Mads Makes The Man

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EW chatted with the new Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself, the actor Mads Mikkelsen, about Bryan Fuller's show - which premieres tonight at 10pm on NBC! - and I liked this exchange:

EW: Did you have any reservations about playing a character so iconic, especially because of Hopkins’ version? 

Mads: Lot of reservations. I read the script and I liked it, but I really had to hear the pitch, which took Bryan [Fuller] a couple of hours — he was pitching through season 28 or something! Bryan is a fantastic, energetic man, and brilliant brilliant brain, and I realized, “Yeah, we might be able to do something different because Hannibal can’t play all his cards as he can in the prison.” He can do whatever he wants [there] because they know who he is. But that’s not the case here. This is a man who has to make friends. He has to make people feel comfortable around him, and so that was a different angle to attack the character. So my reluctance kind of slowly went away, and I said to myself, “Hey, Hamlet has been played so many times — to perfection — but that shouldn’t stop anyone else from doing something else with Hamlet.” 

EW: Did you incorporate traces of Hopkins’ Lecter or did you intentionally stay away? 

Mads: I would say neither. We cannot do what Hopkins was doing. I can’t stand and do the tongue thing. I can’t do that. I have to be as honest as possible when I’m with Jack and with Will. In the private moments, on the other hand, that’s a different thing. Then I can be who I am. And we will see that… but there will be no winking at the audience. They know who I am, but the other characters don’t.

The tongue thing! We can all immediately conjure that up, right? I hope Bryan writes in a tongue thing at some point, though. Everything needs a tongue thing. Mikkelsen also points out that he and Hugh Dancy have worked together before - they were both knights in that King Arthur movie with  Clive Owen! Ha!