Hannibal Lecter MD

Mads about his most iconic roles :) (yep Hanni is there)

You played the titular role in the NBC TV series Hannibal (2013-2015). I’ve spent some time with another Hannibal Lecter – Anthony Hopkins. His Hannibal was very different than yours. He focused on the power of Lecter, but yours is more mysterious. Was that a deliberate strategy?

It was deliberate in the sense that there was no way we’re gonna go down the paths of Anthony Hopkins. That would be creative suicide! I think he’s a masterful actor. I think what he did in the films was perfection! But obviously, we had a TV show on our hands. Every season, I had 13 hours where I could build up the character, create suspense, etc. We didn’t have to show all our cards in the first or the second episode. So, we could build it up very differently than he had a chance to do.

He has 14 minutes of screen time in The Silence of the Lambs, but he still makes such an enormous impact on us. There’s a lot on his plate, in that film. He has to show everything in those 14 minutes. I have 13 hours. So obviously, it’s going to be a different animal. And also, we wanted it to be believable that he could build up friendships and loyalty towards people. We couldn’t have him wink to the audience, we couldn’t have him do his thing in front of people, it had to be behind their backs. So, we had to wait until he got his private moments. And then slowly, slowly, he shows himself more and more to the people around him.