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Hannibal season 3 finale: Creator Bryan Fuller looks back at his show’s last season
"It's alive in some form, even though that form may be a ghost."
by Todd VanDerWerff on August 30, 2015
Spoilers for the entire run of Hannibal follow.

Hannibal — Bryan Fuller's grandly bloody reimagining of Thomas Harris's famed cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter for television — is dead. At least for now.

That's true in the world of the show, where the murderer, bleeding profusely after being shot, plunged from the top of a cliff into the sea below, criminal profiler and object of his obsession Will Graham clutched in his arms. Sure, he could come back from that — and a teasing post-credits scene suggested he had — but it's just as easy to imagine he's at the bottom of the ocean.

RelatedOur complete coverage of Hannibal, season three
But it's also true for the show itself, which now goes on a long, possibly eternal, hiatus, after NBC canceled the show and its production studio, Gaumont, failed to find a new partner to keep making new episodes. The actors have moved on. Fuller is now working on Starz's adaptation of the novel American Gods. And the fans are preparing to go back through the 39 episodes that exist and savor them all over again.

But is there still hope for an eventual resurrection? Fuller suggested there's so much story left to tell when I called him shortly before the finale aired in the US. And what's more, he says the next chapter would be "the most interesting" in Will Graham's story.

Over a half-hour, Fuller and I chatted about the structure of the most recent season, whether the show will ever continue, and why American Gods will tackle something US television almost never takes seriously — religion. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Where the story could still go: "It's alive in some form, even though that form may be a ghost"
Will consults with Hannibal.
NBC

Will and Hannibal's relationship takes a dark new turn in the season finale.

Todd VanDerWerff
Obviously, this could serve well as an ending for the whole series, but it wasn't intended to be. Where would this go in a fourth season or future movies or miniseries, and how on Earth would you ever wrap back around to Silence of the Lambs [as was rumored the show would eventually do]?

Bryan Fuller
The Silence of the Lambs wouldn't have been part of the fourth season. The fourth season would have been Will and Hannibal, having survived the fall, taking a new and dramatic turn in their relationship. For me, it was perhaps the most interesting chapter of Will Graham's story.

Todd VanDerWerff
Do you have any faith that you may get to do that some day?

Bryan Fuller
It's a hard question to answer because you're asking somebody who sees that story very clearly in his mind. It's alive in some form, even though that form may be a ghost. It's hard to not see it and not be able to visualize it. I'm a person who makes a living with their imagination, so it's hard for me to answer whether I see that coming to fruition, because I do see a form of that clearly in my mind.

"For me, [a possible fourth season] was perhaps the most interesting chapter of Will Graham's story."
Todd VanDerWerff
I've had so many arguments about that post-credit scene with people.

Bryan Fuller
What's your theory?

Todd VanDerWerff
Maybe my screener was just too dark, but I didn't see a place set for Will. And in the montage beforehand, we see all of the other characters making preparations for Hannibal being free. So my theory was that Bedelia is preparing for Hannibal's return to her life by accepting that he's going to kill her. She has somehow arranged for her leg to be prepared as this meal for him.

Bryan Fuller
I thought it would be very clearly suggestive that Hannibal survived and Bedelia got what was coming to her. That's why she grabs the fork and she holds it under the table. She is waiting for whoever cut off her leg and is serving it to her to return so that she can bury that fork in his or her throat.

Constructing a two-part season: "That felt like it justified Will's requirements for murder"
Hannibal kidnaps Bedelia.
NBC

Bedelia's attempts to understand Hannibal drove much of the season.

Todd VanDerWerff
Lots of people complained in the first half of the season that Will didn't have enough agency and was being led around by others. What did you make of those complaints?

Bryan Fuller
What I wanted to accomplish was telling the story of Will's psychological trauma from the finale of season two. He has essentially been in a post-traumatic fog, not knowing what's real anymore. If he just stepped right back up to bat, then I would doubt his existence as a human being. It would feel disingenuous to me if he was just like, "I've got a job, and I'm gonna get that guy."

It's such a cowboy, television-storytelling shortcut that I simply didn't want to take it. I wanted to be in the subjective point of view of his character and his trauma, from what he experienced, and tell that story as honestly to the nature of his character as we could. I get that people wanted more action from him, but I don't think I believed that.

Todd VanDerWerff
In the first season, for instance, this show was definitely weird and grandiose, but it was also recognizably a cop show, and the characters more or less operated like they were in that reality. But by this season, it's like everybody realizes they live in a strange opera, and season three seems to be so much about these seemingly "normal" people learning to live within the show's reality where the devil could grab them at any time.

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Bryan Fuller at 2015 San Diego Comic-Con.

Bryan Fuller
That goes back to your earlier question about the decision to be more methodical and contemplative with Will Graham's arc in the first few episodes. It really was about being as authentic as I imagined we could be with someone in the state of mind of, "Holy shit, I live in a fucking dream — or a nightmare, more specifically — and this is my reality now. How do I navigate myself back to something I can plant my feet on and stand back up again?"

For me, that was the impetus to crawl inside Will psychologically in those first three episodes, until we hit episode four and we understand that, no, Hannibal is his friend and this is very confusing for him. That's why he's been so shaken and so non-committal to what he's going to do when he finds Hannibal Lecter. I think he honestly doesn't know, or didn't know until Chiyoh pointed out to him that what he likely wants to do is kill Hannibal so he doesn't become Hannibal.

Todd VanDerWerff
Bedelia really sets out the rules for this world as they pertain to Hannibal's seeming omnipotence. That made her a much bigger figure in this season — even in the latter half of the season after she's escaped his captivity. What did you see as her role in the season?

Bryan Fuller
It was somebody who was Hannibal Lecter's intellectual equal in terms of understanding human psychology, yet someone who could not resist putting her hand in the flame and seeing how hot it was. That's what drew Bedelia to Hannibal — this desire to, for her own edification, understand the worst in humanity as she saw in Hannibal Lecter, to perhaps understand the worst in herself.

I love Gillian Anderson, and I love her performance as Bedelia. It's such a wonderful high-wire act that she's balancing between this Grand Guignol Victorian, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, drama to, arguably, camp. There are scenes where she mixes all of those elements in such a wonderful, strange way that I think her purpose in the second half of the season, really, is to better understand her role in the first part of the season by understanding Will Graham more intimately than she ever has before, and realizing that they are sharing a lot of the same self-destructive obsessions when it comes to Hannibal.

Todd VanDerWerff
Obviously, I know the show's title, and I know there are other books featuring the character you may adapt someday, but this season talked so much about how the only way to be free of Hannibal is to kill him. Don't you ever find yourself wondering why the characters don't just do it already?

Bryan Fuller
The most efficient way would just be to put a bullet in his head and be done with it. But for Will Graham, who is caught in his gravitational pull, he's always afraid of will he be able to pull that trigger when the time comes? Because of the connection that he has to Hannibal and the feelings he has with Hannibal of being understood, of being seen in a way that no one else can see him. Saying goodbye to that forever is a pretty daunting task. In his mind, he needed Francis Dolarhyde to make that happen, because he simply didn't trust himself to carry through.

Todd VanDerWerff
This season consisted of two very different halves — the Italian half and the Red Dragon half. How did you unite those halves together as a single season of TV?

Bryan Fuller
"It felt like a natural conclusion that Francis Dolarhyde would be the pig on the spit roast for these two guys."
I think it really comes down to Will's stating in the Italian side that in order to avoid becoming Hannibal Lecter, he has to kill Hannibal Lecter, and that thread being pulled through the Red Dragon arc into the finale. That's the conclusion that Will had to come to. That's the goal that he set for himself. It was distracted by Hannibal's incarceration and [Will] finding a family of his own. Being pulled back into the FBI caused him to really question how he was going to accomplish that goal.

Todd VanDerWerff
Will always goes grudgingly to Hannibal in Red Dragon and its adaptations, but this added that extra level of his near-certainty that doing so would destroy his life. And it sort of does! How did you make the events of the story into major parts of the Will-Hannibal arc?

Bryan Fuller
Making killing the Red Dragon be the ritualistic killing by Hannibal and Will together for the first time. That felt like it justified Will's requirements for murder as laid out by Bedelia. He's not so much a murderer as he is capable of righteous violence. The Venn diagram of Will's righteous violence intersected Hannibal's desire to push Will to places that he may not be comfortable with but are actually perfectly valid for his psyche. It felt like it was a natural conclusion that Francis Dolarhyde would be the pig on the spit roast for these two guys.

On adapting Red Dragon: "So much of this show is really fan fiction"
Reba and Francis in Hannibal.
NBC

The relationship between Reba and Francis drove much of the doomed tragedy in the Red Dragon arc.

Todd VanDerWerff
Red Dragon has been adapted before. Were there things you were concerned about with that, even as this is a show where the viewers have always been familiar with the characters?

Bryan Fuller
I was fighting the instinct of wanting to see these certain iconic scenes from the book that we've seen adapted a couple times before with Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne in those roles. "Well we've seen it before, should we do it again? And perhaps we should subvert it in a greater way." But then I was like, "Well, I would like to see Mads Mikkelsen say those lines that I've seen Anthony Hopkins and Brian Cox say."

Manhunter was screened at the [Toronto International Film Festival] when we were filming and we all went, and Mads sat next to me and was kind of giggling at the '80s of it all and some of the lines. I was like, "Don't laugh too hard. You're going to be saying them pretty soon." I bit the bullet and felt that certain members of the audience who were as dedicated fans as I am would also like to see new actors in those scenes, justifying them and the canon of the series.

Todd VanDerWerff
What were the biggest shifts you had to make to Hannibal [the novel that served as basis for much of the season's first half] and Red Dragon to make them fit within the show's universe?

"I was, like, 'Well, I would like to see Mads Mikkelsen say those lines that I've seen Anthony Hopkins and Brian Cox say.'"
Bryan Fuller
The shifts were very fluid. I don't think there were any solid matter shifts where you could hear tectonic plates crunching. More of a liquid state of one thing flowing into the next in an organic way.

So much of this show is really fan fiction. "Oh, what if Hannibal and Will were friends? Let's explore that relationship and how complicated it could be." It was kind of the oil that lubricated the adaptation.

Todd VanDerWerff
The love between Will and Hannibal became much more explicit this season. What was the thinking behind that?

Bryan Fuller
I think it was really being able to address the conversations as they would come up. After everything that has happened, if anything, we asked the question a little too late — when everything he's been doing has been Glenn Close-caliber obsession.

Todd VanDerWerff
You played the season, then, as the long fallout from a big breakup. That upped the feeling of romantic ruin, too.

Bryan Fuller
I remember losing friends and it being every bit as traumatic as losing a lover, in fact, more so. There are great bonds that we have with people who we identify as friends and let them in in intimate ways that are so much more complicated than sex. It has every bit the resonance of an intimate physical relationship, but is on a different plane, no less powerful in the feeling it provokes.

Todd VanDerWerff
At The A.V. Club, there was an article about the past versions of this story, saying that you could tell which character was most important to that version based on who was on the cover — Francis on the book, Will for Manhunter, and Hannibal for the Red Dragon movie. Who would be on your cover of this version of the story?

Bryan Fuller
Really it's all three boys, Francis and Will and Hannibal. It felt like one of those cheesy collages from '90s movies where you have the faces floating in the darkness and slightly merging together, a la Dead Ringers. There are elements of Francis Dolarhyde, that are so representative of what Will Graham is going through and simultaneously still representative of what Hannibal is going through. It felt like such a great triangle for these men to be facing each other. I feel in the telling of the story that we've told in the television series, it feels pretty balanced. It feels like there is equal weight given to Will, Hannibal, and Francis in that tale.

Todd VanDerWerff
The book certainly has a procedural element to it, focusing on how Francis and Hannibal communicate, or how he chooses his victims, but you eschewed a lot of that. Why was that?

Bryan Fuller
"It's a romance that I root for. I want to forgive his horrible murders of families and let him have a win."
I was much more interested in the characters talking to each other, but I actually enjoyed the procedural aspects of Red Dragon. They were smart, insightful, and they were doing things that you don't traditionally see in a crime procedural and to a degree of reality that was refreshing. I enjoyed them in the context of the Red Dragon arc but I also recognized that that wasn't the spine of the story that we were telling. The spine of the story now that we're telling was the triangle of Will, Francis, and Hannibal.

Todd VanDerWerff
What most spoke to you in the character of Francis?

Bryan Fuller
The tragedy of Francis Dolarhyde spoke to me reading the novel, because Thomas Harris so clearly did create the impression of his life and how it slipped away from him very early on.

You see the humanity of that little boy who was crushed come percolating up to the surface, because there's an opportunity of new love and light in the face of a blind woman who can't perceive him in the ways that others who have ridiculed him in the past perceived him. It's a romance that I root for and want him to win. I want to forgive his horrible murders of families and let him have a win. You just know that he can't win. He's doomed to suffer because of his insanity.

Todd VanDerWerff
You mostly left his back-story untouched, though, leaving in little allusions and flashes to it. What was behind that choice?

Bryan Fuller
Well, there was the matter of real estate and how much we had to tell the tale.

It was also the fear of Jake Lloyd-ing Dolarhyde, where you see young Anakin Skywalker and what you're getting is an actor who's less experienced than the very sophisticated actor portraying the adult. It's always a difficult chasm to cross, because you are, in those storytelling moments, projecting the sophistication of a performance onto somebody that you haven't cast yet.

The reality is, you're going to be casting that child actor in Toronto. You have a very shallow pool to chose from, and chances are they're not going to be up to the skill set of the story that you need to tell, or the sympathy that the character needs to communicate to the audience in order for empathy to take hold. It was just a fear of giving a lot of sophisticated material to a child actor who may not be able to pull it off.

On the many supporting characters — and what's next: "So many people in television are afraid to discuss religion"
Jack and Alana on Hannibal.
NBC

Jack and Alana both had smaller arcs playing in the background of the season.

Todd VanDerWerff
There were a lot of concerns about Alana in season two, but she had a strong season this year. What did you do to figure that character out?

Bryan Fuller
What I was doing was essentially making amends, not only to the audience but also to the actress, Caroline Dhavernas. Really saying, "Yes, there wasn't a lot of room for you to be much more than the third corner of the triangle between Will and Hannibal." The finale of season two, it felt like it serviced an attitude change in Alana that she had coming and that also empowered her to be the driver of her story in a way that she hadn't been before in the series.

Todd VanDerWerff
How about Jack? He felt like he had hardened a lot to me. Obviously, he's lost a lot too.

"There's something very fun about seeing [Chilton] back behind the desk of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, slightly melted, with a wig, trying to persevere and live."
Bryan Fuller
What was interesting with Jack was the idea that we see at the beginning of the season, that he is actually not pursuing Hannibal, he is pursuing Will to save him from Hannibal. Will admitting to Jack that he did want to go with Hannibal because Hannibal is his friend, and Jack feeling responsible for that and wanting to not lose Will. Also, telling him that the reason that Jack did not kill Hannibal is because he felt that that was Will's task to do.

Then when we get into the Red Dragon story and all of the game-playing and the betrayals that Will was guilty of in his relationship with Jack, Jack is now in a hardened place where he doesn't trust any of these people. A great part of him does need Will Graham to kill Hannibal Lecter.

Todd VanDerWerff
Is there anything Chilton can't survive?

Bryan Fuller
It's partly because of my great, great, great, love for Raúl Esparza that I wanted to do such horrible things to Chilton. I knew Raúl was going to know exactly how to portray them and exactly how to maintain the black humor of his character and make these horrible events enjoyable in some way to the audience. Maybe that's just my fucked-up perspective, but I honestly get such a kick out of the ridiculous situations that we put Chilton through.

Todd VanDerWerff
If this show ever came back, would he somehow still be there, looking more or less like Raúl Esparza?

Bryan Fuller
"There has been any prolonged discussion of what religion truly is and truly means to us in a way that is not cynical and anti-religion."
I think we've made great leaps and bounds in the progress of tissue transplants and skin grafts. He would resemble him more than he did the last time we saw him [with most of his skin burned off], but there's something very fun about seeing him back behind the desk of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane slightly melted, with a wig, trying to persevere and live.

Todd VanDerWerff
At the start of this season, we discussed how Hannibal had put you into a certain mindset, and you missed writing brighter, lighter stuff. Now that you're working on American Gods, what parts of your creativity is that feeding?

Bryan Fuller
It's so in the zeitgeist right now — religion and belief and the things that we do for things that are intangible. So many people in television are afraid to discuss religion in any meaningful way because it is bound to insult and instigate fatwas, and so everybody is terrified.

There hasn't been any prolonged discussion of what religion truly is and truly means to us in a way that is not cynical and is not anti-religion, but is looking closely at who we are as human beings constantly trying to avert an existential crisis by burying ourselves in our iPhones or our computers or whatever screen we can get our eyeballs on, to not think about our role in the universe. That's very exciting to me.

The complete run of Hannibal is available for digital download. The first two seasons are on Amazon Prime, and season three is on Hulu.

Everything Hannibal wore on 'Hannibal'

Keep your eye on the pocket square.

by Darren Franich • @DarrenFranich



Posted August 29 2015 — 9:27 AM EDT

Hannibal ends on Saturday night. It has been wild, crazy, strange, scary, romantic, Sopranos-esque, just plain great. We will miss it for many reasons. Maybe not the most important reason, or maybe the absolute most important reason: the world will no longer thrill to the far-flung excursions of Hannibal Lecter, Fashion Plate. As we await the show’s final act, we honor Hannibal’s fashion legacy — in chronological order from the pilot onwards. (A shout-out to Hannibal costume designer Christopher Hargadon, Hannibal’s three-piece man since day one.)

Eggshell tie on eggshell shirt, with matching eggshell pocket square. It’s a look that says: “I am a trustworthy medical professional.”

Your dad’s second-favorite tie paired with a brown blazer and a red pocket square. Nothing to be afraid of, Will Graham.

Sign of problems ahead: When alerting a local serial killer to the authorities’ impending arrival, Hannibal goes for a tie-optional sweater-blazer combo. (On this show, “Tie-Optional” means “Up To No Good.”)

Episode 2, and we’re past that initial, tentative, “It’s the pilot so let’s play it cool on the windowpane checked three-pieces” phase. Whether he’s rocking a lighter suit with a blood-red pocket square…

…or a darker suit with a bright-white pocket square, the Hannibal style has officially arrived.

Another first in episode 2: Hannibal and his sitcom sidekick Hannibal’s Vest. Karl Lagerfeld wishes he read a tablet like this.

“I’m here for you,” says Hannibal’s face. “I am Shiva the God of Death” says that tie matched with that jacket.

A study in contrasts: Jack Crawford, always in black and gray, often shot with straight-line geometric ties. His tie represents Law & Order. Whereas Hannibal’s tie represents Law & Order: SVU FanFic illustrated by Hieronymus Bosch.

Another study in contrast. Look at Hannibal’s overcoat (powerful, passionate, impeccable buttons) and Will’s everything. Concrete gray and puke magenta? Everything that follows between them will be a fashion intervention.

A closer look at that tie grants us an opportunity to Rorschach some deeper meaning therein. What do you see when you look at that necktie? Personally, I see a drop of meteorite sperm cried from the 15th eyeball of Cthulhu.

Sorry, Hannibal, is that a blue-black plaid blazer on top of a blue zip-neck sweater on top of a tie?

Sorry, wait, Hannibal, is that yellow-black plaid blazer on top a red zip-neck sweater on top of a different tie?

Having reinvented the zip-neck sweater into a crime-scene three-piece, Hannibal settles down with a tie that looks like a sonnet about a bloody water lily.

Up to no good in a tie-optional combo of that yellow-black blazer and a zipper-free sweater.

Letting his hair down and his vest breathe with Alana.

Like No. 1, but with more patterns this time, because the madness rises.

Thought bubble over this outfit. “Me? Cook humans? I’m just the humble manager of a successful brokerage concern!”

A gentlemen knows when to wear a suit, and when a set of demure black slacks will do just fine. Note how Hannibal is making the same expression as the pocket square.

Hannibal’s most and least subtle outfit: The devil-red shirt/square combo.

Before dinner time, a gentlemen only removes his jacket if he is planning to put on an apron.

Hannibal’s bathrobe is obviously an homage to Number Six in The Prisoner. Or maybe it’s a kimono? Hannibal’s kimono is obviously an homage to Number Six in The Prisoner.

Dinner with friends, back to plaid.

Red patterned tie on a red shirt, symbolizing the nefarious allure of the forbidden.

Red patterned tie on white shirt. Symbolizing the battle between good and evil.

Stare into that tie long enough, and it becomes the “Night on Bald Mountain” scene from Fantasia.

The tale of the lonely yellow pocket square, cast adrift upon the Great Sea of plaid teal.

Return of the Yellow Pocket Square.

Never has a paisley tie looked more like a slumbering mystical serpent of lore.

In episode 6, we meet Frederick Chilton, eternal pretender to the throne. Chilton doltishly pairs an ill-patterned tie with a licorice-candy-cane shirt and a tan blazer. Obviously, this means war. And when Hannibal goes to war…

…he reveals his full power with a casual unbuttoning. GAZE UPON YOUR PAISLEY DOOM, FREDERICK CHILTON.

In the present, Hannibal and his paisley pet listen patiently to Jack Crawford describe his long-lost student, Miriam Lass.

In the past, Hannibal and the tie he carved out of your mother’s garden prepare to give Miriam Lass the long-lost treatment.

Midway through the first season, Hannibal decides to stop fooling around. Thus, tux.

Thus, purple.

Thus, scarf.

Thus, vest on salmon.

Thus, vest plus rolled-up sleeves.

Thus, a rare moment of de-vested glory. Because sometimes it is merely enough to let your tie breathe. In Hannibal’s world, skinny ties were never invented. Nor digital watches. Nor whatever we wear now instead of pocket squares.

Addendum to the rule about jackets before dinner: It is barely acceptable to remove it if you are rescuing someone from an organ-fetishist EMT serial killer.

Clean white shirt = Normcore Lector.

Black tie over an apron = Food Network Lector.

When hosting a dinner party filled with annoying people eating other annoying people, sometimes a subtle tie is the best tie.

Fun fact: The last ten outfits? All from the same episode.

Hannibal / 29 Aug 2015
Hannibal: Bryan Fuller on the Huge Events in the Season 3 Finale and Continued Hopes for the Future


By Eric GoldmanNote: Full spoilers for the Hannibal: Season 3 finale follow.

Hannibal: Season 3 Finale Review

Hannibal’s third season has ended and needless to say, some huge events occurred. But is that it for the show? In the wake of NBC’s cancellation of the series, no new distributor has been found, as the actors have been released from their contracts and moved on to other roles. But when I spoke to Bryan Fuller for a post-finale conversation, he revealed that there is still some hope that we could see Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham again.

Of course, given how Season 3 ended, fans got a very strong conclusion, if it needs truly serve as that… one post-credit dinner scene aside that more directly aims towards a new storyline. Read on to see what Fuller – who is currently working on an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at Starz -- had to say about Hannibal and Will’s big fall, Bedelia’s fancy meal, Chilton and Alana’s fates and much more.

IGN: If the show were coming back next year on NBC, I’m sure I’d jump to questions about how Hannibal and Will survived, but given the circumstances, do you want people to even assume they survived? Or are you fine with people thinking, “That’s it and both of them are dead”?

Fuller: Well, I think if there were a Season 4, of course they would survive but there’s still… The conversation is still in play in so many ways and I may be holding on to false hope that we’ll be able to continue telling a bit of the story because I love these actors and would love to continue working with them. I think it works both ways where if you are satisfied by this conclusion to the series, then that can be the end. if you are wanting more story then there is a version of events yet to be told.

IGN: You’ve had a long term plan for this show for quite a while, but at what point did you know that the Red Dragon story specifically was going to end this way?

Fuller: About half way through the season, we knew that the great conclusion for Hannibal and Will, with everything they’ve experienced this season, would be for them to actually kill the Red Dragon together as two jackals taking down a wildebeest. That felt very organic. Then we started talking about Moriarty and Sherlock over Reichenbach Falls and how that was an interesting direction to go for us, because Sherlock survived. You get your cake and get to eat it too, where you have a big, epic finale where there are gasps and apparent losses of lives and then you are able to continue telling that story by just simply saying “they survived the falls.”

IGN: Not that it wasn’t a clear part of the show to many people, including myself, before but the final two episodes especially got more explicit with the idea of this essentially as a tragic, gothic romance, including Bedelia and Will directly discussing Hannibal being in love with Will. Did it just feel like now was the time to be more overt with that conversation?

Fuller: Well it felt like it was -- it felt like they would be talking about it. It felt like he would ask that question. It wasn’t a strategy of “let’s wait and reveal this now,” it just felt, as we were writing those scenes, Will would ask that question because Hannibal’s behavior is indicative of someone who is obsessed and it seemed that Will would not be terribly bright if he hadn’t figured out there was some romance going on there. For me, Hannibal has always been a romantic horror story. Even from the get go of the series. I was fascinated by the idea of telling the story of a “bromance” between these two gentlemen that called into question how men relate to each other.

IGN: When they go off the cliff, it’s Will who pulls them off. Do you think Hannibal is a willing participant in that and accepting of that or do you think that’s all Will in that moment?

Fuller: I think he’s surprised in the moment that it happens. I think he’s surprised that it happens, but then a millisecond later he’s like, “Of course, that’s what he would do.” Because earlier in the episode, Will tells Hannibal very plainly that his survival is not necessary for him to accomplish what he wants to do, which is to end Hannibal. And he said very early on in the season or it was said very early on that if he doesn’t kill Hannibal, he fears that he will become him and that comes back to haunt him in the Red Dragon arc and we see how much joy he actually does take from killing another man, side by side with Hannibal Lecter. It’s operatic and poetic and also sickening.

IGN: When Dolarhyde is going to kill Hannibal, there’s a great moment with Will calmly drinking his wine, watching this go down, because this is what his plan is. But then right before Dolarhyde stabs Will it looks like Will is reaching, like he’s going to pull a weapon. At that moment, might Will have changed his mind?

Fuller: Yeah, I think that in that moment… What Will was afraid of -- and the reason that he co-opted Dolarhyde into his plot, in as much as Dolarhyde felt that he was co-opting Will into his plot -- was Will’s fear was that when it comes right down to it, he cares too much about Hannibal to kill him but kill him he must.

IGN: The ending being what it is, if the show comes back, we’ll see how they survive and if not, that could be their end but what’s happening with Bedelia is a huge, much more overt question. Should we assume she did that to herself? Should we assume that’s a time jump? What would you have people take from that?

Fuller: Well, I think what they should take from it is that the story is not over and somebody cut off Bedelia’s leg and is serving it to her and she just grabbed her fork and hid it under her napkin and she’s going to plunge it into the next person that walks into that room. And that if there had been a Season 4, we would have seen a continuation of that dinner.

IGN: Is there anything you can say about when that’s taking place? Is it taking place simultaneously to what we just saw with Will and Hannibal?

Fuller: I think we can safely say it’s after what Will and Hannibal experienced, suggesting one or both of them may have survived.

IGN: Okay. See, I was way off on that one! Let me ask about Chilton, who I have described as the horror version of Wile E. Coyote at this point.

Fuller: [Laughs]. Yeah, Hannibal’s Kenny!

IGN: [Laughs]. Except Kenny at least gets to come back looking the same.

Fuller: Right!


IGN: Clearly, Chilton’s role had already changed a lot. Alana was doing much of what Chilton had done traditionally in Red Dragon and Silence. If the show does continue in some form, did you have a specific idea of how Chilton could figure in, given his physical limitations at this point?

Fuller: There are miraculous leaps and bounds in grafting technology these days, so I always imagined that if we ever got around to Silence of the Lambs, we would see him back control of the institution with a scarred face. There’s something so haunting about a scarred Chilton flirting with Clarice Starling in the manner that he does in the book. “Baltimore can be a really fun town, if you have the right guide.”

IGN: Now you make me really want to see that moment. Continuing on that thread, the Red Dragon story was interesting for you guys because it began pretty faithful to the book and then you started moving things around, like having Molly get attacked much earlier or having Chilton be targeted instead of Freddie. Was it fun for you to on one hand do the most direct adaptation you’ve done since the series began but then begin to subvert it?

Fuller: Yeah, and really it was [episode] eleven that kind of shifted things around. You think, well, what they would do here is that the cops would show up before anybody else and you would save the attack on the family for the end. But since I knew that the ending had to be Hannibal and Will gleefully killing Dolarhyde side by side as murder husbands, we were able to shore up the telling of the tale from the novel to basically supplant the novel and the previous adaptations’ ending with an ending that was unique to our show.

IGN: What about choosing Chilton to be Dolarhyde’s target and not Freddie? Obviously, you had already had some fun with using “Freddie’s” traditional death in the Season 2 fake out, so how much did that play into it?

Fuller: The big motivation, honestly, was that we didn’t want to see that happening to a woman, so Chilton was the perfect replacement for Freddie Lounds in that instance. We gave him the authorship of the Hannibal story and he was telling the Red Dragon story in a novel so he was the writer that could be targeted by Frances Dolarhyde. But like I said, it all boils down to I didn’t want to see a man biting the lips off of a woman and burning her alive.
I also actually think it's more fun that it’s Chilton. We have more invested in Chilton in terms of his relationship to Hannibal Lecter. For me, it’s a more satisfying story move for that to be happening to Chilton than Freddie Lounds. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted to see that scene, but I knew we couldn’t do it exactly like it was done in previous adaptations and in the novel because we had stolen the thunder of it in Season 2. Yet what we did in Season 2 could, in a clever way, set up what was going to be a repeat of that sequence.

IGN: You don’t directly, in flashback or what not, go into Dolarhyde’s childhood in detail, although it is referenced several times and there’s that little flash of the nursing home his grandmother ran. Did it just seem that, given the focus of your show and how much you had going on already, you didn’t want to as directly go into Dolarhyde’s past like the book does?

Fuller: The big fear, honestly, is child actors. I thought a glimpse of him as a child would be great but once you see a child actor imbuing characteristics of a more sophisticated actor, it kind of diminishes power. We all saw the terror that poor Jake Lloyd unwittingly unleashed on audiences as Anakin Skywalker. So I just didn’t want to go near it but I wanted to, at the same time, be able to service the hardcore audience who knows the book and knows that his grandma was the real source of the Red Dragon and give them just a fleeting stab of that in an episode where we were talking about the impact of family. We see this very strange family dinner with a little boy and we know that there is a whole story behind it, but we got the tip of the iceberg of just how f**ked up his childhood was.

IGN: Reba’s final scene was another where you got to really pull direct quotes from the book. But here, I was reading it as Will can also be projecting about himself, as he talks about what it might be like to have a serial killer in love with you. Was that in your mind too, given you had these great quotes from the book but that it could definitely be maybe be a bit more of an echo here, given the situation.?

Fuller: Oh, absolutely. It was a great synchronicity of events where everything that Will was saying to Reba in the novel actually applies to Will Graham in the television series. So there was the want of seeing that scene because I haven’t seen it in any of the adaptations where we get to see Reba, post all of this, and have a quiet moment between the two people who were in love with serial killers.

IGN: Is Reba a character that, if you got to continue at some point, you might want to revisit? We never saw her again in the books, but we never saw Will again either, as far as the Red Dragon aftermath is concerned.

Fuller: This is the first time I’ve worked with Rutina Wesley and I hope it’s not the last. Yeah, if we were going a fourth season, I would absolutely bend over backwards to bring her back because she’s a goddamn delight.

IGN: One small clarification I wanted to ask is Will and Jack come up with this plan -- well, Will first suggests it -- about using Hannibal as the bait but the one thing that we know that Jack doesn’t know is that Dolarhyde has already attacked and spoken to Will. Is it safe to say that Jack does not know that at all during all of this?

Fuller: Yes. Jack is assuming that Will knew exactly when he did, which is that Dolarhyde may have survived. The interesting part of Jack Crawford going along with the plan is that, if you remember in the Italian chapter, Jack says he didn’t kill Hannibal Lecter because he needs Will Graham too and that sentiment is still haunting Jack. I think in the back of Jack’s mind, he knows that it is highly likely that this is going to go off the rails. But when it does go off the rails, it’s also highly likely that Hannibal Lecter and Francis Dolarhyde and perhaps even Will Graham will be dead and all of those things are sadly acceptable in Jack Crawford’s mind.

IGN: Hannibal said some very pointed things in the finale to Alana about borrowed time and almost insinuating that not only she but her entire family were in danger. Suffice to say that given the chance, he would have been gunning for her after they dealt with Dolarhyde?

Fuller: Absolutely. That was going to be one of the fun arcs in the fourth season. Hannibal’s want to keep that promise and Alana’s desire to be one step ahead of him and do everything that she could to make sure she stayed out of his [sight]. That’s one of the things… Of all the characters, Alana is perhaps the only one that has some semblance of a happy ending.

IGN: There had been this whole question of how much darkness was inside Will. We don’t see how things ended with him and Dolarhyde, after he suggests the idea of Hannibal. But Dolarhyde leaves and he ends up killing a bunch of cops. I feel like maybe if Will had told Jack, “Dolarhyde came to me. I can tell you where I saw him,” things have gone differently.

Fuller: The episode is called “Wrath of the Lamb” for Will being single-minded about Hannibal's destruction and the fear that he himself wouldn’t be able to do it when push came to shove and needing Francis Dolarhyde to really take it all the way. When he’s sitting in Bedelia’s chair in episode 12 and saying “Damned if I’ll feel,” he’s trying to harden himself. What he did to Chilton, however inadvertently or however unintentionally, he still did a shocking, unethical, immoral thing and that’s a slippery slope for Will. I feel like in order to understand Will’s acceptance on how he could sacrifice so much, including himself, just to put an end to Hannibal, we have to go back to that episode and see his struggle with what has happened to Chilton and how he’s hardening himself after that fact and goes beyond the “save yourself a lot of trouble and crush them all” recommendation that Bedelia gave him in therapy, to allowing himself to be crushed as well in the waves of the Atlantic.

IGN: With Siouxsie singing.

Fuller: “I will survive!"

IGN: [Laughs] All your finales had a certain sense of closure, but this one felt more so. Given some of the events in those last episodes, I wondered if maybe you were being extra careful in case the show didn’t come back. Is that true? Or regardless of whether Hannibal was coming back for three more seasons on NBC or not, was this how it was going to play out?

Fuller: I think this is how it would have ended regardless. The idea for Season 4, which we kept going back and forth on, I was like, “This is an arc for a season that I want to do and we can either do it in Season 4 or we can do our version of Silence of the Lambs in Season 4 and then get back to it in Season 5.” But I really feel like it organically goes in Season 4, before any sort of Silence of the Lambs arc, because there’s a lot to address and a lot to unpack. So I stand by this ending as the appropriate ending for Season 3, whether it was going into a Season 4 or whether it was ending where it stood.

IGN: I have to follow up with what you said about there still being some conversations about the future of Hannibal. Anything you can elaborate on that or with whom we might expect if it were to come back?

Fuller: Martha [De Laurentiis] is still trying to get financing on a film, so I’m curious what her perspective… They’ve explored Kickstarter for a film. They’ve talked about traditional financing. So there are conversations still ongoing and I’m mainly curious how the audience will react to this finale and whether the audience will say, “Okay, great, you scratched our back. We’re satisfied. That feels like an appropriate ending and we’re done with the story now.” Or if the audience is going to say, “I want more of Mads Mikkelson and Hugh Dancy and their mindf**kery.”

IGN: I feel like it’s going to be a combination of both!

Fuller: I hope so!

IGN: You, Hugh and Mads are now all working on new projects but as you just mentioned, the love for Hannibal runs deep both from the people who made it and the fans. So right now, obviously nothing is certain, but what do you feel at this moment? Do you think one day there will be a continuation of this world?

Fuller: Well, you’re asking somebody who can see it. I can see that story. I can see it very vividly and I can see it in a new, redefining of the roles of Hannibal and Will Graham. So I feel like it is alive whether it’s just a ghost in my machine or if it’s an actual thing that’s going to manifest in reality. I still feel the reality of that in my heart so it’s hard for me to answer with any objectivity.


IGN: You mentioned doing Silence of the Lambs, and everyone is very curious how this version of Hannibal would deal with that. Were the rights issues with that book and the characters still an issue to be dealt with when you got there?

Fuller: We were going to re-address it if we had got a green light on Season 4 because Season 4 didn’t involve Silence of the Lambs, but it would allow us to grease the wheels and start preparing for a Season 5, so we were going to ask again. So who knows! Who knows how these rights things will pan out and is there a possibility of Starz, in a year from now, saying, “We would love to do a Silence of the Lambs miniseries” and being able to work it out with the rights holders. Who knows? I certainly love working with Starz on American Gods and I would love to do a Hannibal miniseries of sorts.

IGN: I don’t think many would argue with that! Since you mentioned American Gods, can you mention briefly your approach on that?

Fuller: It’s interesting, because Michael Green and I are taking a similar approach to adaptation that I took with Hannibal in that we are taking the iconography of the book and translating it to the screen and also taking suggestions of iconography from the book and expanding them in ways that there was simply not the real estate to explore in a novel whereas when you’re telling a television series that hopefully will go many, many years. So we’re planning it out accordingly that the first season is actually a very small part of the novel because we’ve expanded it in such a dramatic way.

IGN: Will we be hearing some details on that in the not too distant future, you think?

Fuller: Yes and if you buy the current issue of Fangoria, you’ll see exclusive production art from the television series. It’s a good issue. And there’s lots of great interviews with the Hannibal cast. I’m thrilled with it. Having Siouxsie Sioux write a song for the show and being able to guest edit Fangoria, I’m a very happy little piggy. IGN Logo

Bryan Fuller Describes The ‘Silence of the Lambs’ Season of ‘Hannibal’

He was unable to get the rights to 'The Silence of the Lambs' before the show's cancellation. Now he tells us what would have been.

by William Bibbiani Aug 30th, 2015

"This is all I ever wanted for you, Will. For both of us." So spoke Hannibal Lecter in last night's series finale of Hannibal, Bryan Fuller's acclaimed adaptation of Thomas Harris's best-selling novels. But the series lasted only three seasons, and Fuller definitely wanted more for his TV show. Hannibal adapted the events of the novels Red Dragon, Hannibal and (somewhat) Hannibal Rising, but the rights to Harris's most famous Hannibal Lecter novel, The Silence of the Lambs, have been consistently unavailable to the makers of the popular show.

So with Hannibal cancelled (for now), and the proposed movie taking place in what Fuller calls "a pocket in one of the novels," it seems unlikely that fans will see the Hannibal version of The Silence of the Lambs anytime soon. And thus, the morning after the series finale aired on NBC, I called Bryan Fuller up to ask what might have been.

In this exclusive interview, we talked about the Fuller's dream cast, the scope of the season-long Silence of the Lambs story arc, and what the introduction of the "real" Clarice Starling would mean for the show's existing, alternate version of her character, Miriam Lass, played by Anna Chlumsky. Bon appétit.

Crave:One of the things a lot of the fans wanted to see in Hannibal was The Silence of the Lambs. Obviously it never panned out in time. Do you still have any hope that you can adapt it someday, down the road, or will your plans lead you elsewhere?

Bryan Fuller: I absolutely do hope and would love to tell Silence of the Lambs with this cast. I love that novel and I think there’s fantastic ways to reimagine it for thirty years later, and… yes. Period. [Laughs.]

How would that have worked? You introduced Miriam Lass [in Season One]. Would you have brought her back in or would there just be a new character, a lot like Miriam Lass, named “Clarice Starling?”

I adore Anna Chlumsky, and we talked about where Miriam Lass is now and what she would be doing, so yes, Miriam Lass would be - depending on Anna’s availability - as big a part as Anna’s availability would allow in a Silence of the Lambs arc.

But she would be separate from Clarice Starling?

Yes.

I imagine, since you adapted Red Dragon by tweaking it and shifting certain plot points around, you would have to do the same with The Silence of the Lambs. What are your initial thoughts on how The Silence of the Lambs would work in a serialized format, since everyone knows the story already?

I am imagining a parallel structure of Hannibal in the institution, with a severely scarred Chilton, now having returned to his post, and juxtaposing that, back in the heyday of Hannibal as a psychiatrist, perhaps even earlier than we met him the first time, when he had Benjamin Raspail as a patient, and weave that story in and around the modern day Silence of the Lambs tale as we know it.

We saw a dark version of Barney [Lecter’s guard] in Season Two. Would there be other plans for Barney’s character?

If we got Silence of the Lambs we would be hitting Barney, we would be hitting Benjamin Raspail, we would be hitting Buffalo Bill… there would be the same kind of voracious need to fan fictionalize all of those characters [laughs] and reimagine certain specific scenarios that caused them to cross paths, or uncross paths as their stories were unfolding.

What about Ardelia Mapp [Clarice Starling’s roommate]? Would she have a role as well?

Major. Major.

You’ve made excellent casting decisions so far… what would you have looked for in a Buffalo Bill?

I would love to cast Lee Pace as Buffalo Bill. His first, most notable, award-winning career move was playing a transgendered person [in 2003’s A Soldier’s Girl], and I think it would be fascinating to return him to that side of his acting skill.
Lee Pace Pushing Daisies

You’ve worked with him before [in Pushing Daisies]. Had Lee Pace ever come close to being in Hannibal before, in another capacity, or would you have reserved that role for him?

Many, many, many times. Every season. We constantly asked Lee but he was always so busy, because he was making Guardians of the Galaxy and Halt and Catch Fire and the Hobbit films. So his dance card was full but we kept on asking. We had talked about him playing Francis Dolarhyde, and it was something that we were sort of hanging in the balance, to see if Halt and Catch Fire would have another season. So he wasn’t available. But I think it worked out amazingly well for us. [Laughs.]

What about Clarice? Do you have any dream casting for Clarice Starling in your version of The Silence of the Lambs?

Well, there’s a couple of ways to go. There’s the Ellen Page way, which I think would be fantastic and more kind of in line with the Clarice that we all know. But I know I would also like to explore who Clarice would be from a different racial background. There’s something about being poor and white in the South but there’s something else about being poor and black in the South, and I think it could be the necessary gateway into the character, to make Clarice as much our own signature character as we tried to make Will Graham.

In The Silence of the Lambs and throughout the other books, Hannibal’s interest in Clarice becomes romantic. You’ve already done that with Will Graham in the show. Would Will be in that season or would Hannibal be moving on to a new romantic conquest?

Well, I think that all depends on how Season 4 would have ended. [Laughs.]

Something about Richard Armitage’s portrayal of Francis Dolarhyde
I didn’t notice this until I read that the character was from St. Louis, where I have lived all my life.

His voice is absolutely perfect. He sounds like someone who has lived in Missouri forever. I’m extremely impressed by how good his voice is. It sounds totally neutral to me because that’s the accent I’ve grown up around. It’s truly amazing.
#Richard Armitage#Francis Dolarhyde#Hannibal

Size matters.
When we were shooting the final scene, the lovely Richard Armitage came by my prep station with compliments but asked me why I made Gillian's leg so big. He thought her legs were much slimmer. Gillian and I had already discussed it. I apologized that I had to made the roast bigger than her leg so it would have presence on the long table. She modestly said she thought it was pretty close to the actual size of her leg. Not really. She has no idea how tiny she is!

Q&A: Bryan Fuller on the End (for Now) of ‘Hannibal,’ the Future of Broadcast TV, and His Plans for Clarice Starling


This should go without saying, but if you’re concerned about spoilers, you should probably wait to read this discussion of the Hannibal finale until after you’ve watched the Hannibal finale.

The first rule of Fannibal Club is that on Hannibal, nobody’s truly dead until we’ve seen them cooked and plated — and even then, who knows? Bryan Fuller’s operatically gross and sneakily romantic reimagining of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon has run its course as an NBC show, but according to Fuller, we may not have seen the last of Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham and Mads Mikkelsen’s Dr. Lecter.

(Spoilers follow. Last chance. Perhaps enjoy this instead.)

After a bloody three-way battle staged like a love scene, this Saturday’s season/series finale closed with a nod to Holmes and Moriarty’s plunge from the Reichenbach Falls in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem,” one of the most famous impermanent endings in pop history. (Doyle published the story in 1893; Holmes stayed dead until 1901.) But if you were a fan of the show inside this show — the one about the genuine and passionate emotional entanglement between a heterosexual male FBI profiler and the people-eating serial killer he’s chasing — the finale paid off on another level. Dancy and Mikkelsen found an odd tenderness in a relationship that would have played as a freak show in the hands of lesser actors; there was tension in their scenes together leading up to Saturday’s bloodbath, but there was real sadness, too. Like Holmes says to Watson in “His Last Bow,” considered the real last Sherlock story: “Stand with me here upon the terrace, for it may be the last quiet talk we shall ever have.”

The thing I kept saying to people about this season was that it felt like a dream you’d have after watching too much Hannibal. I mean that as a compliment.

Well, I think that’s certainly true of the first [half of the season], the Italian chapter. It felt like if we just went right back into a case, we wouldn’t be acknowledging any of what the characters went through in the previous two seasons. And given the finale of the second season, there needed to be a certain refractory period for the characters to fall back and assess what they’ve been through. To charge them forward in a heavily plotted arc seemed artificial and television-y, and I wanted to do something that was much more organic, to be in the headspace of Will Graham, which is heavily traumatized. [Laughs.] We had to establish the damage that had been done. If they were just right back up on the horse, you don’t really feel the impact of what they’ve been through. So it was a very conscious choice.

When it started, you described Season 3 as the version of Hannibal you’d always wanted to do. Were you pretty sure this was probably going to be the last season, and did that embolden you to go out in a blaze of glory?

Well, yeah. I think when we first started talking about the season, I knew the Italian chapter was going to be a lot of fun. I knew that it was going to be very thoughtful and cinematic, and a deviation from the FBI crime-scene cases that we’d experienced in the first two seasons. And then I knew, of course, that we were going to be heading into the Red Dragon [story] after that chapter, and it just felt like that was a necessary conclusion for Will Graham, who in that first chapter of the season was really struggling with, If I don’t kill Hannibal, I fear I will become him. And, that pays off in the finale in so many ways, because you have Bedelia [Du Maurier, Hannibal’s therapist, played by Gillian Anderson] asking Will, “So, you can’t live with Hannibal and you can’t live without Hannibal? Is that what this is about?” And Will saying, “I accept that I may not survive this, and that’s fine with me.” And so it seemed like it was an organic conclusion to the emotional state of Will Graham.

Was this the ending that you had always envisioned? It’s kind of the consummation of the relationship in a way. It’s the thing that it’s been building to. It’s like the Get a room moment …

[Laughs.] Right. It felt — it’s hard to answer that, because I had a plan for Season 4 and how to wrangle the story back from the cliff’s edge, so to speak. With the idea that we were not going immediately into a Season 4, and there may be a period of time before we pick up the baton again to tell more adventures of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, it felt like this was the logical conclusion to the arc of the season, and to Will Graham saying, “I have to kill him or I’ll become him.” A Thelma and Louise/Sherlock and Moriarty nosedive felt like it completed that arc of what Will Graham had been experiencing in the first three seasons. And then Season 4 would’ve started a whole new arc between those two guys.

You characterizing the cliff thing as a Sherlock moment implies something pretty specific …

Oh, yeah. That’s why I keep saying Sherlock and Moriarty, because they go over, and you think they’re dead, and then there’s another book and they’re not.

Right before I got on the phone with you I was reading a great article about postcanonical Sherlock Holmes stories. I didn’t realize how many iconic things in the Sherlock mythos didn’t originate in Conan Doyle’s books. Like “Elementary, my dear Watson” is from the movies. Someone else came up with the deerstalker hat, too.

Yeah, it was the gift that kept giving. That’s the fun of an adaptation — you know the story works because you’ve read it before. And in this case, not only had I read it before but I’d seen a couple of movies that have covered the same territory. It’s up to me to make that story fresh for the audience that’s tuning into this program, but it also becomes a fan fiction of sorts. I don’t want to do anything unless I can put some portion of myself into it, so it feels reflective of my soul as an artist. So I felt like there was an opportunity, with the dynamic between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, that allowed me to explore male friendship, above and beyond boundaries of sex and camaraderie. It just felt like a way for me to do something that I hadn’t done before. And three years later I feel like I did something that I’m very proud of artistically.

These are obviously Harris’s characters first and foremost, but do you feel a sense of ownership, at least of these versions, at the end of three years?

I felt a sense of co-ownership with Mads and Hugh, because so much of this show and my favorite moments of crafting this show were working in conjunction with two brilliant actors who were as invested in the storytelling as I was. And, as creative as I was. So much of what we give these actors is riddles and poetry. For them to navigate that, and find something genuinely emotional and authentic, is a testament to their skills and their craft.



I still can’t imagine being Mads Mikkelsen at the beginning of this experience, looking at the Anthony Hopkins version of Lecter and trying to come up with another way to do it. And now it’s weird — the Hopkins version seems off now. It seems a little big.

Nothing would please me more than Mads Mikkelsen becoming the definitive Hannibal Lecter for audiences. And that’s a very big wish, because Anthony Hopkins, those are huge shoes to fill. But it’s a new generation, and it’s a different version of the story, and I think for some members of the audience, Mads is the definitive Hannibal Lecter. He certainly is for me. But I’ve been a fan of all of the Hannibal Lecters. I thought Brian Cox was brilliant in Manhunter. And Anthony Hopkins deserved every accolade that he got for Silence of the Lambs.

Were you ever close to working out a deal to use the Lambs characters?

Y’know, it was pretty, um, immobile. It was not going one way or another. It wasn’t getting closer to “no” and it wasn’t getting closer to “yes.” It was always a possibility, but a difficult possibility. And who knows what’ll happen now that Hannibal has come to fruition on NBC. Maybe in a few years from now MGM might decide that they would love to see a Silence of the Lambs miniseries on Starz, and we’ll go for it.

But that’s a hypothetical at this point?

Well, at this point we’re trying to get financing for a Hannibal film that would essentially be a version of the arc [I had in mind] for Season 4. And who knows what the likelihood of that is. I’m hoping that with the finale airing, and with people discussing it, we’ll be able to have a conversation again about continuing the story, because myself and Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy are all ready, willing, and able to return to the story when the time is right.

The Season 4 arc you’re talking about — that’s a separate thing from the Hannibal version of the Silence of the Lambs story?

There’s a portion of the novel Hannibal that has not been included in any of the adaptations of the story. That was the thrust of the potential Season 4 for us — taking this plot point from that book and reconceiving it for Will and Hannibal. I was talking with Hugh about this as we were landing the plane on Season 3. And Hugh was like, “Oh my god, that’s cool. I want to do that.” So I know Hugh wants to do it, I know Mads wants to do it, and I want to do it with them, we just have got to find the right time and the right platform to tell that story. And who knows? American Gods1 may be a big hit for Starz, and they may owe me a favor, and maybe they’ll green-light a Hannibal miniseries. Who knows what will happen?

So everything you do from now on is just going to be you trying to get another crack at the Hannibalverse, basically.

When I work on these shows, particularly Pushing Daisies and Hannibal, I see the story so vividly in my mind. That allows me a certain creative satisfaction, knowing where the story’s going, but it doesn’t help with the frustration of not being able to tell it to the audience. Every show I’ve done that’s ended, I knew what the next season was going to be. I have many ghosts of stories untold haunting my head, and I would love to exorcise some of them.

Did you know what your version of Silence of the Lambs was going to be?

Oh, yeah. There were so many great characters in that story — not just Hannibal and Clarice, but Buffalo Bill and Benjamin Raspail. It felt like there was a great opportunity for a parallel structure — Hannibal Lecter incarcerated and Hannibal Lecter flashing back to the period when he was Benjamin Raspail’s psychiatrist, and you learn that Raspail was involved with Buffalo Bill, who was also murdering people. There’s a way into that story that expands what we saw in Silence of the Lambs. There’s a version with bigger chunks of Hannibal Lecter folded into that omelet than in the film.

I really liked what you had to say in that Entertainment Weekly Q&A about how you’d decided to handle the sexually violent aspects of Francis Dolarhyde on the show. Had you thought much about how you’d deal with Lambs’s treatment of its transgender characters, which — and I think we can say this without throwing Thomas Harris under the bus, because it’s a 30-year-old book — is very much “of its time”?

It is and it isn’t. It’s interesting, because I remember when that came out, there was some backlash from the LGBT community, but in reading it, I just thought, “Oh, it’s cool that [Buffalo Bill] is a trans character.” I don’t need a character to be perfect and an upstanding citizen because they are also representing a minority. I think that that actually reflects a very narrow view of the world, and a kind of — not hysteria, but a political correctness that doesn’t allow room for human beings to actually be flawed. I know trans people, and they are some tough motherfuckers. Because they have gone through so much shit, and so much pressure, because of their identities, and how they view themselves, and the dysmorphia they experience from who they are on the inside and how they look on the outside, and the madness that lies in that chasm between those two realities.

So I could imagine somebody in a trans situation, who is insane, acting out on those circumstances. There’s arguably a lot of homophobia in Thomas Harris’s work — both nascent and active — that’s reflective of an era. And we’re beyond that [era] now. But I was more bothered by his portrayal of Margot Verger as a woman who was repeatedly molested at a very young age, and as a result destroyed her body and her femininity with steroids, and became this roid-rage monster. The depiction of her physically, and the way she’s assessed by other characters, their feelings about her where — I think there’s even a moment when Clarice Starling first meets her, where she’s wondering about the size and proportion of [Margot’s] clitoris.2

And I mean, it’s all so specific and weird in the way that Thomas Harris is very specific and weird and wonderful for those things. But I found that much more offensive than a person who was insane and also trans. Because there are people who are trans that are perfectly sane, and myself — as somebody who gender identifies with the gender that I was born with — I frequently feel insane. So [laughs] who am I to argue with someone’s interpretation of insanity for a character who has a specific quality?

Ridley Scott’s Hannibal doesn’t touch the Margot Verger stuff from the novel. That whole book is deranged.

Oh, it’s deranged. And actually, like — a lot of people hate that book, but I fucking love it. And it frequently jockeys for position as my favorite of the Hannibal stories. Red Dragon will sort of inch ahead by a neck, and then Hannibal will go forward, and then I’ll remember something about Silence of the Lambs that I adored, but it’s usually between Red Dragon, Hannibal and then Silence of the Lambs as far as my favorites.

I dig the movie for that same reason — for its craziness. It’s not the most finely wrought of those things necessarily, but it’s crazy, and Mason Verger is such an incredible villain. One thing I really appreciated about your Hannibal is that you used the whole canon, instead of just going, “OK, my movie is a sequel to Alien and Aliens but we’re pretending Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection didn’t happen.”

Oh, I think that was necessary to corral it into a television milieu, and be able to tell it as a complete story, as opposed to “We’re just doing Red Dragon.” There was so much mythology in those novels, and I wanted every inch of it. And still do.

I also really liked the meta-story you’re telling in the Red Dragon half of the season, about Lecter being this niche phenomenon who’s being superseded in the culture by Dolarhyde, who Dr. Chilton calls a “four-quadrant killer.”

That was a very conscious way to say, like, Yeah, we know our ratings are terrible, and we know we’ve got a very loyal fan base, and that’s our niche appeal. And maybe more people will like the Red Dragon story, because it’s a little less pretentious than the Italian chapter.

How did you find out the show was done, at least for the moment?

At the beginning of Season 3, [NBC Entertainment president] Jen Salke pulled me aside and said, “We need to start talking about new development for you.” And I was like, “OK — so we’re not having the fourth season on NBC.” She’s like, “This doesn’t mean anything about the fourth season. But we should talk about new development.” It was her way of saying, “I’m just preparing you now, because I don’t know how long I can hold the wolves at bay.” She has been incredibly supportive of this show. Without her support, we wouldn’t have been able to tell those pretentious stories in the Italian chapter. We would’ve had to shore it up with a lot of plot machinations, and that would’ve compromised the integrity of the characters and what they were experiencing. NBC just said, Do the show that you want to do, we will support you within reason. And they did. It’s incredible that we got to tell this tale on broadcast television. No other network would have allowed us to do the things that Jen Salke allowed us to do.

Given the source material, given what you can’t take out of the Hannibal Lecter story without having it not be Hannibal Lecter anymore, was there a way you could have done this show that would have made it more of a mainstream success?

Absolutely. I think there were many more commercial approaches we could’ve taken to the material. It would start with casting. We cast Mads Mikkelsen, who’s a brilliant actor, but he’s foreign, and perhaps to some mainstream audiences a little bit hard to understand with his accent. If we had cast James Spader in that role, [or] if we had cast Hugh Grant, [we would have] played much more to the pop-cultural understanding of Hannibal Lecter as a character that had become camp in some of the later films. To the flourishes in the later performances of the role. There was a broadness that contributed to his mass appeal, because people were like, “Oh, he’s funny. He says Oh, goody when he’s about to gut somebody. That’s cute.” It’s an approach that’s also glib and a little dismissive of the subject matter, and that probably would have been a much bigger hit. But I think that version would’ve been inauthentic. And fortunately for us, NBC didn’t force us to take that path.

From that perspective, I guess it’s pretty impressive that they stuck with you this long. Although by the end they did take away the “Next week on Hannibal” promos, which I thought was weird. It’s like they were saying “Look, don’t get attached.”

They were servicing their new shows. They knew exactly who was going to be watching [next week’s Hannibal], and that number was not going to move. It’s a very strange time in television, because people are still holding on to the old ways, even though everyone knows that they don’t work. You look at broadcast television — when we moved to Saturdays [in the U.S.] but were still airing on Thursdays in Canada, we kept our audience numbers the first week, and then the second week they dropped by half, because the audience realized that they could BitTorrent it after Thursday night and watch it then.

A big portion of our audience watches the show illegally, because once it airs in one place, people put it online and everyone has access to it. It’s a really challenging situation, because what networks seem to not be realizing is that they can’t control when their audience watches the show. The audience is passionate and they’re going to find the show and get it as soon as they possibly can. And that means seeing it illegally. If all the people who watched Hannibal illegally, watched legally, we would have much healthier numbers and we’d probably still be on the air. But until networks realize that everything has to be day-and-date — like, everybody has to see it simultaneously, that’s the only way to combat piracy.

Netflix figured that out. Here it is. You don’t have to pirate it because we’re giving it all to you right now. We have a very active, rabid fan base. I mean we trend every Saturday on Twitter. It’s wonderful how active and committed the fan base is to the show. But that doesn’t translate to the old way of doing things. Until we crumple that up and throw it out the window, and say, This is how we’re measuring things, and we’re going to put commercials on piracy sites — until they figure out a way to monetize those illegal experiences and bring them into the fold of legal viewing, we’re going to see shows die early deaths because the numbers on paper don’t reflect the passion of the audience. It’s a tricky situation. I’m curious to see when they’ll make the shift into the modern day. Because they’re still using standards that are 50 years old.

Was that an issue even before the move to Saturdays?

We were frequently in the top-five most-pirated shows. And most of the fans that approach me tell me they watch it illegally. But it’s not entirely fair to blame it on piracy. I think we were canceled before they moved us to Saturday. Ultimately, like I said, the show is very niche. It is not a broadcast television show, based on its subject matter. And NBC tried it, and it was a noble effort. Now we’ve gotta see if the industry is going to evolve.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

2016 Golden Globes: Why ‘Outlander,’ ‘Halt and Catch Fire,’ ‘Hannibal’ deserve Drama Series nods
November 11, 2015




Globes -

On December 10, the nominees for the 2016 Golden Globes are going to by announced by the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the buildup to this show, other than the Emmys, is maybe our favorite of the year. Sometimes, we even prefer the Globes since they tend to be more open to recognizing shows that are either new to the table, or of a variety of different genres.





Over the course of the coming weeks, we’re going to be letting you know what our ballot would be for all of the TV categories if we were a member of the HFPA, and we’ll be having you do the same. Much like we did with the Emmy series this summer, we’ll announce the reader picks the day before the nominations. (In this case, we’ll announce them on December 9.)

Today, we’re kicking things off by focusing on the Outstanding Drama Series category.





“Halt and Catch Fire” (AMC) – One of the most-improved series of year, “Halt and Catch Fire” succeeded in its second season by focusing on innovation, character development, and surprising twists. With “Mad Men” now gone, Lee Pace, Kerry Bishe, and the rest of the cast are making a strong case for AMC’s best show.

“Hannibal” (NBC) – Gone but not forgotten, this show remains a visual achievement from Bryan Fuller. When it tugged at your heartstrings like it did with the Hugh Dancy – Mads Mikkelsen scenes in “Digestivo,” few programs needed the tissue box. You could argue that maybe its biggest flaw was simply being ahead of its time when it comes to what network viewers have an appetite for.

“The Leftovers” (HBO) – Probably the most improved series of the year. Through season one, we found this to be perennially depressing, devastating, and at times even frustrating to get through. Now, Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta have found freedom away from the source material and created an arresting character study, and a story about what faith means to different people and how much they strive for redemption in a world where it is sometimes impossible.

“Mad Men” (AMC) – Before we say goodbye to it for good, how about one final nod for one of the greatest shows ever made? “Mad Men” said farewell with a brilliant final seven episodes, which gave us a sense as to how some characters changed, some didn’t, and how at least temporarily, maybe Don Draper found a little bit of peace within himself.

“Outlander” (Starz) – It’s a little bit fantasy, a little bit historical drama, and throughout fantastically compelling entertainment. Anchored by Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan’s powerful and at-times gut-wrenching performances, this story not only adapted the work of Diana Gabaldon beautifully, but it also created a legion of dedicated fans and gave Starz greater relevancy as a network with pop-culture aspirations.

Honorable mentions – “Better Call Saul” (AMC), “Daredevil” (Netflix), “Hell on Wheels” (AMC), “Penny Dreadful” (Showtime), “Vikings” (History).

What is your pick? Vote now below!

You are going to be able to see many of the other editions of our Golden Globes spotlight series over at the link here. Also, you can sign up now to get some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: Golden Globes.)

The third and (probably) final season of the much-loved but barely-watched thriller started slowly but ended on a high note with the arrival of Richard Armitage's Red Dragon. And it remained one of the most beautiful shows around, so it's surprising that it didn't get a single nod to take to the grave.

Exclusive Interview: Bryan Fuller Talks The Home Release And Legacy Of Hannibal Season 3
By Sam Woolf @S_Woolf 1 week ago

The dinner bell tolls for thee, Dr. Lecter: tomorrow, the third season of NBC’s Hannibal is being released on DVD and Blu-ray, and it will no doubt be a day of mixed emotions for Fannibals. By all accounts, the critically beloved, criminally under-watched psychodrama is done for good, having ended an improbable run as TV’s most horrifying, beguiling, and richly visualized show. The best always leave you wanting more, and while series diehards will have a glut of new DVD extras to feast on in the home release, Hannibal deserved to be more than a three-course meal.

To celebrate the third season’s release, we spoke with creator and showrunner Bryan Fuller about the series as a whole, and what Hannibal’s ideal (possible?) future would look like. Whether dishing on the DVD special features, paying his respects to the author and collaborators who made Hannibal possible, or diving into how the series’ sausage was made, Mr. Fuller’s insights offer just a taste of the pleasures to be found in one of this year’s best shows.

Check out what he had to say below, and enjoy!

The home release for this last season is something of a bittersweet occasion for fans. Was putting this set together tougher than the last two? It might be a bit like worrying about the details on invitations to a wake.

Bryan Fuller: [laughs] Oh no. I worry about the details on everything, so it wasn’t about being a futile effort. It was about making sure we got the Fannibals the best possible version of the Season 3 collection, with a ton of extras, and a ton of commentaries, and making sure that they know that we are as invested as they are in this show.

Can you open up about who’s going to be on those commentaries?

BF: Yes! There’s commentaries with Hugh Dancy, and Richard Armitage, and Rutina Wesley, and even Patton Oswalt drops in on a commentary for episode two. There’s a lot of fun had in those conversations that’s essentially conversations with myself and the actors. Gillian Anderson did a commentary, so we had quite a few of the actors participating.

How did the Patton Oswalt commentary come to be?

BF: He was recording something in the same sound studio that we were and he asked if he could do an ambush commentary.

So that means we get his reaction to the heart stag in episode two then?

BF: Yes, that is exactly when he walks into the room!

Outside of those commentaries, is there anything in particular on the set you’re going to be happy to have out in the world? You guys have always done well by your gag reels.

BF: The gag reel is hilarious, Raúl Esparza is the star of the gag reel. Him in the burn makeup cackling, and clacking his teeth is definitely the highlight [laughs]. The documentaries that our Blu-ray producer Cliff Stephenson cut together for the show are fantastic. He made a great documentary on adapting “Red Dragon,” and there’s a few different documentaries that he produced that are wonderful addendums to the story that we’re telling.

Looking back on the third season as adaptation, was it difficult making that shift between the first half, when you’re telling your own story about Hannibal’s time on the run in Europe, and then at the midpoint finally having “Red Dragon” the book dictate where things were going?

BF: It was always a very – I wouldn’t say “smooth” handoff. It was more of an abrupt handoff of the episodes ending the European-Verger arc with episode seven, and then episode eight we’re three years later, and everybody has changed so dramatically based on their experiences. It allowed us a flush of new energy for the storytelling and the character dynamics, so it was very welcome. It was almost a buoy to swim to, and recalculate the trajectory of the series in a great way. That was actually a huge gift to the storytelling.

It’s a great narrative to pull from, but over three seasons you had pretty much picked the book clean for smaller details.

BF: [laughs] Oh yeah, there was a couple of times in there where it was like, “Shit, we used that line already, and this whole scene we recontextualized.” There was once when Hugh had to call me and say, “Didn’t we use this line with Abigail in Season 1?” And I was like, “Fuck, yes, we did.”

Notably, you skip over Francis Dolarhyde’s origins from the book. Was that because of time, or something that worked better for the character?

BF: Well, I think the trouble would have been for us giving so much to a child actor…my concern was finding the right child actor, and then seeing that child actor in Richard Armitage, which could convolute the character in some ways. And I felt it was better to get a glimpse of it and understand that Richard Armitage is Francis Dolarhyde, and not spend too much time with anybody else being Dolarhyde.

The same goes for the earlier part of the season, when we were exploring a little bit of Hannibal’s backstory. There were conversations in the writer’s room, “Do we see young Hannibal?,” and my attitude was, “I don’t want to see anybody else play Hannibal except for Mads Mikkelsen.”

18 December 2015

Digital Spy's best TV of 2015: Our top 5 - and No.1 show of the year - revealed

This is it - which series impressed us more than any other this year?
By Morgan Jeffery, Emma Dibdin and Tom Eames

So it comes to this - the big one. All this week, Digital Spy has been listing off our favourite TV shows of the year - and now our 2015 telly retrospective reaches a dramatic finale of its own. As rock band Europe once sang: it's the final countdown.

But with more to choose from than ever before - across broadcast, cable, online - which show has been crowned our greatest of the past 12 months? There's only one way to find out...

5. MARVEL'S JESSICA JONES
David Tennant and Krysten Ritter in Marvel's Jessica Jones episode 8 'AKA WWJD?'

Undoubtedly, 2015 was the year in which Marvel's small-screen output officially outstripped its movies. And shrewd, noirish character drama Jessica Jones was a triumphant note to end the year on.

A nuanced psychological thriller masquerading as a comic book adaptation, the series sees Krysten Ritter's hardened superhero-turned-PI Jessica trying to rebuild her life in the wake of a recent trauma.

Her former tormentor is Kilgrave (David Tennant), a sociopath with the power of mind control whose obsession with Jessica has grown more dangerous since she escaped from him.

Jessica Jones exceeded our already high expectations at every turn, balancing its wry hardboiled tone and pacy plotting with a remarkably rich exploration of rape, domestic violence and the meaning of consent.

Never mind Marvel's best show to date – this is one of the most daring and sophisticated dramas of the year.

4. HANNIBAL
Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter & Hugh Dancy as Will Graham in Hannibal S03E13: 'The Wrath of the Lamb'

While it's perhaps fitting that Bryan Fuller's intoxicating take on the Hannibal Lecter story was slaughtered before its time, the loss of it still stings.

The show's third season was its most divided (and divisive) yet, devoting its first seven episodes to the manhunt for Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal in Italy, before jumping forward three years to pick up with Red Dragon.

While the loss of the FBI procedural in that first half made for an even more surreal and disjointed tone than usual, the show's visual language and grasp on its characters remained impeccable.

And if season finale 'The Wrath of the Lamb' is the last we ever see of Hannibal, it's hard to imagine a more perfect end.

Richard Armitage made a fragile and frightening Francis Dolarhyde. But his story was ultimately a means of reuniting Hannibal and Will (Hugh Dancy) - whose cycle of seduction and betrayal finally paid off in a tragic, blood-soaked and startlingly romantic climax.

3. FARGO
Ted Danson as Hank Larsson & Patrick Wilson as Lou Solverson in Fargo S02E01: 'Waiting for Dutch'

Eyebrows were raised when it was announced that Fargo's second season would jump back to 1979 and focus on a relatively minor character from the first season. But lo and behold, our second trip to Minnesota was even better than the first.

Sporting an even more impressive cast including Patrick Wilson, Ted Danson and Nick Offerman, Fargo was never a chore - constantly enthralling, shocking, hilarious and keeping us hooked until the very end.

Particular props go out to standout star Bokeem Woodbine as the wisecracking hitman Mike Milligan. To think that before this, one of his biggest roles was in the dodgy Total Recall remake. Where has he been all this time?

2. THIS IS ENGLAND '90
This is England '90 episode 1

Expectations were high for the final chapter of Shane Meadow's searing saga, but he and co-writer Jack Thorne of course delivered. And then some - with the brutal, hilarious, bleak, heart-warming This is England '90.

The concluding chapter - arriving almost a decade after the original This Is England was released to cinemas - brought the whole thing full-circle, with Combo's vicious assault on Milky continuing to have tragic and far-reaching consequences.

The final scene at Lol and Woody's wedding reception was perfect. The whole gang reunited, joyous... all except Milky, who's doomed to linger on the fringes after opting for violent revenge over forgiveness.

And this is one gang you wouldn't want to be excluded from. From Joe Gilgun to Vicky McClure to Stephen Graham to Andrew Shim, a finer ensemble cast you will not find - breathing brilliant life into characters the audience had almost come to think of as friends.

1. HUMANS
Katherine Parkinson as Laura and Gemma Chan as Anita in Humans episode 3

The best, most surprising television of 2015 came courtesy of Channel 4 and AMC's Humans. Whereas the former's Utopia had been imaginative and innovative, it was perhaps too offbeat - too weird - to secure a broader audience. This series though effortlessly fused - no pun intended - human drama with a fresh twist on familiar science-fiction trappings.

A star-making turn from Gemma Chan as Anita - a human-like android known as a Synth, whose true identity has been suppressed - was but one of a roster of incredible performances.

William Hurt, Katherine Parkinson, Will Tudor and more did wonderful work with Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley's smart, stirring scripts - though special mention should be reserved for Emily Berrington as the cold yet somehow sympathetic Niska. That girl's going places.

Telling a broadly fantastic story for a mainstream audience, Humans' ambition was huge. But it was matched by the show's faultless execution, with the US co-production delivering a sheen and polish that set it apart from other UK series.

Though loosely inspired by a Swedish series, Vincent and Brackley took their show in enough new and interesting directions that even those familiar with the show's origins would have a reason to keep tuning in.

Humans managed to stand out as something totally different in a TV landscape awash with cop shows and crime thrillers. And its fearlessness, its creativity and its quality all deserve to be recognised.

‘Hannibal’ Season 4 Would’ve Returned to First Season in “Unexpected” Way
by Allison Keene

Fannibals, though Hannibal has seemingly come to a close, I still can’t let the flame of hope die. And it’s some consolation that Hugh Dancy won’t, either. In an interesting subversion of his Will Graham character, Dancy is playing a cult leader in the upcoming Hulu series The Path, but he also was happy to talk about Hannibal, as well as what show creator Bryan Fuller has in mind for the potential continuation of the story:

“Bryan [Fuller] pitched it to me … well, he, described to me in an overview with what he wanted to do with the 4th season, had there been an interest, and it was really fantastic. it was a complete restart, without describing it — because who knows, God knows, maybe some way we may be able to do it in the future — but it took us back to the first season in a very unexpected way, and made total sense of that cliffhanger ending; it seemed justified. It was born out of a part of one of the books so it was still coming out of that universe, but it wasn’t the Clarice / Silence of the Lambs storyline.”

When I asked specifically if there would be a chance to explore that story, Dancy admitted,“I just think if I keep saying that it will happen!” We hear you, Hugh. He also mentioned that when it came down to who might have been close to picking it up,

“Honestly, the fans were better informed than I was about a lot of stuff, but all I can say is that Bryan is very busy, Mads is busy, I’m busy right now, but I know that all of us would happily come back in the future.”

As for whether or not the story could be continued in movie form,

“The answer is I don’t know. I think we’d all be happy to return in some capacity, and the idea of a movie is really interesting. Obviously, one of the things that we did with the show, that Bryan did really, was very languorous, very image-rich storytelling, so how to fit that into a movie, I’m not sure. But the version of the season he described to me … I just know I’d like for it to happen.”

So would we, so would we.