After The Hunt, you did Hannibal, Bryan Fuller’s NBC show about Dr. Lecter and his relationship with FBI agent Will Graham. What made you say “Yes” to a network TV show in the U.S.?
Yeah, how did that come around? We had just been successful in Cannes with The Hunt. And then my agent talked about Bryan Fuller — “this genius” she called him — and said I should have a look at it. At first, I was like, “Oh, God, Anthony Hopkins. That’s just a no-go.” He did it to perfection. Then I had a meeting with Bryan Fuller and he pitched the first season. And I was just like, This is absolutely nothing like the film. This is a different animal. I was one out of three or four actors they were considering. I was really reluctant to do that. I don’t like castings. Nobody likes castings. “Come on guys, either you want me or not.” But we did a couple of scenes, me and Hugh Dancy, and I think we had a great chemistry in that awkward way it was supposed to be.Did you see his relationship with Hugh Dancy’s character, Will, as a romance?
Yeah, but not necessarily something that would become physical.
The murder of Francis Dolarhyde (played by Richard Armitage) is the consummation in some ways.
And also cannibalism, obviously. This is the ultimate way to love someone in his world, to eat them — right? We actually did a couple of takes of the very last scene where we were looking at each other, and it was a little too obvious — it was almost a kiss. Me and Hugh were like, “Why not? We have a couple of takes. Let’s do one. It might be cool.”
Did you kiss?
No, we didn’t. Never went for the kiss. Bryan loved it, but he was like, “Too much, guys. It’s too obvious.” And he was absolutely right. But I think we were just stuck on that. And a lot of the Fannibals wanted it as well. It’s been a subject of homoerotic fan art. And for good reason, because they are so united as twins in many ways. But we never wanted it to be a physical thing. It was something much bigger than that.
What were the discussions of the season-three ending like?
It had to be that they managed to kill someone together and both have the same sensation. Finally, I got him. Finally, Will Graham is me. They are inseparable at that point. We also knew that that was not the ending. We knew that there was a fourth season. We had something more up the sleeve, but then it didn’t happen. It was such a surprise to all of us because we did not have great numbers the first season, so we thought that was it. But we got saved and got a second season. And then in the third season we had much greater numbers. So we thought it was a given we would continue. And it didn’t happen.
Talk of a fourth season has gone away, but would you still do it to end the show in the way you envisioned?
Yes. The work itself was brutal because we had long hours, with scripts coming in late. It’s TV, and what we were doing was elaborate. The texts were high-IQ texts. The monologues or the dialogues were always about fine art, music. You had to learn Japanese, Hungarian, and words you had simply never heard before. And you had to do it within two hours because everything came so late. Having said that, I would love to go back. Everybody wants to go back, and if there’s only one season and we’re sure about that, he can finish it in a proper, surprising, stunning way.
It’s still such an improbable show in so many ways because it was on NBC.
Exactly. And I’ve been wondering if we had been on some other platform and could do whatever we wanted, would we have gone more for the graphic stuff and forgotten some of the poetry? Maybe it was a good thing we had to hold back. It served the show really well that we didn’t go full-blast Walking Dead on it.
― Draymond is "Mr Dumpy" (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 20 April 2021 20:50 (three years ago) link