Return of the Dragon: Richard Armitage talks Dolarhyde on “HANNIBAL” Season Three!

With Bryan Fuller taking his shot at editing FANGORIA #343, the wait for HANNIBAL to return has become an even more difficult endeavor for fright fans. However, Fuller was able to sneak FANGORIA onto the set of HANNIBAL last month, and we were able to catch up with the brilliant cast of the surreal series. Our next chat was with HANNIBAL’s most recent addition to its prestigious cast, as Richard Armitage let FANGORIA dig our claws into the latest iteration of Francis Dolarhyde…

FANGORIA: What can you tell us about Francis Dolarhyde and where he fits into HANNIBAL’s third season?

RICHARD ARMITAGE: I don’t quite know where he fits in. It’s probably going to take me about 4 or 5 hours to talk about the character. One of the things I love about this character is the detail with which Thomas Harris treats him in RED DRAGON, which has become a real bible for every day on set here. I think the main thing that fascinated me with the writing that Thomas did and what Bryan Fuller has done is that it’s figuring out the crimes of a psychopath, and then giving the character such an interesting, rich history with which to find a very winding, tormented path to that destination.

I haven’t seen or been on set for any of the aftermath or any of the murders that this character has committed, which has been really interesting because I feel like when the character is in that persona, his brain is different. He doesn’t recall what he’s done. That’s why he films it and he watches it back. We played one scene where he’s watching footage of the crime, and it was really disturbing for me to see that, and, as the character, to not comprehend what he’d done, and for him to feel that it was badly filmed and that it was badly executed.

FANGORIA: What kind of preparation did you do for the role?

ARMITAGE: I had 10 days to read the novel and completely change my body shape to become like the bodybuilder that Thomas Harris describes. Yeah, I did quite a bit of training, but 10 days is just not enough time. In the book, he’s described as a bodybuilder, so I took his military history, I took my own physique, and I took the psychology of someone that wasn’t happy with themselves and was trying to become better. We put him somewhere in the middle of that.

There’s a lot of stuff going on here with Francis. It was interesting because I didn’t speak for the first episode. You don’t hear him really utter any words. His speech is slowly evolved throughout the 6 episodes, until the end when he’s eulogizing in very succinct, poetic, gothic ways. It’s been interesting.

FANGORIA: Were you familiar with Tom Noonan’s performance in MANHUNTER?

ARMITAGE: I should be, but I wasn’t. I’d seen the film a long time ago, probably when I shouldn’t have when I was about 14 or younger. But I deliberately didn’t go back and watch, because I know that both Ralph Fiennes and Tom Noonan created iconic characters, and I needed to create my own iconography, so we were looking for that.

It is difficult because Thomas Harris’ description is so specific that ultimately you will end up playing the same role. Because he describes down to the finest stitch what his mask is made out of, we needed to think of a kind of iconography for the character which was unique and specific to this show, and we created a great artistic tattoo for the character. Even the way that the cleft palate is executed on my face is very specific to me and to his history.

FANGORIA: What is Dolarhyde’s relationship to Will and Hannibal? How does he differ from them?

ARMITAGE: Dolarhyde is somebody that’s tethered by his past. It’s like he’s trying to tread a path where he’s kind of tied to his past but it’s also shaping the way that his life is going, as we all would. But his past is so damaged that it’s like a hair follicle.

What he doesn’t realize is that he becomes kind of a bargaining tool between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, in an over-simplistic way. Of course, Dolarhyde doesn’t really know that. He only really knows the context that he has with Hannibal, which is a very fine thread. But of course, Hannibal’s psychology can be used to get inside Dolarhyde’s mind.



FANGORIA: Francis has some iconic moments in the novel. How curious were you about what would get translated to the small screen?

ARMITAGE: Yeah. It’s interesting because I read the book before I saw any of the HANNIBAL episodes, and I read it a couple of times. It’s quite a quick read, actually. Then I went back and watched seasons one and two. There were a couple of moments that I thought, “Oh, they’ve already played that. They’ve already played these lines.” But Bryan’s managed to pull out pretty much every single great detail that Thomas Harris wrote. Even if it’s been played before, he’s reinventing it in a slightly different context.

Dolarhyde is very physical, more so than I imagined. I think one of the things about playing someone that is insane is that you can’t detect insanity from looking at somebody, and to reveal insanity on screen, it has to have some kind of physical manifestation and a linguistic manifestation. I think insanity is incredibly difficult to write because we look for logic in text and we look for continuity. What you have to do is make him abstract and discontinuous, so that’s what we’ve done. I have no idea what any of this is going to turn out like. It’s been a big experiment.

FANGORIA: How was your experience working on a TV show like HANNIBAL?

ARMITAGE: I’ve been afforded a great deal of voice [on HANNIBAL]. It’s been a very democratic forum, so every idea that I’ve had and every thought I’ve had about the character has been embraced by the writers, the costume designers, the set designers, the stunt coordinator, and the director. When you’re given that opportunity, your brain starts to work in much more detail. I know that Bryan’s obsession with detail has definitely had an influence on me. Down to the way that the blood on my knuckles is positioned after a fight with the dragon, every detail is thought about and considered, and I’ve really enjoyed that.

FANGORIA: Was there ever a discussion about how to handle Dolarhyde’s redemptive side?

ARMITAGE: Yeah. It’s a difficult one when you think you know how it ends. I always knew that there would be an ending that’s going to be slightly different to the book, and it is different to the book. Bryan’s symphony ends with a bigger flourish than Thomas Harris’, which is nice.

But yeah. I look at the potential of the child that was taken down this path. I always felt that there was a kind of possibility of redemption through his love for Reba. But then that’s the point where I have to step outside the character and really see him as a figure of menace and discord, and let him be that. I fluctuated between loving him and condemning him.

FANGORIA: Having worked both in feature films and television, can you talk a little bit about the differences and preferences between those for you?

ARMITAGE: Yeah. One of the things that was compelling about coming to play Dolarhyde in HANNIBAL was that, in both of the other manifestations of this character, there’s been probably a a 90-minute chance to play that character. On this series, we get nearly 6 hours to play Dolarhyde. We really get the opportunity to go into great detail.

I think that’s one of the things I like about television and the way that Bryan Fuller makes television is that every episode is a movie. It has the same production values as a film. It’s not shot on the same budget as a film, and it’s certainly not shot in the same time frame as a film, but it just means everyone has to work so much harder. But you know, if you look at any single shot in this show, you could easily play every episode of HANNIBAL on the big screen and it would sell out theaters. Bryan is making mini movies every week.

HANNIBAL returns on Thursday, June 4th at 10 p.m. EST on NBC. HANNIBAL creator/writer Bryan Fuller will be serving as FANGORIA’s first Special Guest Editor for Issue #343; you can subscribe to FANGORIA here. Keep an eye out for more HANNIBAL coverage here at FANGORIA.com!

.@NBCHannibal @BryanFuller @neoprod Could this be the ramblings of a mad man..http://t.co/HtXI9hT5uR

I had 10 days to read the novel and completely change my body shape to become like the bodybuilder that Thomas Harris describes.

I haven’t seen or been on set for any of the aftermath or any of the murders that this character has committed,

May 30, 2015
Meet Red Dragon In ‘Hannibal’ Season 3 — Richard Armitage Talks Francis Dolarhyde
Red Dragon Hannibal Season 3, Richard Armitage talks
When Hannibal returns to NBC for season 3, we will meet a new, terrifying character — Francis Dolarhyde, a.k.a Red Dragon, portrayed by British actor Richard Armitage (The Hobbit Trilogy, Into the Storm).

For Armitage — who is universally admired for his work ethic and dedication to portraying his characters as faithfully as he possibly can — delving into a psycho serial killer was no easy feat. However, it seems he went above and beyond, and showrunner Bryan Fuller confessed he has been moved to tears watching his performance.

If you’re excited to watch the Red Dragon in Hannibal next week, you’re not alone. Fuller and company have certainly done everything in their power to keep viewers glued to the show, which is fast becoming one of the best television has to offer.

As with any serial killer, Red Dragon is not easy to play, as the character is full of contradictions and audiences could even feel sympathy towards the conflicting emotions he experiences, while murdering at random. Richard Armitage has a lot to say about Francis Dolarhyde, in a detailed interview with Fangoria.

“It’s probably going to take me about 4 or 5 hours to talk about the character. One of the things I love about this character is the detail with which (author) Thomas Harris treats him in RED DRAGON, which has become a real bible for every day on set here. I think the main thing that fascinated me with the writing that Thomas did and what Bryan Fuller has done is that it’s figuring out the crimes of a psychopath, and then giving the character such an interesting, rich history with which to find a very winding, tormented path to that destination.”

Red Dragon is a very physical character, which Armitage wasn’t quite expecting, and considering he had very limited time to train for it, he did a very convincing job.

“I had 10 days t I did quite a bit of training, but 10 days is just not enough time. In the book, he’s described as a bodybuilder, so I took his military history, I took my own physique, and I took the psychology of someone that wasn’t happy with themselves and was trying to become better. We put him somewhere in the middle of that.”

Armitage confessed he watched Tom Noonan play the role in Manhunter — when he was an impressionable 14-years-old — but didn’t go back purposely in order to start with a clean slate and create his own “iconography.” A photo making its rounds online, shows the incredible artwork they created for the tattoo Red Dragon wears on Hannibal, which is unique to Richard.

The British thespian, who has hoards of fans all over the world, has impressed Bryan Fuller so much, that he was brought to tears watching his scenes as Red Dragon, according to an interview from Den of Geek.

“Oh! I can’t speak highly enough about the man as a professional and how he has brought this character to life in such a unique way.

“I’m currently looking at episodes with Richard’s work and there is one in particular where both the editor and I were crying in the edit room because he communicated so eloquently the pain of Francis Dolarhyde and the torture of his existence.”

According to Richard Armitage, Fuller gave him a lot of leeway to do what he wanted to create his own Red Dragon for Hannibal Season 3.

“I’ve been afforded a great deal of voice (on Hannibal). It’s been a very democratic forum, so every idea that I’ve had and every thought I’ve had about the character has been embraced by the writers, the costume designers, the set designers, the stunt coordinator, and the director.”

Watch Richard Armitage star as the Red Dragon in Hannibal, with Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal), Gillian Anderson (Bedelia du Maurier), and Hugh Dancy (Will Graham). Season 3 premieres June 4 on NBC.

Return of the Dragon: Bryan Fuller, Martha De Laurentiis & Steven Lightfoot on “HANNIBAL”, Part One!
Awardsline/Deadline Screening Of Gaumont Int'l TV/NBC's "Hannibal"
With Bryan Fuller taking his shot at editing FANGORIA #343, the wait for HANNIBAL to return has become an even more difficult endeavor for fright fans. However, Fuller was able to sneak FANGORIA onto the set of HANNIBAL last month, and we were able to catch up with the brilliant cast of the surreal series. Next up was a massive chat with Fuller himself, as well as producers Martha De Laurentiis and Steven Lightfoot, who dished out some salacious secrets about HANNIBAL’s third season…

FANGORIA: Has Thomas Harris been involved in the show at all?

BRYAN FULLER: I’ve never talked to Thomas Harris. Martha is our Thomas Harris gateway, so I don’t know.

MARTHA DE LAURENTIIS: I’m very close with [Thomas] and his partner, and they love the show. In fact, I’ve sent them several sets of DVDs because they have two homes and they want one set for each home. They’re very thrilled with the evolution of the character and the rebirth of the character as well as with where Bryan has taken him, and it’s obviously gorgeous to watch. It’s also shocking for them to be on the wild ride of where it’s going. Like, the Wendigo is a new element, so often times I explain what the Wendigo’s purpose is to him.

FULLER: We all assume that he’s just a head in a box.

DE LAURENTIIS: Well I think it works best that way.

FANGORIA: There was a rumor that Guillermo del Toro would be directing an episode this season that has since been dispelled. Was his involvement ever a consideration?

DE LAURENTIIS: Can I take responsibility for that faux pas? What happened was I was doing a newsletter for the fans that once a month updates them on certain things that are going on, and I was talking about what we had done. We had talked about the directors this season, and then there was a possibility of doing a “post-mortem” talk segment. Bryan and everyone up here have been talking about this season andrecording a show that airs the hour after the episode on what went on in the episode. We were excited Guillermo del Toro is up here [with THE STRAIN] while his longtime DP Guillermo Navarro was directing [for HANNIBAL], and we talked about how could we possibly could get the two of the Guillermo’s together to talk about the show because Guillermo del Toro is a fan.

When somebody asked me, “Is there something new going on?”, I said, “Well with the post-mortem, it would be really fantastic for Guillermo del Toro, who directed an episode.” So, del Toro got mentioned there when I meant to say Navarro and because I didn’t proofread that final thing before it went out, I didn’t realize it until all of this stuff started coming back. It’s my responsibility. Always proofread what goes out with your name on it!

FULLER: Richard Armitage called me up, and he was like, “Oh my god, I love Guillermo del Toro; is that the one that I’m in?” I was like, “No… It’s Guillermo Navarro; you’ve worked with him, and you said that you loved him.” He was like, “There’s no del Toro?” And I was like, “I wish there was del Toro.” I mean, I would love to work with del Toro.

STEVEN LIGHTFOOT: But we’ve got Navarro, which is great.

FANGORIA: What is this season like compared to the first two seasons?

FULLER: It’s such a shift in tone from what we had been doing. The first season particularly was very procedural. Every week, we had a different killer who’s doing a different wild thing. That gave us kind of a backbone for stories, because we knew everything had to come back and relate to the human cello, or what was happening with Georgia Madchen.We got away from the procedural this season so it’s much more of a soap opera.

Really, this season was about unpacking the events of that finale that were like huge and traumatic, and you see Will Graham, laying in thirty gallons of blood with poor Abigail Hobbs and Alana’s out the window lying in the rain. Jack’s got the gash in his throat, bleeding out. The first three episodes start a new chapter, and then on our fourth episode, we actually go back and tell events immediately after the finale.

The first three episodes are eight months later, essentially. We get little glimpses of what happened afterwards that help us sell the trauma of what Will went through, and is going through to find this guy who’s had such influence in his life. Then, the soap opera takes over and it’s all about the characters.

Taking that off of our burden and really telling a story that is about the characters first and foremost and how events have affected them is the big difference for us; we are much more a character show in the third season than we have ever been. The assets that we have with this show is the cast: Gillian Anderson, Mads Mikkelsen, Laurence Fishburne, Hugh Dancy; we got Zach Quinto coming in to play with us. We’ve got a lot of fantastic actors, so we don’t want to overburden it with a killer of the week.

We really want to get into the psychology of the story line, so it’s actually been liberating in many ways. Part of it is, when we’re breaking stories in the writers room, if we only had a killer of the week, we could break this so much easier because a soap opera is harder to break than “We find a body!” “How do you open act two?” “Well, we find a body!” Those crutches have been taking away from us in a great way, I think.

FANGORIA: Of course the core of the show is this dysfunctional relationship between Will and Hannibal. Can you talk about how it evolves this season, and maybe tease a little bit about how their reunion plays out?

FULLER: The evolution is really out of the shock of what Will experienced, and the mystery of the first three episodes into the fourth episode is really, “How has this changed Will Graham, and how does it change his approach to Hannibal Lecter and the nature of that friendship?” At a certain point, you can either say, “I need to eradicate the monster,” or you say, “That’s the monsters condition; I’m not gonna go hunt a great white shark doing what a great white shark does.”

There’s sort of an acceptance at the same time, so it does allow us to further explore the intimacy between Hannibal and Will in a way that feels organic to the finale. The finale keeps on getting unpacked in a way; We get to see it from different views, and different character interpretations of what exactly happened. So, over the course of the first four episodes, we really take certain traumatic elements of that, and we tell how that traumatized each individual character is who survived the bloody day.

FANGORIA: Can you tease about how their first reunion plays out?

LIGHTFOOT: Well, because we’re playing with what Will wants, I think we’re saying to the audience, “What does Will want to do when he finds HANNIBAL? Is he going to embrace him? Is he going to kill him?” Will doesn’t know, and the journey takes him there, and in the end, they’re really pleased to see each other. Whatever else there is, it feels to me like there’s part of those guys feel better when they’re together, even if it’s wrong. The problem is, there are so many other people with other agendas that, after they meet, those agendas come crashing in and the story spirals off into crazy places.

DE LAURENTIIS: We do get to hear, “Hello Will.” I love that.

FANGORIA: With such a great cast, it’s a bit disappointing that Michael Pitt won’t be returning to the role of Mason Verger. What happened as to that decision?

FULLER: Ultimately, Michael didn’t want to do the show, so we tried very hard and we negotiated for a long time to try to get him back, and he didn’t want to come back. But wait until you see what Joe Anderson does with the role.

I remember the very first conversation I was having with Joe and he was like, “So who is it that I’m playing? I know Michael Pitt played him, but who is he?” I was like, “Did you see HANNIBAL, the Gary Oldman character?” And he was like, “That guy?! I’m gonna play that guy?! I’m in. I’ll totally do it.” He does more twisted things in this season than he did in the previous season.

150520_2867522_First_Look_at_Season_3

FANGORIA: Considering how much character development there was in seasons one and two, will it be difficult for new fans who haven’t seen the other seasons to come aboard and watch season three?

FULLER: It’s interesting to start with the first episode [of the third season] because looking at it now with fresh eyes, it does reframe the show in a very specific way where, if you understand that Hannibal is a cannibal and that he’s on the loose, you’ll plop right in and you’ll figure it out, It’s actually a good entry point.

If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. Because we reset, we give you all the information that you need to understand where the characters have been. Of course, it helps to see the first two seasons, but just looking at this season from that point of view as if we just started here, it’s an interesting place to start.

FANGORIA: There are a lot of new female characters joining the show this season. What informed that decision?

FULLER: We really wanted to make sure most of the new characters on the show are female characters. At it’s heart, HANNIBAL is Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter’s story and whenever we are a little outside of that orbit, we want to make sure we have as much female energy as possible because it’s an interesting perspective into this world.

Gillian Anderson is a series regular, and our first episode is so much her episode and so much her point of view of “how did I get into this situation?” We tell their story, and it exists in four different timelines: We go into her past relationship with Hannibal Lecter to the night that everything went down at the house, to where they are now in Italy and how they function as a couple and to who she is as his doctor at the same time as his accomplice.

I remember when we first turned in the script for a particularly horrifying sequence where we really make one female character a master of her own story. The network said it was their favorite sequence that we’ve ever done on the show, and it was with a supporting character in the second half of the season. We really wanted to make sure that if we are bringing a character into the world, that we give them something fantastic to do. That’s how we attract great cast.

LIGHTFOOT: We talked a lot about fairy tales this year because we were in Europe and that is sort of European storytelling tradition. Actually the hero, or rather heroine, of most fairy tales is the female character. So we talk a lot about how Bedelia is Bluebeard’s wife, and Chiyo, when we meet her, is Rapunzel, essentially. Reba is a beauty and the beast story with Dolarhyde, which I love.

Just stretching on that, [Reba] is a catalyst for so much of that story because I think its a tragic love story that Hannibal screws up as it suits him. That was one of the joys, and being able to do RED DRAGON over six hours so that you can give Dolarhyde’s world an equal point of view to Will’s really gets under the skin. Generally on the show, bodies have turned up and the killer might get a scene at the end, so it’s been brilliant to give the killer equal weight in the show and really tell his story. It’s sad; I’m kind of rooting for Dolarhyde half the time, personally.

FULLER: You want the audience to be confused about Francis Dolarhyde, and for me, that’s the romance between Frances Dolarhyde and Reba in the literature. You have this guy who takes a blind woman to the zoo who can’t see any of the animals, and who’s arranged for her to touch them, which is one of the most romantic things I’ve ever read in literature. I think it’s incredibly elegant and eloquent, as it says in the book. To really be able to get underneath the skin of that story, we have to understand Reba as more than just the girlfriend in that situation, which is always a trap when you’re telling a male oriented, or male centered story.

LIGHTFOOT: Yeah, they’re never just saved by the guy in the last second. Actually, we put them in some pretty horrible positions and they all save themselves, which is always way more interesting.

FULLER: When we were talking out certain scenes, I was always like, “Nobody better fall. Nobody better twist their ankle. We’re not doing that.” When we’ve done that in the past, like last year when we had Will trying to kill Freddie Lounds, she fell and struggled to get up, and I just cut it all out. Women can run. They don’t slip and fall. We wanted to make sure that we’re three dimensionalizing everyone as much as we possibly can.

FANGORIA: Television has become a real space for stories about anti-heroes. Do you think it’s difficult for modern series to tell traditional heroic stories and still make the heroes interesting?

FULLER: Well, look at Superman. That’s one of the big problems with telling a Superman story is that the guy is so pure of heart and that makes it difficult. It works with Superman since you do rally around that person, and purity of soul is something that can be interesting, but I think because we’ve had that so long, we’ve had the white hat cowboy for so long, that in order to start shaking it up and adding a different ingredient to the dish, we have to start looking to stories from a different point of view and sometimes that’s the anti-hero’s point of view.

I think what’s going to happen is that anti-heroes are going to be another tool in the toolbox for storytellers to use. You’ll be able to drift from the focus of the anti-hero to more of a traditional protagonist, and by juxtaposing those two against each other, you’ll be able to find fresh ways into story. Steve and I both have been working in television a while. You’re constantly looking at, we’ll break stories, and we’ll just be like, “I feel like I’ve seen this episode before on something.” We have to figure out how to undermine it, how to subvert it and how to make it different and fresh because we are in a golden age of television right now.

LIGHTFOOT: I also think we live in such a time where now’s anti-hero in twenty years will just be the hero. That’s the truth of it. Things just get greyer, and greyer. We live in such a high-wound time; there are so many rules about everything and anyone who works in anywhere. How do people justify themselves these days? It’s by coming up with more shit we all have to conform to.

I want to go break those guys legs. I’m just not gonna take any shit. I think that’s also why anti-heroes are so popular now because the world is getting ever more constraining and less individual. You’ve got to go through so many things; just doing our job, I get more memo’s about health and safety and discrimination. If I read it all, we wouldn’t get anything done. Apparently, you sanction all this stuff to be a functioning human being in society, and it’s a lot of fun vicariously watching someone who ignores all that.

FULLER: It’s the age of outrage, the age of the internet where you do something small and everybody’s like, “How dare you! You can’t do that!” Yeah, you can, because you’re a human being and there’s all sorts of colors on the spectrum and we don’t have to be all alike. The fact is that everybody is looking for the rush of being pissed off at something, and taking personal offense because that reaction is totally neurological.

I read stuff online and go, “Oh, well that’s unfortunate,” and then, I’ll read somebody else’s reaction and how pissed off that thing made them, and I’m like, “Should I be more pissed off?” Look at THE DAILY SHOW when they changed over John Stewart to the new guy [Trevor Noah] who had some tweets that were offensive to some people, but purely within the parameters of comedy.

LIGHTFOOT: Their biggest crime was not being that funny.

FULLER: Right, yeah. Exactly.

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