Posted Apr 3, 2013 01:35:15 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
You want to be on your toes sitting down to a dinner table with Hannibal Lecter.
Keep a close eye on the cutlery, especially the knife. Ask questions before you bite into anything — or get bitten into.
That was the situation last month in Mississauga, Ont., on the set of “Hannibal,” a new drama premiering Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on NBC and City.
The prequel to the Thomas Harris novels and the “Silence of the Lambs” films stars Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen as a younger Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist hired by FBI Behaviour Sciences head Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) to help crack tough cases involving serial killers.
Crawford mainly wants Lecter to help him keep a gifted profiler, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), from cracking up under the strain of seeing into the minds of mass murderers. What Crawford and Graham both don’t know, however, is that they are sitting opposite the deadliest serial killer of them all in Lecter.
The drama also stars Montreal native Caroline Dhavernas (“Wonderfalls”) as a college professor colleague of Graham’s. The series is adapted and executive produced by Dhavernas’ former “Wonderfalls” boss, Bryan Fuller (“Pushing Daisies”).
A tour of the ornate sets includes a visit to the interior of Lecter’s expansive library, a dark, Gothic, two storey space filled with eccentric details such as stuffed birds, precise architectural drawings and mesh fencing masks. There’s a stop in Lecter’s modern and well-stocked kitchen, where a food specialist giddily shows reporters the cow lungs, bird beaks and bone fragments that go into the character’s cannibalistic banquet — often washed down with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
The next stop is the dark and moody showcase dining room where Mikkelsen, who also showed off his creepy side as Le Chiffre in the James Bond hit “Casino Royale,” sits down at a large black dining table. He tells reporters he’s not trying to duplicate the performance of Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar playing the same role.
“I can worry as much as I want, it will happen,” he says of the inevitable comparisons. “He made a fantastic job, perfection. Having said that, we’re starting out in a different situation.”
The cards are dealt, says Mikkelsen, “I have to play them differently.”
Does he see Hannibal Lecter as a villain?
“I don’t think Hannibal sees himself as a fool,” he replies. “He sees himself as a man who’s in love with the finer parts of life. He hates anything that’s banal.”
Fishburne, who holds court behind his character’s desk on the FBI office set, says he’s having a blast playing opposite Mikkelsen.
“I’ve been a fan since the ‘Casino Royale’ movie,” he says. “I mean, I really sat up and paid attention to him.” Fishburne points out that even in such popcorn fodder as the sequel to “The Clash of the Titans,” Mikkelsen brings “a sense of danger and reality and he grounds it in such a way you think, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna work with this guy! I should just stay behind him!'”
The tricky part Mikkelsen pulls off, adds Fishburne, is that audience will end up rooting that this serial killer does not get caught by the trained police professionals who are right in his face. “They’re going to be rooting for him,” stresses Fishburne. “He’s incredibly charming. He’s sexy.”
Back around the dinner table, Mikkelsen — voted the “sexiest man alive” by a Danish magazine — reacts shyly to that association. Sure, you could say Hopkins’ portrayal of Lecter was sexy too, he allows.
“He was fascinating. It’s the devil.”
The 47-year-old actor says he never sets out to play a bad guy. “I try, as much as I can, to make him the good guy in my world,” he says.
“I mean, I always feel that they go hand-in-hand, the good guys and the bad guys. You have to find the flaws and the holes and the little mistakes in the good guys and you have to find something you recognize in the bad guys.”
In the TV series, he says, “we are trying to make his heart beat a little more. He’s famous for having a pulse of 80 or 70 when he kills people, but it’s a choice. He can also choose to make it beat a little faster.”
As for the quirky delicacies served at Lecter’s table, Mikkelsen says he isn’t spooked by the bones or the lungs or most of the oddities placed on his plate. Only one thing has frightened him so far.
“There was something called Head Cheese?” he says, making a face.
He does cook, but admits he’s no Hannibal Lecter in the kitchen.
“When I do cook, I often eat alone, let’s put it that way.”
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Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.
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