these murders has been an act of therapy, in Hannibal's mind.
Are we to believe this was always Hannibal's master plan? Or does he just adapt very well?
Fuller: I think he has a very loose plan, but he's also quite adaptive. He couldn't have predicted when he met Will that he was going to be suffering from encephalitis. But once he smelled that on him, he knew that, "Oh, this is going to be an interesting playing field for Will and his perception of reality, so I'm going to take advantage of it."
Is it troubling how quickly Jack accepts that Will could be guilty of these crimes?
Fuller: Hannibal is playing off of Jack's intrinsic guilt over what's happening to Will. From the get-go, [Jack] knew that he was taking a man out of a classroom and putting him into a dangerous psychological situation. He had no idea how dangerous it was, but the water was getting hot. Jack was aware of the increase in temperature — he just didn't know that it was going to be Will's brain that was boiling over. So, to deal with his own guilt on that matter, it would be very easy for him to go to the place of, "Will did it." All of the evidence is pointing that direction, and clearly he has no reason to suspect Hannibal at this stage. We'll see more in Season 2 of Hannibal's further manipulations of Jack Crawford on that front.
Jack conveniently comes in after Will accuses Hannibal of all the murders. Would Jack have been swayed if he had heard Will's thoughts?Fuller: In Season 2, Jack will be investigating those accusations. I think after Will woke up from getting shot by Jack and before he was put into the institution, he shared his theories about Hannibal. Now it's up to those characters and Hannibal Lecter to either support or deny those accusations in a properly investigated way.
Do you intend to keep Will locked up for a while?
Fuller: He will be incarcerated, and we will be dealing with all of the threads of that. We need to see all of the things happen that would happen in that scenario. Will Graham needs to go on trial for the murders that he may or may not have committed. Jack has to be brought before a review board for his participation in what happened to Will, and Hannibal, as Will's psychiatrist, is going to continue to try to help Will see the truth that Hannibal wants him to see. The ball is up in the air in so many ways for Jack and Hannibal and Will. The fun of Season 2 will be spiking those balls.
Will Dr. Chilton get his organs put back inside himself and be trying to analyze Will's mind?Fuller: Yes. I would love to have a lot more of Raul Esparza and Dr. Frederick Chilton in Season 2. He will be a nemesis of sorts for Will in the institution.
I loved the role reversal at the end. Fuller: When I was breaking the pilot and thinking about where this goes, it occurred to that Hannibal needs to win this round. Hannibal needs to have everyone in the world think that Will Graham is a killer. And therefore, it will be less work to get Will to believe that he is a killer. I had always pitched in every conversation that ... the last shot of the season is that iconic shot from Silence of the Lambs where you're coming down the corridor toward the last cell on the left and instead of finding Hannibal Lecter there, you find Will Graham. It felt very poetic and it felt powerful and it felt full of promise. It promised so much story, and now we get to deliver on it.
From the beginning, you made it clear you were telling your own story, but do you fear that this choice will alienate some of the diehard Red Dragon fans?
Fuller: If you look at the scant two pages that talk about Will Graham's back story, they tell us that Will was so psychologically compromised from investigating the Minnesota Shrike that he had to become institutionalized. So, I feel like I've got a car jack and I've wedged it in between those lines. I've just opened them up for room to tell more between the lines than what you may have anticipated. But we're also sticking to the canon. We will deliver what we've come to expect in Red Dragon of Will Graham, but he'll just have a longer, harder journey to get there. I gave myself room to wiggle, so we're going to see some wiggling in the next two seasons.
Does Will have any allies at this point? Perhaps Alana (Caroline Dhavernas)?
Fuller: I think we'll see shifts in relationships. Will has always felt alone and we've seen him victimized by his isolation in the first season. Now, Will has to step up and defend himself and also be much more proactive as a character because it is his life on the line. The tragedy for Will is that he allowed himself to open up and get close to Hannibal, and now he fears that that is the exact wrong person that he should have been so intimate with. Hannibal has so clearly convinced all of those around Will that Will could be capable of all of this. And Will has convinced everyone around him that he could capable of this by his own behavior.
Can Will distance himself from Hannibal, or will he have access to him as his attending psychiatrist?
Fuller: Hannibal will always want to be close to Will. He sees a great potential in Will as this pure human being, and he's seduced by Will's purity. He's attracted to it, and he's also very eager to conquer it in some way.
Is Hannibal's obsession with Will also an attempt to more fully understand himself? Fuller: Hannibal's absolutely on a journey of self-exploration, and he's fascinated by his fascination with Will. He is curious about this change that's come over him. It's sort of like somebody who is falling in love for the first time and had never felt that was actually a possibility for them. That's a fresh, unexplored territory for Hannibal that is exciting to him and interesting to him. Maybe his ultimate downfall is his attraction and affection for Will Graham.
But for now, Hannibal is on top.Fuller: Hannibal Lecter has won this round, certainly. But one of the exciting things moving forward with Season 2 is that Will has hit rock bottom. One of the great gifts that the universe can give somebody in a tumultuous state of mind is for them to hit rock bottom and be free. Now, Will has nothing to lose, and he will be a very dangerous dance partner for Hannibal Lecter.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
IGN: Hannibal Coming to San Diego Comic-Con by Eric Goldman
Friday, June 14, 2013
AssignmentX: Bryan Fuller Interview - Part 1 by Abbie Bernstein
An excellent interview by Abbie Bernstein on Assignment X, some highlights below, but check out the full interview here:
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AX: Prior to HANNIBAL, had you been looking to do something this dark, or is it that that once you got the project, you found within yourself, “Hey, I actually want to go here”?
FULLER: Well, I had always been a horror fan, and I have pictures from my youth of makeup effects with arrows sticking all over throughout my body like a pincushion. For me, I also enjoy a little bit of whimsy and levity and humor to cut my horror. But it was interesting. I felt like, “Oh, this will be different for me.” That was just the big appeal – to do something that was very dramatic, that was more serious in tone, and I think it was just to cleanse my palate in a way and try something different, and really engage the characters, not from a romantic comedy point of view, but very high-stakes drama. Also, psychological horror is so insidious that I thought, “How can I shape this into my lens that gives it a valid point of view, but also allows me to express myself as an artist?” I still very much consider myself an artist and have to say something with what I’m doing. I can’t just write something that I’m not emotionally connected to in a great way, so I found myself very much emotionally connecting to Will Graham. I have written about characters who experience isolation in various ways and he felt like somebody that was in my wheelhouse. Also, it was fantastic for me to have Hugh Dancy on this project, because we were both Will Graham in different ways, and that he’s such an intelligent actor and so insightful with the character that it was the beginning of a great partnership; I didn’t feel like I was alone.
AX: Hugh Dancy plays Will as though the character has a great sense of shame …
FULLER: Well, there’s a line in RED DRAGON where Will says that he looks at his ability as something grotesque and evil, so I think [he feels] a bit of shame that he can think like these people and he can understand the horrors that men do, and for him, the vulnerability is, “I can understand it – does that mean that there’s a little bit of it inside me?” And that could be where the shame comes from. But he definitely is aware of the darkness and uncomfortable with it, because he I think on some level feels the seduction, and that’s what Hannibal then taps into to try to exploit it.
FULLER: Well, I had always been a horror fan, and I have pictures from my youth of makeup effects with arrows sticking all over throughout my body like a pincushion. For me, I also enjoy a little bit of whimsy and levity and humor to cut my horror. But it was interesting. I felt like, “Oh, this will be different for me.” That was just the big appeal – to do something that was very dramatic, that was more serious in tone, and I think it was just to cleanse my palate in a way and try something different, and really engage the characters, not from a romantic comedy point of view, but very high-stakes drama. Also, psychological horror is so insidious that I thought, “How can I shape this into my lens that gives it a valid point of view, but also allows me to express myself as an artist?” I still very much consider myself an artist and have to say something with what I’m doing. I can’t just write something that I’m not emotionally connected to in a great way, so I found myself very much emotionally connecting to Will Graham. I have written about characters who experience isolation in various ways and he felt like somebody that was in my wheelhouse. Also, it was fantastic for me to have Hugh Dancy on this project, because we were both Will Graham in different ways, and that he’s such an intelligent actor and so insightful with the character that it was the beginning of a great partnership; I didn’t feel like I was alone.
AX: Hugh Dancy plays Will as though the character has a great sense of shame …
FULLER: Well, there’s a line in RED DRAGON where Will says that he looks at his ability as something grotesque and evil, so I think [he feels] a bit of shame that he can think like these people and he can understand the horrors that men do, and for him, the vulnerability is, “I can understand it – does that mean that there’s a little bit of it inside me?” And that could be where the shame comes from. But he definitely is aware of the darkness and uncomfortable with it, because he I think on some level feels the seduction, and that’s what Hannibal then taps into to try to exploit it.
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AX: How many seasons do you have plotted?
FULLER: I can see pretty clearly seven seasons. I think that there are always shifts and alterations and course corrections that you have to take, because you’ll be cruising along and then you’ll hit an idea and go, “Oh, wow, that’s a great idea, we have to do that now.” That being said, I can see the structure for a seven-season arc for the show, but then I also am very open to course corrections along the way to adapt to changes.
AX: If you don’t get to run for seven seasons, are you going to make available to the public in some form what the unaired seasons would have been?FULLER: Well, when you get into Season Four, you get into the literature. And so Season Four would be RED DRAGON, Season Five would be the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS era, Season Six would be the HANNIBAL era, and then Season Seven would be a resolve to the ending of that book. HANNIBAL ends on a cliffhanger. Hannibal Lecter has bonded with Clarice Starling and brainwashed her and they are now quasi-lovers and off as fugitives, and so that’s a cliffhanger. It might be interesting to resolve that in some way and to bring Will Graham back into the picture. So once we get two more seasons, say, of the television show, those are the aren’t-novelized stories, and then we would get into expansions of the novels after that and kind of using the novels as a backbone for season arcs that would then be kind of enhanced.
FULLER: I can see pretty clearly seven seasons. I think that there are always shifts and alterations and course corrections that you have to take, because you’ll be cruising along and then you’ll hit an idea and go, “Oh, wow, that’s a great idea, we have to do that now.” That being said, I can see the structure for a seven-season arc for the show, but then I also am very open to course corrections along the way to adapt to changes.
AX: If you don’t get to run for seven seasons, are you going to make available to the public in some form what the unaired seasons would have been?FULLER: Well, when you get into Season Four, you get into the literature. And so Season Four would be RED DRAGON, Season Five would be the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS era, Season Six would be the HANNIBAL era, and then Season Seven would be a resolve to the ending of that book. HANNIBAL ends on a cliffhanger. Hannibal Lecter has bonded with Clarice Starling and brainwashed her and they are now quasi-lovers and off as fugitives, and so that’s a cliffhanger. It might be interesting to resolve that in some way and to bring Will Graham back into the picture. So once we get two more seasons, say, of the television show, those are the aren’t-novelized stories, and then we would get into expansions of the novels after that and kind of using the novels as a backbone for season arcs that would then be kind of enhanced.
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AX: Assuming you cover the eras of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL, when Will Graham isn’t a character in the books, what do you do with Hugh Dancy for those two seasons?
FULLER: Well, it would be about incorporating him in a way that he hasn’t been incorporated in the books, because Will Graham was only mentioned in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, he was not seen, and so I would be curious to see what happens to Will Graham after RED DRAGON. By the time of RED DRAGON, he’s married to Molly and has her son from a previous marriage, but doesn’t have any children of his own. And then that relationship is more complicated by Francis Dolarhyde and there were suggestions that there was a not-so-happy ending for Will Graham after RED DRAGON because he has his face carved up and you wonder what’s going to happen to Will now, and I’m curious to see what happens to Will after that.
AX: How did you decide to cast a Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen, as Hannibal?
FULLER: Hannibal Lecter is actually Lithuanian, and Eastern European, which is not Denmark [laughs]. But the interesting thing for me was to work with Mads Mikkelsen, because I think he’s a phenomenal actor and not just in CASINO ROYALE and a lot of the big genre films that had made me aware of him through, “Hey, that’s the guy with the eye patch,” or he’s played heavies in these big science-fiction/fantasy films, but for me what did it was this film AFTER THE WEDDING. It’s a beautiful film and he plays this heartbroken man who is trying to get back a lost romance and he was so sweet and emotional and vulnerable, and I really wanted meet him, because I felt like [part of HANNIBAL is] about Hannibal Lecter trying to find a friend, because he’s lonely in his own way. I wanted to see that vulnerability, that bonding, that need for a companion to share his life with in a way that he thought would never be possible. Then along comes Will Graham, a man who empathizes with the worst of humanity, and perhaps there could be a chance for Hannibal to have a friend after all. It felt like it was such a fascinating place to take a villain. It would be very easy to [depict] Hannibal Lecter as a psychopath or a sociopath, and in the book RED DRAGON, Thomas Harris says, “He’s not really a psychopath or a sociopath, because he does understand empathy, so what kind of crazy is he, and the answer is, we don’t know.” Primarily because it’s a work of fiction, but he does not fit any of the kind of the categories of the multi-phasic tests for psychopaths. He doesn’t fit any of those columns, so [the series] looks at him not as a psycho, but as someone who was completely Other.
When [Mikkelsen’s] name entered the [casting] conversation, I was like, “Oh, my God, yes, yes, yes. Yes, absolutely.” Because I had seen AFTER THE WEDDING and was aware of what an experienced and full-bodied actor he was, or is, and I think a lot of people may have been, “Oh, well, he always plays villains.” Well, he plays the villain in American movies, but he’s actually the George Clooney of Denmark [laughs].
At the very beginning of the season, Mads comes up and he says, “I think Hannibal should be much more active and I’m really good at fight scenes, so if you write one, I will nail it.” And I was like, “Okay, great, we’ll write one.” And he did a fight sequence – all of the stunt choreographers were like, “Oh, my God, this guy is better than anyone that we’ve ever worked with like this.” His experience as a dancer really helps. He has such control of his instrument and his body, so he really is somebody that you want to see in an action sequence.
Mads Mikkelsen’s approach to the character was not to play him as Anthony Hopkins did, but here he is, this fallen angel who is capable of horrific things, but yet has an awe for humanity and an appreciation of the [human] condition. And that felt like it was such a fascinating approach to the character. And when I see the episodes again, I look at him now not as Hannibal Lecter, but as this guy [who] has that really distant look in his eyes, that infinity of thought, that goes beyond a mortal man. It’s such a smart, interesting, fresh approach to this character that Mads has taken, not that we have altered course to accommodate it, but had it climb aboard and we were all set off to the same destination.
[Hannibal’s] arrogance is not sort of outward – there’s no dismissing of fellow man, no sense of offense or, “You have offended me, good sir.” With Hannibal, he’s not so much offended as he is kind of observational, and there are moments of his micro-expressions that [unint.] a big scene. I love the look after he snaps his patient’s [Franklin, played by Dan Fogler] neck when he’s confronted by [fellow serial killer] Budge [played by Demore Barnes] and drops [Franklin] like a bag of rocks, and just looks back at [Budge] with this innocent kind of, “Well, what’s next? What shall we do now?” It’s so delightful, because it wasn’t like, “I just killed a man because he had it coming because he was annoying,” it was like, “Well, that happened, and now I’m curious what happens next.”
AX: Before Hannibal kills Franklin, he tells Franklin he should leave. Is he sincere in wanting to let him go?
FULLER: Yes.
AX: So it’s, “If you don’t go now, I have to get rid of you”?
FULLER: Right. What I love about Hannibal is that he’s a good doctor for his patients and he wants to help them, and even though Franklin is a very annoying character and is a comic foil for Hannibal in some ways, I do think that Hannibal actually cares about Franklin and sees the flaws in his humanity and finds him endearing in some way. And there are people who see that and think, “Oh, that guy was dead from the moment we saw him,” and I’m like, “Well, this version of Hannibal would consider that rude,” because Franklin hasn’t done anything terrible in terms of his humanity. He’s clearly a lost and lonely man, and I think Hannibal has empathy for that. And when [he and Budge] are at the dinner table, Budge says, “I want to kill Franklin,” and Hannibal says, “Don’t kill Franklin.” It’s like, “Why?” With Franklin, he was just eager and lonely, so I don’t think he necessarily falls onto Hannibal’s plate [laughs], in Hannibal’s thinking. So I think right up until the moment that he snaps Franklin’s neck, he was hoping that Franklin would walk away. But [makes philosophical shrugging sound], eh.
FULLER: Well, it would be about incorporating him in a way that he hasn’t been incorporated in the books, because Will Graham was only mentioned in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, he was not seen, and so I would be curious to see what happens to Will Graham after RED DRAGON. By the time of RED DRAGON, he’s married to Molly and has her son from a previous marriage, but doesn’t have any children of his own. And then that relationship is more complicated by Francis Dolarhyde and there were suggestions that there was a not-so-happy ending for Will Graham after RED DRAGON because he has his face carved up and you wonder what’s going to happen to Will now, and I’m curious to see what happens to Will after that.
AX: How did you decide to cast a Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen, as Hannibal?
FULLER: Hannibal Lecter is actually Lithuanian, and Eastern European, which is not Denmark [laughs]. But the interesting thing for me was to work with Mads Mikkelsen, because I think he’s a phenomenal actor and not just in CASINO ROYALE and a lot of the big genre films that had made me aware of him through, “Hey, that’s the guy with the eye patch,” or he’s played heavies in these big science-fiction/fantasy films, but for me what did it was this film AFTER THE WEDDING. It’s a beautiful film and he plays this heartbroken man who is trying to get back a lost romance and he was so sweet and emotional and vulnerable, and I really wanted meet him, because I felt like [part of HANNIBAL is] about Hannibal Lecter trying to find a friend, because he’s lonely in his own way. I wanted to see that vulnerability, that bonding, that need for a companion to share his life with in a way that he thought would never be possible. Then along comes Will Graham, a man who empathizes with the worst of humanity, and perhaps there could be a chance for Hannibal to have a friend after all. It felt like it was such a fascinating place to take a villain. It would be very easy to [depict] Hannibal Lecter as a psychopath or a sociopath, and in the book RED DRAGON, Thomas Harris says, “He’s not really a psychopath or a sociopath, because he does understand empathy, so what kind of crazy is he, and the answer is, we don’t know.” Primarily because it’s a work of fiction, but he does not fit any of the kind of the categories of the multi-phasic tests for psychopaths. He doesn’t fit any of those columns, so [the series] looks at him not as a psycho, but as someone who was completely Other.
When [Mikkelsen’s] name entered the [casting] conversation, I was like, “Oh, my God, yes, yes, yes. Yes, absolutely.” Because I had seen AFTER THE WEDDING and was aware of what an experienced and full-bodied actor he was, or is, and I think a lot of people may have been, “Oh, well, he always plays villains.” Well, he plays the villain in American movies, but he’s actually the George Clooney of Denmark [laughs].
At the very beginning of the season, Mads comes up and he says, “I think Hannibal should be much more active and I’m really good at fight scenes, so if you write one, I will nail it.” And I was like, “Okay, great, we’ll write one.” And he did a fight sequence – all of the stunt choreographers were like, “Oh, my God, this guy is better than anyone that we’ve ever worked with like this.” His experience as a dancer really helps. He has such control of his instrument and his body, so he really is somebody that you want to see in an action sequence.
Mads Mikkelsen’s approach to the character was not to play him as Anthony Hopkins did, but here he is, this fallen angel who is capable of horrific things, but yet has an awe for humanity and an appreciation of the [human] condition. And that felt like it was such a fascinating approach to the character. And when I see the episodes again, I look at him now not as Hannibal Lecter, but as this guy [who] has that really distant look in his eyes, that infinity of thought, that goes beyond a mortal man. It’s such a smart, interesting, fresh approach to this character that Mads has taken, not that we have altered course to accommodate it, but had it climb aboard and we were all set off to the same destination.
[Hannibal’s] arrogance is not sort of outward – there’s no dismissing of fellow man, no sense of offense or, “You have offended me, good sir.” With Hannibal, he’s not so much offended as he is kind of observational, and there are moments of his micro-expressions that [unint.] a big scene. I love the look after he snaps his patient’s [Franklin, played by Dan Fogler] neck when he’s confronted by [fellow serial killer] Budge [played by Demore Barnes] and drops [Franklin] like a bag of rocks, and just looks back at [Budge] with this innocent kind of, “Well, what’s next? What shall we do now?” It’s so delightful, because it wasn’t like, “I just killed a man because he had it coming because he was annoying,” it was like, “Well, that happened, and now I’m curious what happens next.”
AX: Before Hannibal kills Franklin, he tells Franklin he should leave. Is he sincere in wanting to let him go?
FULLER: Yes.
AX: So it’s, “If you don’t go now, I have to get rid of you”?
FULLER: Right. What I love about Hannibal is that he’s a good doctor for his patients and he wants to help them, and even though Franklin is a very annoying character and is a comic foil for Hannibal in some ways, I do think that Hannibal actually cares about Franklin and sees the flaws in his humanity and finds him endearing in some way. And there are people who see that and think, “Oh, that guy was dead from the moment we saw him,” and I’m like, “Well, this version of Hannibal would consider that rude,” because Franklin hasn’t done anything terrible in terms of his humanity. He’s clearly a lost and lonely man, and I think Hannibal has empathy for that. And when [he and Budge] are at the dinner table, Budge says, “I want to kill Franklin,” and Hannibal says, “Don’t kill Franklin.” It’s like, “Why?” With Franklin, he was just eager and lonely, so I don’t think he necessarily falls onto Hannibal’s plate [laughs], in Hannibal’s thinking. So I think right up until the moment that he snaps Franklin’s neck, he was hoping that Franklin would walk away. But [makes philosophical shrugging sound], eh.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
SciFiNow Issue 81: Bryan Fuller Interview
SciFiNow #81, pages 50-53, on sale now has an interview with Bryan Fuller
and some lovely pictures of Hannibal.
and some lovely pictures of Hannibal.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
EXCLUSIVE TV Goodness Q&A: EP/Director David Slade Discusses Hannibal by Kara Howland
Some Highlights below, but the full interview at:
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TV GOODNESS: Let’s talk about Hannibal. When did you first hear about it and how did you become involved?
David: “There’s a potentially interesting answer in this and I’m trying to figure out how to word it. So, I would have liked to become involved through nepotism, but it didn’t work that way. I had met with Martha De Laurentiis and I had met with Dino, who passed away a year or so ago and we were talking about doing a film, which didn’t really work out. Just wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right project. Martha is the executive producer of Hannibal and she had nothing whatsoever to with me directing it. [Laughs.] The pilot was written by Bryan Fuller. At this point I think they had Hugh Dancy and that was it. We didn’t have any other cast. And I was just sent the script and it was astonishingly visual and astonishingly fascinating. Pretty much everything that was in that pilot was in the script and to me ideas speak the loudest and these ideas were multifaceted. [Specifically], the show spoke to horror by pulling out a lead character who is damaged by looking at violent and horrific things. So it had a viewpoint, yet at the same time it wasn’t restrictive. It seemed responsible, if you know what I mean. It seemed smart, it was definitely intelligent. The characters, the dialogue was wonderful. Quite frankly, you don’t often get scripts that good in film so to have a television script sent to me – doesn’t matter what the medium is - it was a fantastic, well-written script. I had to do the usual thing you do as a director where you go and you meet a bunch of people and you tell them what you think you can do to help and eventually they fund you and say, ‘Okay let’s go and do this.’ And that’s really agonizing, but that’s not what I want to dwell on. It takes forever. You’re like, ‘Ok and so we spoke last week and yes we did and we’d love to work with you.Thank you.’ And it just goes on and on. But that’s the process. There’s a huge difference between ‘in talks’ and ‘in development’ and being on set shooting. You never assume anything’s real until you’re actually there but in this sense I really wanted it. I think the point I’m trying to make is that I’d become quite good at being okay about that. The phrase I use is: no news is no news. And you just get on with the next thing and keep busy doing other things. But this one I really wanted to happen so I kept calling them and I keep going and knocking on people’s doors and eventually they said, ‘Oh alright. Yes, you’re in.’ And then I went and met with Hugh Dancy. And Bryan Fuller said to me, ‘We’re thinking about Mads Mikkelsen.’ And I was just flabbergasted. That’s exactly who I was thinking of and I couldn’t think of anyone better. And I said great. Then I went to New York. Hugh was on Broadway in a play called Venus in Fur and Mads Mikkelsen was at the same performance, which wasn’t accidental. It was all planned so we could meet up and we went and the 3 of us discussed a scene and we put that scene on tape and bang Mads was cast. And that’s how it all started. It just started with this great material. It’s about two things when you’re at the beginning. It’s about the material. It’s also about the people and Bryan Fuller is just so smart. We were on exactly the same page. We were almost finishing each others sentences by the time we finished our first meeting so it was- I think it was a good pairing.”
TV GOODNESS: Did you always want to be an EP on the show or were they just interested in you as a director at first? How did that come about?
David: “So when you do a pilot for a TV show as you probably know already, the model you’re always told about by people who work in television is this: That as a director they want you to come on, they want you to shape the show, they want you do set a look, set a tone, essentially make a kind of mold from which they can cast all the extra shows that are gonna happen. And it rarely works out that way, but in this instance it really did. And I was a very hands-on executive producer and I was an executive producer from the beginning because they needed to give me a certain amount of authority to make the decisions that would shape the show visually speaking. To start off it’s one thing to ask someone to come and help you create a palette for a show that hopefully stands out on network television. It’s another to actually allow you to do it. I’ve got to have the authority to be able to do it so that I can do what I’m promising to do. So that was the beginning. It worked. It went really well and we got that look. The opening sequence of the pilot, ‘Aperitif,’ where we begin with Will Graham walking backwards out of a crime scene – Bryan and I understood exactly what that was going to be. But I don’t think anybody really understood what that was going to be until they saw the first cut. And it became apparent that I wasn’t just the guy saying ‘ cut’ and ‘action,’ I really was shaping the show and had to hang around a little bit to help keep it shaped because in this instance they really did want the show to get shaped and stay shaped. So what I have been doing is setting a certain look and talking with at least one director and then they go forward about how we shot the episodes I did and how to continue that look through all the episodes without containing anybody. Just saying, ‘If you wanted this is the palette. We encourage you to do it.’ These are the kinds of shots we do and these are the kinds of lens we may use and kind of context and the visual language of how Will decriminalizes certain places, to we’re gonna use time-lapse, to DSLR cameras to do all our exterior establishing wide shots and that’s a specific thing. You’ll notice every time you see a location exterior the clouds are all blasting by and the first intent for that was that you didn’t ever want to know how much time had passed by the time you went inside at the start of the scene. And that’s something that I employ. It was actually quite a cheap, very high-quality alternative to what is usually a really dull shot of exteriors, which are often not even needed in movies. But in television just because the pace is so fast you just need to go, ‘Okay we’re here and go.’ Give the audience as little as you can but as quickly as you can. I think I literally sound mixed the first 6 episodes with our mixers and our composer Brian Reitzell and then I’ve been checking in and doing notes and making sure everything stays great, which it generally does. There’s barely any notes anymore. We’re in a good place where we all know what we’re doing. I was in sound mix [last] week on Monday and color timing to make sure the color palette remains and now I think the colorist we have working on the show really knows the show. All I do is just check in every now and again. But in the beginning it’s really sitting down with the person who does the color timing and saying this is actually not just gonna be mixing certain colors but we’re actually gonna be doing a lot of things that are quite advanced and we’re gonna make sure that these things have a context that can be applied to almost everything. We’re gonna sit down – and I sit down with the colorist – and work on the picture until it looks a certain way and we’ve got there a very specific way and then the idea is that continues toward all the episodes. And, again, it just helps the feel. You don’t want to see that stuff, you just feel that stuff. I’m technically fairly proficient so it’s easy enough for me to go in and say I want to do whatever it is I want to do with the picture. And it’s interesting right now because television is exclusively shot digitally so to stand out and be noticed takes some doing. It takes some doing, some work. You need to get a recipe together of how to make your show look not like every other show.”
TV GOODNESS: You guys have done a great job. It looks beautiful. Every single episode I watch I’m really impressed by how it looks.
David: “Thank you. That’s nice of you to say. [Laughs.] You know, we’re using the same tools as everyone else. We’re just using them differently. We have a really great crew, a phenomenal cast. Obviously we have a phenomenal cast because of who’s in it, all of them. Sets can be whatever. You know they can be tense, they can be friendly. If everyone’s having too much fun then it doesn’t turn out very well but it was actually very fun to do this largely because we had a really great cast and a really great crew and a great set of producers. So that usual kind of reserved energy of fighting the director has to do was able to be put into making the show better rather than just fighting to keep it good. It’s worth saying this because this is not often what happens. Carol Trussell, our producer, is amazing. The show could never happen without her. Bryan and Martha – they all just want the best show and I know that sounds like a stock thing that anybody would say but it’s not always the case and really it shows on this.”
TV GOODNESS: It’s nice when people are really passionate about a project. It really comes across.
David: ”We shot in Toronto. I felt really good about it because there was this contagious feeling that everybody’s job was important. The drivers who were driving people felt like they were doing something worthwhile and it did really help. It just helps everything. Because it’s tough material we’re dealing with. In development and in pre-production I had a really tough time with the imagery. I work in a very emotional way and I was having nightmares and I was getting emotionally distraught. If you’re going to go into a scene with your actor you have to have the same level of energy as your actor. That could be exhausting too. It’s really great that everybody turned out to be nice and wanted to do a really good job. It just helped all that stuff work.”
TV GOODNESS: You mentioned that you directed “Aperitif” and I know you directed “Potage.” What goes into preparing to shoot each episode?
David: “The scripts are constantly being revised because they just keep getting better and time is always the enemy of any TV project. So I’ll have a script. I’ll know it’s probably going to change some and I know also when we work with the actors that’s gonna change so these are the things I have to bear in mind when I’m preparing. I sit down and read the script. I guess at this point – I’ve been doing this longer than I care to talk about – but when I read the script I do see a film. And it’s not just a kind of dream of a film. It actually comes with the technical know-how and where the camera is, what the f-stop is, what’s beyond that camera, what the focus might be, etc., where the lighting is being motivated from, how that’s gonna affect the mood of the scene. So I tend to jot down storyboards in the margins, in the sides. I tend to just visually sketch it out. Now that’s a many draft process. And generally nobody would be able to look at my thumbnail margin storyboards and tell you what they were, they would just be for me. Immediately there’s a visual take on it because I already know emotionally what the take is and essentially I know that my job here is really to be of service to the emotions of the scene. For “Potage,” which aired as episode 3, I’ve worked with all the actors now. I know how they work. I’ve got a good sense of how they’re gonna react, how they’re gonna perform a line. What I don’t do is I don’t project how they should read a line if you see what I mean. It’s pretty important for me to understand the line, understand the intent of the line and the scene but I also think it’s very, very important when you’re working with this caliber of actors to give them the room to be able to work. And then if they ask a question, then of course have an answer. If they ask for direction, of course there is direction to be had. Usually though direction is something which starts as a collaboration with the actor – the scene is about this, I think we did this before. What do you think Will Graham would be thinking at this point? It’s usually me asking a series of questions to the actors, getting the answers to those questions from them – there’s no right or wrong answers – but it gives me a sense of mood. And just policing after that point. Making sure that everything we’ve agreed we’re going to try and do emotionally isn’t either under-reached for or overreached for or make sure everything’s landing as it should. And then just really keep your eyes out for wonderful moments that might just happen. And make sure that it’s fertile ground for those things to grow. When you have no time at all putting actors in a straitjacket is a really bad idea. When I did my first movie Hard Candy we did endless rehearsals, we did a lot of rehearsing. And in that instance directing the actor can become lots of notes, lots of retakes, lots of figuring things out, coming at it from different angles but in television that rehearsal time is rarely there. You get blocking time. We talk through the scene with the actors that you’re going to shoot and then you give everybody an idea of exactly what we’re gonna do for the day. Often what I’ll do is at the beginning of that I’ll get rid of everybody except the actors and we’ll go through the scene, we’ll perform the scene. We’ll deal with it with just the actors there and then eventually everyone comes in and we say, ‘Okay right we’ve kind of figured this out.’ It’s usually 10 minutes, it’s not half an hour. It is good to be respectful to actors in that way and say look there’s no one here but us right now. There’s no wrong or right way to do this. We all have a good idea of what we want to do and that’s kind of how it goes. How it goes for me anyway.”
TV GOODNESS: Are you directing any more episodes this season and are you allowed to tell us anything about them?
David: “I have already directed the season finale, which is episode 13. What could I tell you that wouldn’t be a spoiler? Right now we’re still in the early stages of the show and I think what people are going to expect and what is going to happen is that things are going to increase, things are going to get scarier. Hannibal is very much in the background right now but expect that he will come to the foreground. And it’s not looking good for Will. That’s not a spoiler for anybody’s who’s read Red Dragon. They know exactly how Will ends up because this show is a prequel. So everybody knows where it’s going it’s just how it’s gonna get there.”
TV GOODNESS: When someone other than you directs an episode how much input do you have on who gets the job?
David: “Not very much. It’s generally a scramble and we all kind of go, ‘I’d love to get this guy and I’d love to get that guy,’ and we check on who’s available. We’ve got Peter Medak, he’s brilliant. Or we’ve got Michael Rymer or whoever it is. Great. Fantastic. We’ve had really good directors. The show needs people with vision because it’s a show that has vision. And I think you’d really notice if your director didn’t. It’s a director’s show. Our criteria for what we’ve set up in the pilot is broad enough to allow people to do a lot of things and Bryan is such a visual writer that it is a lot of fun for a director. The only part that’s not fun is the standard amount of television time to do really complicated things. ‘Cause usually its complicated stuff that’s happening. I ask for really good directors. We generally get them. What we don’t do, what I don’t do is- I don’t sit around behind people and tell them how to do their jobs. That’s not the job of an executive producer, I think. I believe that directors should be allowed to direct. So we leave them alone to do it. And usually the odd shot here and there ends up being picked up because of time or schedule. Every now and then you get to shoot a little bit here and there for other episodes, which is fun. It makes you feel like you’re part of a family.”
TV GOODNESS: Is there anything else you want to add?
David: “There’s not that much I can add. The pilot was very technically complex. We did have a few more days on the episode – we had like 11 days. The hierarchy in television, [which] is really well-known, is that the writer is the top of the totem pole whereas in feature films it’s the director, often writer/director. But in this instance, it’s really Bryan of course, it’s his universe and as directors we’re thankful to be able to play in it and he does write a very visual universe for us to play in. But it’s a very level playing field on Hannibal. It’s not the kind of show where the producers and writers run out and the directors come and go. Everybody does get to pitch in and I’m really enjoying it.”
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Showrunner Bryan Fuller Talks HANNIBAL, the Show’s Inception, Gauging the Level of Violence, the Overall Series Plan, Using the RED DRAGON Storyline, More by Christina Radish
Collider: How did Hannibal come about? Was it something you had the idea for, or did the network come to you with this concept?
BRYAN FULLER: How it started was that I was on a fateful plane trip to New York. I had just finished a draft of a script and I was like, “I need to go see some shows on Broadway to cleanse my palate.” I happened to be on the plane with a friend of mine, who randomly was just sitting one row ahead of me and across the aisle. We were catching up and it was like, “Oh, we’re sitting close and we’re chatting!” She was like, “I just got this job to be the CEO of Gaumont U.S. TV, and one of the first properties we’re acquiring is the Hannibal Lecter character. Do you think there’s a TV series there?” Not even asking if I wanted to do it or if I was curious, at all, but I was like, “Yeah, just saying the name Hannibal, I’m curious.”
I read Red Dragon in high school and I was a fan of the Thomas Harris books, so my first question was, “Do you have the Will Graham character?” I feel like Clarice Starling was done so iconographically with Jodie Foster that that’s a pretty bar to reach. You had William Petersen and Ed Norton play Will Graham in previous incarnations of Red Dragon and Manhunter, but I always felt like there was so much more between the lines of Will Graham on the page than had ever been seen in the way that he was presented on screen. He’s such a complex character. What I loved about him, reading him, was that he has personality disorders and he has neuroses, but I felt like I didn’t really see those things as apparently on screen before. I thought, “God, if you have an empathy disorder and you’re putting yourself in the minds of serial killers to catch them, how damaging and traumatizing that would be.”
So, I was really interested in that character and how he existed on the page. I thought, “Well, what if there’s this relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal, that didn’t exist in the books?” In the books, Will Graham met Hannibal twice. He went to his office and asked him some questions, and then he went back again because he had a feeling about something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and that’s when he realized that Hannibal was the man he was after and Hannibal gutted him with a carpet knife, but Will brought him down. So, they only really had two encounters, but there’s that line from Red Dragon where Hannibal says to Will Graham, “Do you know how you caught me?,” and Will Graham says, “Well, because you’re insane,” and Hannibal says, “No, you’re actually more like me than you care to admit,” or something along those lines.
There’s a section in the book where Alan Bloom, who’s now Alana Bloom, and Jack Crawford are talking, and they talk about how Will sometimes picks up the cadence of another person’s speech as he’s talking to them, which seemed to be indicative of some form of echopraxia. We’re all born with mirror neurons. We have a flood of them in our brains and it helps us socialize. When little babies are mirroring what they parents do, or what adults do, or anyone around them, those are the mirror neurons in the brain at work. As we get older and achieve our own identities, those mirror neurons are absorbed into the system and they don’t play as active a role. But, if you have echopraxia, they’re still pretty active and also prevent you from clearly establishing your own identity, or your own identity is a little bit slippery because you can shift in and out of it, depending on who you’re with. So, I just thought, “If he has a little bit of that and he has an empathy disorder and he has all of these things, he’s in danger, in these situations, just psychologically.” That’s a version of a crime story that I haven’t seen, that would be interesting to explore.
Since Hannibal really pushes the boundaries of what’s been seen on network TV, how do you gauge just how far you’ll take the violence on the show?
FULLER: I think it’s what feels right for the story. It’s also what’s right for the genre. Keep in mind that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie, and Hannibal is a horror anti-hero. To a certain point, we have to honor the genre and deliver certain elements of the genre. I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion. So, as a member of that audience, I want to make sure that the other members of the audience are protected in getting certain things out of the show. I don’t think we could do a Hannibal that was too soft because it would have no business being on network television. We’re at a point in network TV where things are changing. Networks have to change because cable is now doing better ratings than most of the network shows, so they have to start adopting more of a cable model and a cable attitude. Networks are hemorrhaging viewers. CBS is always gonna be fine because it knows exactly who its demographic is and how to service that demographic. But, NBC has a great opportunity to be at the leading edge of evolving networks into a hybridization of a network-cable model.
Your three leads – Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen and Laurence Fishburne – are so fantastic on the show. What was your casting process like? Did you have any of them specifically in mind, or were you just open to any suggestions that were brought to you?
FULLER: I didn’t have who Will Graham was in mind. And then, our very first conversation with the network about who this should be was Hugh Dancy. There were three names that came up – Hugh Dancy and two other actors – and everybody said, “Let’s go to Hugh and see if he’s interested.” We just thought that he has an innate likeability and this character is very complex. Like it says in the book, “Fear makes Will Graham rude,” so he is anti-social and complicated and in his own world. You have to have somebody who has an innate likeability, otherwise they’re just going to come off like an asshole, and Hugh has that. You want to be invited into a world by an actor, and Hugh Dancy, as an actor, invites you in to the world that he’s inhabiting. So, that was a very clear, easy choice.
And based on getting Hugh, Mads was interested because they had worked together on King Arthur. They were friends. So, we sat down with Mads and pitched what the show was to him. Even in that very first meeting, he said, “So, this character is a bit like Lucifer. He sees the beauty in the world and in humanity, but is also punitive to those who don’t recognize beauty in the world and in humanity.” If you look at his performance, he is playing Lucifer, as opposed to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal. I don’t think any of us wanted whoever we cast as Hannibal to go anywhere near Anthony Hopkins because you would be slain. There would just be no way to live up to that. So, we had to go a different direction with Hannibal. With Mads, who has this beauty, elegance and grace, and was a dancer, as well as having played several villains in prominent movies we had somebody who was going to bring something so unique to the role. Hannibal Lecter is not American. In the books, he is Eastern European, so he is other and he is different. So, getting a foreign actor to play the role was always at the front of my mind because I wanted to have some indication that he couldn’t be American.
Aside from the fact that the three leads are so interesting to watch individually, watching them interact with each other is just so fascinating.
FULLER: This is a stellar cast. It’s a feature film cast. One of the things that I was really attracted to, about this story, is the bromance between Hannibal and Will Graham. Here are two crazy men, who are so unique in their insanity that they need each other to understand themselves. That felt like a great place to tell a story, and to tell a different version of the Hannibal Lecter mythology. What we had been exposed to was essentially an incarcerated psychopath who had done his villainy, and everybody around him knew what he was capable of. And now, we have him peacocking in the open, and he is functional in society. He has relationships, and not only the relationship with Will Graham, but the relationship with Jack Crawford. I love seeing them friends, at the dinner table, laughing and raising glasses in toasts. And there’s the very touching relationship that he develops with Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), and how he feels very protective of her and responsible for what happened to her. I love that relationship, and the irony that she traded one cannibalistic father in for another, but she just doesn’t know it yet. I find that really satisfying. You get a great sense of a man who never thought he’d have friends or relationships, and then he’s discovering himself in circumstances where he is getting those opportunities and he is taking advantage of them, and we never know to what end. You’ll get an idea by the end of the season. It is fascinating to see someone who is making connections through their psycho-pathology.
When you know where most of these characters eventually end up, is that something you always have to keep in the back of your mind, or do you try not to think about that?
FULLER: It’s a huge gift to be able to know the destination of these characters and know that, in Season 4, we’re going to be telling the Red Dragon story. That’s a buoy that we’re swimming to, in the storyline. So, it’s exciting, on that level, to know that we have a destination, but we’re also mixing things up. Events that have happened in the books will happen, but they may not necessarily evolve all of the players that were involved because we are creating a new introduction to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter that didn’t exist in the literature, and everything has a ripple effect. There will be folks that are hardcore fans of the novels who will say, “Oh, my god, they totally told that story, but they’re telling it with this character instead of that character, even though the events still happen.” I’m hoping that it is as satisfying to fans of the movies, as it is to fans of the literature, and also welcoming to new audiences who aren’t familiar with either of those properties.
Have you already given any thought about if or when Hannibal Lecter’s famous face mask will appear?
FULLER: Yeah, that would be Season 4-ish. We’ve got some fields to play in, before we get to Hannibal incarcerated, in all sorts of ways. We’ll definitely be getting there. Red Dragon was the first book in the series. Imagine that there are three novels that were unpublished, and we’re going to tell those three novels before Red Dragon. And then, we’ll try to sync up with the timeline of the other books.
With the change of gender for the Dr. Bloom role, did you just want to change that role to add a female character, or had you specifically wanted to work with Caroline Dhavernas again?
FULLER: Both, actually. It’s a pretty male world. You have William Graham, Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford, as your three leads. And then, there’s Alan Bloom and Freddy Lounds. Really, the only female character in Red Dragon, besides the blind woman is Beverly Katz, and you only see her for a little bit. So, I just thought that we need more female energy because I love writing for women and it was just too male. The piece needed women. So, when I was first developing the project, I called Caroline and I was like, “Okay, there’s two roles. The bottom line is that I want to work with you, so which of these roles sounds more interesting to you.” She was like, “Well, actually Alana Bloom sounds more interesting to me,” and I was like, “Great, it’s yours!” Then, we were so lucky to find Lara Jean Chorostecki. I had gotten the news that we were going ahead with Hannibal at NBC, as I was on a plane on my way to the U.K. Of course, all over London, at the time, there was Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World stuff going on, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be interesting, if that was our Freddie Lounds,” as opposed to the sleazy tabloid reporter. She’s someone who’s a little savvier and a little more of a political animal, with those great shocks of red curly hair. I just saw Rebekah Brooks so clearly, as our Freddie Lounds. That’s where she’d be going, if she doesn’t get doused with kerosene, set on fire and be in a wheelchair, in Season 4.
Why did you decide to focus so strongly on the relationship between Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and his wife (Gina Torres)?
FULLER: If you’re a Thomas Harris fan and have read the books, you know that Jack’s wife is dying of cancer, and dies of cancer in The Silence of the Lambs. I really wanted to tell that story, and I also really wanted to work with Gina [Torres] again, having worked with her on Pushing Daisies. I was curious how people would react to that, ‘cause it’s a different story for the show. It’s a cancer story. It’s a departure from cannibalism, but it’s all faithful to the canon of the stories and where Jack Crawford would be by the timeline of The Silence of the Lambs. Also, it’s fascinating to see Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), who’s a cannibalistic killer, be so empathetic for someone who is having their life slip away. So, it was interesting to see that color from Mads, and I think Gina is amazing in those episodes.
How do you decide the meals that Hannibal Lecter will make and serve?
FULLER: We have a James Beard award-winning culinary consultant in José Andrés, who’s a world famous chef and has restaurants all over the country. I was a fan of Jose’s from going to his restaurants, and just being a viewer of Top Chef and being educated that way. I’m also a little bit of a foodie. So, one of my first thoughts about doing this was, “I want to work with José Andrés on this project, as the voice of Hannibal.” I called my agent and was like, “How do I get in contact with José Andrés?,” and they were like, “Well, we represent him and he actually just won an award and he’s having a cocktail reception at his restaurant in Los Angeles. Why don’t you come as my date and I’ll introduce you, and you can present the idea to him directly and see what he has to say?”
So, we went to his reception and they introduced me and I said, “Hi, I’m working on this adaptation of Hannibal Lecter as a TV series,” and he said, “Oh, I want to be a consultant!,” before I could even get the invitation out. He was so enthusiastic! He’s so passionate and infectious with his enthusiasm that he immediately pulls you in. He had so many ideas, right off the top. One of the very first ideas that he said to me, right there at the reception, was, “Lungs! You could do the lungs of a smoker. You would clean out the tar from the inside layer of the tissue. The smoke has been in there for awhile, so it gives you this flavor to the lungs. They would be pre-smoked.” It was fascinating to hear his lack of judgement. It was one of those things where it was like meat is meat is meat is meat, which I thought was very fair.
I only eat meat, if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I’m at somebody’s home for a dinner, I’ll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don’t eat anything that walks around and has a face. I’m not doing it for health reasons, and I don’t have too large of a soapbox under my feet about it because it’s a personal choice. If I go to your home and you’re cooking me a meal, I will eat whatever you put in front of me. So, it was interesting to hear this chef, who is world renowned, speak of eating people in the same manner that he would about eating a pig or a cow or a duck, without any kind of distinction between them as creatures of higher or lower intelligence.
One of the things that I always think about now is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we’re learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you’re eating a pig, you’re essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being. A pig is actually much more intelligent than a four-year-old and much more emotionally sophisticated. I see both sides of the argument about why to eat meat and why not to eat meat, and it was refreshing to talk to José , who also was judgement free, in terms of making the distinctions.
You’re not really sure what to make of Hannibal Lecter for a few episodes. Was it intentional to play on that and make viewers wonder, if he really could be doing such horrible things?
FULLER: No. For me, it was like, “You know who he is.” I figured it was a chip that I could only play so often, so I didn’t want to overuse it. In Episode 3, when he rams Alana’s head into the brick wall, it’s the first time you’re like, “Oh, shit, he’s a bad guy!” Up until that point, he doesn’t really do anything on camera. You see him cooking the lungs in the first episode, but until he acts violently against another character, you realize how ruthless he is and how much of situational ethics come into play with him.
With the great and heartbreaking performance that Anna Chlumsky gave, it must have been difficult to let her go.
FULLER: I thought Anna did a wonderful job in the episode and was our Clarice Starling, but made it distinct from Jodie Foster, in her own way. That’s our The Silence of the Lambs episode, where we’re looking at the archetypes that have been previously established and said, “Yes, these archetypes are in our world, but not necessarily in the roles you’ve grown accustomed to.”
Is there any chance you’ll be exploring romantic relationships with Dr. Lecter?
FULLER: Oh, yeah, we absolutely are going to go there. There are two distinct flirtations that we’re playing with, and the intention is absolutely to go there with his character. I imagine he would be a fantastic lover. Mads and I have talked quite a bit about how Hannibal loves beautiful things, so he would love women and he would love a woman’s spirit. Unless she’s an asshole, she’s not in danger. So, that is absolutely going to be in the cards. I’m excited for those stories and the opportunity to see that other side of the character. We will see him in romantic situation, not necessarily in the first season, but the players are all set up in the first season.
How did Gillian Anderson come to be a part of the show?
FULLER: I loved working with her and writing for her. That was very much a career highlight, being able to work with her. I was such a huge fan of The X-Files. Beyond The X-Files, she was amazing as Miss Havisham (in Great Expectations). She’s a fantastic actress, and she’s great in the show, as Hannibal’s psychiatrist. Originally, the role was written for a much older actress that had retired because of age. Then, as we were talking about actresses and about who was appropriate, the casting person at NBC said, “Well, if you make the character younger, what do you think about Gillian Anderson?,” and I was like, “I’ll make the character younger.” So, I rewrote the character and the retirement hinged not on her leaving the industry because she’s of retirement age, but because of an event. Hannibal Lecter is her only patient because she retired and he is the only one who ignored her retirement. They have a very specific relationship around an event that we will explore over the course of the season, in a very subtle way, keying up a bigger story for them, down the road. What’s fascinating for me about having those actors in a scene is that they each have an icy control to them, but they’re both very sexy. You have these two cool, sexy people in an environment where they are talking about intimacy and deepest thoughts, so there’s this sexual tension that vibrates under their scenes, in a really nice way.
Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me were all great shows that didn’t get as long of a life as they should have. When you saw what happened with Kickstarter for Veronica Mars, did it give you hope about reviving any of your past work?
FULLER: When I saw that announcement, I was like, “Oh, my god, this is amazing!” I emailed Rob Thomas immediately and said, “I have so many questions for you!” He was like, “I’m so swamped right now. Call me in two weeks and I’ll tell you all about it.” They’re slightly different playing fields because Veronica Mars is so much about the wit of the dialogue and the charm of the performers, and the style is a tonal issue, whereas Pushing Daisies is a world that we have to create. Veronica Mars exists in this world, through the lens of film noir, but Pushing Daisies doesn’t exist in this world, so we’d have to build it, which requires a lot more to produce than Veronica Mars would. So, I’m asking questions and seeing what is required and what we could do. It’s a different ball game, and I don’t know if it would be possible. It’s certainly easier to ask for $2 million of crowd funding, as opposed to $15 million. At that point, it begs all sorts of questions like, “Okay, shouldn’t we be contributing that money to a cancer foundation?” So, it’s a complicated issue, but it one that I am actively exploring and trying to find out if it is, at all, possible given what is required for a Pushing Daisies movie. I would love to return to that world, and I would love to return to that cast. It was a very satisfying, creative experience. I love that cast and would love to be on a stage with them again soon. I just have a lot of research to do and a lot of questions hat I need to get answered before I can determine if it’s realistic. But, yes, I would absolutely love it, I would make room for it, and I would make it a priority, if it is possible.
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