Q&A with Actors Hugh Dancy & Mads Mikkelsen
Q : There’s 3, 000 people in this room right now. This is your 4th sold out audience in 6 months. We could have been filming season 4 here, how does it feel?
Mads Mikkelsen: As you can tell we’re looking for work…lol
Q : I Love it.
Mads Mikkelsen: It feels great, it’s a big room with a lot of people, and a lot of phones, and I’m pretty sure maybe all of the good questions for sure.
Q : Let’s get into it. Looking back to when you were first creating Will and Hannibal, aside from The Hannibal versions out there. Did you have any real life or fictional inspirations for your characters?
Hugh Dancy: Yes I did. There’s a book, I’m trying to remember the guy’s name now, but he was the creator of behavioral science, he actually almost died from encephalitis when Thomas Harris stole that. And he subsequently wrote a book about his experiences, which is very helpful.
Q : Was there any kind of inspiration for the look and feel of Will, or did that all come from…
Hugh Dancy: Brian Fuller(Creator of the Show) essentially…lol
Q : Brian was also a Hannibal.
Mads Mikkelsen: Yeah, I read the bible and looked at the Fallen Angel Gabriel( He is a highly exalted angelic being who probably holds the position from which Lucifer fell. He stands below in rank to Christ, who is the Creator (Daniel 10:21; Colossians 1:16), that was pretty much it.
Q : Do you think Hannibal’s relationship with Will made him more human throughout the series than when he was at the beginning, before we met him?
Mads Mikkelsen: You think it’s human what he’s doing to Will?
Q : I think that movie will inspire more human feelings in Hannibal, not that Hannibal treat…
Mads Mikkelsen: It is a long lost friend, it is a long lost brother, he sees a partner in crime for sure if that makes him look more human, it says a lot about you guys but I’ll take it.
Q: It’s amazing and conversely, do you think Hannibal made Will sort of less human as the show went on?
Hugh Dancy: Again, we’re talking small increments..less human. He’s not doing great at the beginning. He eats some people eventually. But I don’t think either of them are high on the human scale.
Q : But do you think they’re in a relationship together…
Hugh Dancy: You just gonna keep going until we tell you.
Q : No, no,…So What is Will’s opinion of cannibalism by season three rolls around…
Hugh Dancy: His opinion of it.
Q : Yeah.
Hugh Dancy: Not his feelings…just his opinion about it?
Q : But his feelings,
Hugh Dancy: Less is more….
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Will and Hannibal tried to kill each other several times throughout the series If either had succeeded, how do you think they would have felt afterwards?
Hugh Dancy: Will might have got a promotion. I mean that’s at least my job, But then he would have had a lot of time on his hands.
Mads Mikkelsen: I think neither of them are wholeheartedly going for it. For sure, if Hannibal wanted Will dead, he would be dead. I have a hunch it would be the same the other way around.
Hugh Dance: I think that’s a good answer
Mads Mikkelsen: Was it also beautiful? You sick fuck(looking at the audienceS)
Q : As you mentioned before, Hannibal is one of your happier characters, but he did feel heartbroken a few times throughout the series. What do you think is worse? The worst moment of heartbreak was?
Mads Mikkelsen: The worst moment?
Q : For Hannibal.
Mads Mikkelsen: I would say the betrayal when he finds ginger colored hair on Will’s shoulder. Then he put him to do the math.
Hugh Dancey : That’s betrayal?
Mads Mikkelsen: Have you not seen it? Yeah, what was the question again? That was the question, and that was the answer.
Q: worst moment. And Hugh, when Will was helping Hannibal fake escape at the end of season 3, what do you think he was thinking would happen next?
Hugh Dancy: Season 4. (crows go wild) Don’t think he really knew what was going to happen next. I just think he wasn’t happy with the way things were going.
Q : That makes a lot of sense. Mads, you’ve spoken about Hannibal’s final scene and Brian has shared about how you all Kissed in some takes.
(Crowd said, “Do it now!”)
Mads Mikkelsen: You can’t afford that. I simply couldn’t understand the question. Can you whisper it?
Q : What do you think took you all up there at that moment? If you could have another take, would you have tried it out?
Mads Mikkelsen: Oh, at the very end of 3rd season..
Q : Yeah.
Mads Mikkelsen: I think it was because of you guys, you were pushing it all the time. We had nothing to do with it. I think that was it. It’s better to indicate something than actually do it. It can make people’s imagination go crazy. I can’t see what you mean when you see the finale, but we didn’t think about it when we did it. We got carried away, let’s put it that way.
Q : I’m sort of in the same vein, is there any scene you might have wanted to try differently?
Mads Mikkelsen: Actually, you always think that.
Hugh Dancey : And some of them we did. That’s the way Brian writes it. You find, Hank, didn’t we shoot this scene like two seasons ago? I feel like I was in this kitchen before. So we kind of did. But, no, there were no scenes that I would like to re-do.
Mads Mikkelsen: I would like to revisit the last episode of Season 2. Not to do something different, just to enjoy it once again. It is a big moment for a cleaning man.
Q : It’s a fun moment for us all. You’ve been at quite a few cons now, and spoken to many fans. Has anything a fan said to you about Will or Hannibal resonated with you or made you think of the character in new and interesting ways?
Hugh Dancy: It’s more the way people talk about it’s affected them or been significant in the moments in their lives and that’s a lot to take on. Because it’s not something you’re thinking about when making the show. And then years later somebody says, it meant this to me. It’s kind of astonishing. That’s a lot of people.
Mads Mikkelsen: I think the sense of belonging has become a keyword.
These two characters are somehow in the outskirts of society. And they find each other in a strange combination of where they at least can find a path through life, right? And it seems as if that has hit a hallmark in a lot of people who, yeah, the sense of belonging has been very important to a lot of people. Which is fantastic that a TV show can help people out with.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Absolutely. If there should be a season 4, what do you think Hannibal would love to do?
Mads Mikkelsen: Hannibal? Yeah, he would love to kill someone and eat them. That’s on his bucket list.
Hugh Dancy: I think Will would just like to figure out who’s doing all this killing and eating.
Q : What do you think Will and Hannibal’s favorite books or movies are? We’ve talked about music before.
Hugh Dancy: Wills would be something like fishing, instructional manual, I don’t think he read seriously, it’s probably about as far as it goes, I think in Red Dragon in the book, Thomas Harris says his possessions were a bunch of fishing tackle.And a case of wine.
Mads Mikkelsen: Yeah, obviously the Old Testament will be inspiring. Dante’s Inferno he’s mentioning a lot.
Hugh Dancy: It’s very big and a pretentious library.
Mads Mikkelsen: But he’s into music. Anything that is high quality and difficult to understand, he will be on the case.
Q : So you think Hannibal’s sitting up in bed and reading the Bible?
Mads Mikkelsen: Sure..
Hugh Dancy: In an audio book. He has a lot to do.
Q : I’m going back to the idea of season 4, anything you as actors would have wanted to do in the schema of Hannibal?
Hugh Dancy: Brian would probably have been stealing stuff from some of the later Thomas Harris books, right. I can’t remember how much we can’t say…I’m sure we’ve said all of this before..but there was an idea of a kind of reversal of season one. Some seasons end in sickness and confusion. And starting from that place at the beginning of season four, and then kind of unraveling it and unpicking it.
Mads Mikkelsen: And I believe there were some discussions of getting his hands on the Silence of the Lamb.
Hugh Dancy: Yeah, but also in Hannibal, when Hannibal has Clarice, he’s kind of brainwashing her. Am I getting that right?
Q : Yeah.
Hugh Dancy: Thank you, I just didn’t make this stuff up.. And then the incredible scene in the helicopter…when he’s got her and he’s brainwashing her by rewiring her, I think he was interested in exploring that.
Q : We would love to see that still..so as we sort of move from Hannibal to more general questions about what has been your favorite memory so far from this Hannibal-con tour?
Mads Mikkelsen: They’re not memories anymore because we keep bumping into each other, but it would be people, it would be rare for actors to do a theater thing or you do a film. It’s over after a while, but this lasted three years, I know TV shows that last longer than that, but I haven’t, I don’t know about you(looking at Hugh), and it just becomes family. You glue together whether you like it or not. so many fantastic actors who came and visited us directors that I’ve never met again, but I would love to meet them again.
Q : So, looking back on all of your past performances, and we can definitely include Hannibal in that, what is the most fun scene that you’ve filmed in any of your projects?
Mads Mikkelsen: Any projects? I just wrapped up a film by Anders Thomas Jensen. Danish titled, The Last Viking. Over here(U.S), I think it’s called Back to Reality, which is a shit title, we’ll have to change that. But I did a scene with a good friend of mine, and I did a stunt.
That thought was so funny. And maybe I’m the only one who thinks it’s funny. But that’s probably the funniest thing I’ve ever done. I laughed a lot. You better laugh.
Q : Can you share anything else about that?
Mads Mikkelsen: There’s something with a window. Something falling out of a window, and there’s dialogue and stuff, that’s fun.
Q : We definitely look forward to seeing you tumble out of window…
Hugh Dancy: A theater near you, Vague Stunt.
Q : That’s the log line.
Hugh Dancy: window!
Q : you have one?
Hugh Dancy: I played a cult leader for a little while and had some kind of scenes where you’re addressing the cult that was kind of fun. Because they were just permission to act quite selfish.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Does this remind you of that at all?
Hugh Dancy: Not the slightest, literally no comparison between this experience and that.
Q : Since this is Hannibal Panel, what was the most fun scene you had shooting in Hannibal?
Hugh Dancy: Obviously, we’ve answered that question before, I think we usually say which is true at the end of season two, because it was a kind of epic scene, and it lasted all night. It goes through so many different but I was thinking the other day but actually the scene at the end of season one, when we’re in Garrett Jacob Hobbs kitchen, then it kind of dawns on me like, huh..you know I’m pointing the gun in the wrong direction that was pretty great to film as well. I remember feeling like, oh ok. This feels like a summation of that whole season.
Mads Mikkelsen: For me, what’s the doctor’s name that checks you out the Encephalitis thing..
Audience shout : (Dr. Donald) Sutcliffe! (Dr. Donald Sutcliffe was a neurologist who worked at Noble Hills Care Center, Baltimore, Maryland. He was a colleague of Hannibal Lecter)
Mads Mikkelsen: Sutcliffe, strange name.. yeah, so apparently somebody kills him and opens his mouth from here to there. That was a dummy of that, it was on set for a good couple of days.
Hugh Dancy: And I had worked with him on another job and then didn’t see him on that…Then I just walked on the set…and his head….
Mads Mikkelsen : Let’s put it this way, we had a lot of sun with that dummy. It was extremely flexible. So that was a fun day.
Q : Hugh, this is the 20th anniversary of Ella Enchanted which the people love, So I have to ask the burning questions that’s on everybody’s mind, do you still remember that ending dance?
Hugh Dancy: I mean it wasn’t very elaborate, was it?
Q : Not very.
Hugh Dancy: I think they made it simple mostly for me. No..but I probably can figure it out there like a bit of this..(doing some movement)
Q : We won’t make you do it…
Mads Mikkelsen: What are you aiming at? Do you want to see him dance?
Hugh Dancy : Do you want to see me dance?
Q : You’re the dancer, do you want to give it a shot? (Facing Madds)
Mads Mikkelsen: Do I want to see Hugh dance?
Q : No…do you want to dance..since you’re the dancer (looking at Mads)
Mads Mikkelsen: No, I’m a private dancer for money.
Q : Mads, we recently got a look at your performance as Kiros, in Mufasa : The Lion King. What did you think of seeing your lion counterpart come to life? Well, I haven’t seen the entirety yet, it was like one of these working processes where we come in, they have some stuff animated, we do some stuff, they go back and animate more, and they bring us in and redo it again and again over a span of I guess three years I haven’t seen the final product and can’t wait. What I have seen so far looks absolutely amazing. Yeah, the trailer is out, you’re in it, you can see your final lion for the…
Mads Mikkelsen: And I play a good guy here…
Q : How did you settle on what your lion voice would sound like?
Mads Mikkelsen: I chain smoked a lot, so I made my voice raspy. That was my method.
Hugh Dancy : Thirty years of prep.
Q : No.
Mads Mikkelsen: It’s obviously well written. It’s fun to see that you allow yourself to do something extreme with your voice. When you see these animated things up on screen, stuff you would never have done in a film yourself. There’s a certain freedom to bring voice to a creation. Have you tried it?(looking at Hugh)
Hugh Dancy: I have, and you do it, and you think, oh, like you say, it’s a certain freedom, and then you think oh, god, I hope that’s true because what I just did was something I would never do on screen. But the animation will be great.
Mads Mikkelsen: But they also often have a camera of us doing it, then you’re lying on all four doing really shitty acting. But eventually hopefully the voice will come out right. That’s the idea.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : What’s the funniest thing you did at the booth to get it right?
Mads Mikkelsen: I can’t remember. I did a Danish version of Monsters Inc. I can’t remember the character. Randall. That was Steve Bushcimi who did it, right? Then, when we did it for the first time, his laugh was obviously a bad guy laugh, they called me back because my laugh was too scary. But you got Steve Buchemi, what’s going on? I had apparently smoked too much for that part.
Q : I’d love to hear these terrifying laughs at some point.
Hugh Dancy: You have to make an animated movie.
Q :So you both have some background in theatre. Is there a dream role you’d love to perform on stage? Are there any live performances for your future? Right now, anything in the works.
Hugh Dancy: Not really…I’m doing a reading in the next couple of months, I think, but that’s all about it.
Mads Mikkelsen: No, I just wrapped this film, so I’m reading a little, and figuring out what’s the future going to bring,
Audience shouts: “Dust Bunny”
Mads Mikkelsen: But that’s wrapped as well. So”Dust Bunny”, hopefully, as far as I know, will come out next spring, that’s what I’m hearing. Brian Fuller for “Dust Bunny,” yes.
Q : We’ll call Brian and get confirmation. Hugh, you’ve been crushing it in Law & Order, is there anything you can tease about what’s next for Nolan?
Hugh Dancy: lots of murders. I think they’re trying to open it up a bit, because the structure of that show is so familiar, and unbending, I think they’re trying to crack it just a bit, I think we’re gonna meet a member of my family, which was forbidden until recently.
Mads Mikkelsen:Are they needing a cannibal?
Hugh Dancy: I mean I’ll pitch it
Q: Is there anything up next for you, performance wise, that you’re excited about or can share?
Mads Mikkelsen: No, I haven’t made up my mind about the future. I’m just chilling out trying to recover and survive the film, I just wrapped. So I don’t know. I don’t have a job, give me a job..Lol
Q : Hannibal Season 4 … .we could do it in chapters on the stage at the Comi-Con just do line..
Mads Mikkelsen: We will make it work.
Hugh Dancy: I’m filming Law & Order at the moment, That’s great, that keeps me here with my family which is fantastic.
Mads Mikkelsen: I didn’t say family is so cute…
Hugh Dancy: I have a family…we(Hugh and Mads) are both going to Tokyo without our family.
Q It’s a world tour now, we love that. That’s the future. Looking back, do you remember the first role you acted in?
Hugh Dancy: Professionally that somebody paid me?
Q : Or, if it’s funny and interesting?
Hugh Dancy: I can’t guarantee any of it was, but the first things I got paid for were not funny or interesting. The first job I ever did was something called Trial and Retribution Part 2, (audience scream), Really?
Hugh Dancy: That’s astonishing. Yeah, starting out in British episodic TV, and bits and pieces, here and there. And you?
Mads Mikkelsen: Professionally yeah, of course we remember the first thing I ever did, as an actor, I was asked to be in one of these little, what do you call it, film school test, where the director has a certain assignment. And I was playing a boxer, together with a friend of mine who was a boxer. And I had a girlfriend, and he fell in love with my girlfriend, I got jealous of stuff like that, really exciting stuff. I remember the first line I had. And he’s sitting there, and someone’s holding this big boom, which is a microphone.
And then I had to ask him if he had seen Tina. And I just went like this, I said, “Have you seen Tina?”, loud and clearly into the mic. Everybody on the set, cracking down laughing, I remember vividly that day, if I ever continue acting, I will mumble so hard from now on and nobody has an idea what I’m saying. I’m stuck to that.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Has anybody seen Tina?
Mads Mikkelsen: We never saw Tina.
Q : So Mads, you’re known for your micro expressions and acting like the tiny snarl Hannibal gives when he’s angry. Is that something that has come naturally to you, or did you like, train to
Mads Mikkelsen: Tiny what? Snarl?
Q : Snarl, like raising the,
Mads Mikkelsen: Oh, I’ve never thought of it. Does he do that? I have to watch it…Yeah. I haven’t thought about that. It’s obviously very small, which means he’s used to a great effect, right? And so I think that’s part of his character. He’s very underplayed in many ways. And that’s also why he can stay hidden that long, I guess.
Q : So both of you, how do you typically approach a new role when you start it?
Hugh Dancy: Don’t have a typical approach. Hopefully talking to the people you’re going to be working with, sitting with it for a while, figure it out, learn your lines well. It’s amazing how often that doesn’t seem to happen. that’s it.
Mads Mikkelsen: The script is the Bible. That’s where everything starts. Everything is the Bible. No, but that’s where everything starts. And all the questions come from the script. And that’s basically what you carry throughout the process. That’s where all the questions and answers are. And if we can improve it, we are trying. if it’s perfect, we just have to man up and shoot it, right.
Q : Absolutely. When building your characters, do you think a lot about everything they might do or their preferences or just stick to what is happening in the group?
Hugh Dancy: You think around the edges, right? Just make sure it’s coherent and the person is cohesive. But then it depends what it is. If you’re doing something very naturalistic, sure. You probably want to think about it. How this person lives their life, but if you start asking those questions too deeply about, say, Hannibal, you might hit some awkward questions, just in terms of time management. The amount of blood a human body can hold. So it depends on the project and time.
Mads Mikkelsen: Yeah, there is a style and genre to every project, and they have to understand that framework. That doesn’t mean you have to approach it to a degree where it’s believable. But the framework can be so insane that a lot of insane things can be believable. So you have to understand that framework. If you start arguing with the framework, it will be a long day.
Q : So, Hannibal, is there anything that you thought about for Will and Hannibal that maybe we didn’t see clearly on the screen, that you knew about them?
Mads Mikkelsen: I think we were more surprised than we planned. Because Brian kept surprising us where the story was going and there was no reason to back down or say no. Because it was always super interesting and one of the most surprising things I’ve done as an actor. I literally didn’t know what the next episode would be.
Hugh Dancy: Because it was coming at us thick and fast. Mostly the day before we filmed it. It was not by design..ironically.
Q : But as far as Hannibal’s favourite breakfast food is waffles, or Will likes swollen socks, did you imagine anything about your character? I’m just curious.
Hugh Dancy: How did you know? I don’t remember. Maybe I had those thoughts, maybe had these conversations with Brian. I remember at the beginning, like I said, thinking about, okay what this job is. Because you’re trying to, as Mads was saying, locate it in something that’s believable, right? That makes sense. So thinking about that job and what it means to be fascinated by this particular type of crime and then realizing that was only going to be 30 percent of the show when he gave us the second episode. Then you go off in that direction.
Q : Is there any franchise in the world that you haven’t been able to join yet, that you’re fans of, that you would love to be a part of?
Mads Mikkelsen: I haven’t been in Star Trek. And I would not like to go there. But I think I’ve answered before that I’m a huge fan of zombies and therefore Walking Dead. It’s been running for a long time and would be repetitive, but there’s something cool about killing zombies. There’s also something really cool about being a zombie, so I can’t make up my mind what I want to play.
Q : Well, you could begin as a zombie killer, then turn into a zombie.
Hugh Dancy :Yeah, have your cake and eat it.
Mads Mikkelsen: But do they survive a long time? The zombies have their own screen time.
Q : You could be the first zombie…
Mads Mikkelsen: That’s What I am talking about.
Hugh Dancy: The weirdest lead role ever.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : I don’t know if you have seen Fallout at all, there’s kind of a zombie-like character.
Mads Mikkelsen: Throw some Kung Fu in there, I’m good.
Q : So, you not zombie zombie Kung Fu lead, we got it.
Hugh Dancy: A bit of romcom
Q : Of Course, zombie love.
Hugh Dancy: Didn’t somebody just make a zombie romcom, I think that’s been done.
Q: What has it been done? Warm Bodies too. Do you have any franchise or you are a fan of that you would love?
Hugh Dancy: I’m busy reading. I’m reading one of my kids’ Harry Potter books again, but we have more children, and then we end up reading the books a third time. They’re remaking them, right? It’s a TV series. Occasionally I do find myself thinking, god, my characterization is pretty good. I’ve got something here.
Mads Mikkelsen: Is that the very dumb version of it?
Hugh Dancy: Then you realize that your only audience is a six year old. Obviously, the reviews are pretty good.
Q : Did you do the voice…
Hugh Dancy: That’s what I’m thinking of, auditions on everybody.
Q : So did you do the voices when reading? Of course.
Hugh Dancy : Of course,
Q : I was chatting with somebody, have you thought about Doctor Who at all?
Hugh Dancy: Yeah, I didn’t grow up being a great fan of Doctor Who, not that I didn’t like it, it just wasn’t my family I watched much, but yeah, absolutely. I’d like to play one of those half human, half cyborg whatever…
Q : Or an Alien or doctor…
Hugh Dancy: I don’t know I don’t mean yes, why am I saying no absolutely not…
Q : If the pair of you could make another movie together, what genre would you imagine?
Mads Mikkelsen: That would be a Danish film. I’d like him to say in Danish, a fragile little teapot. I’d like to see him get away with that shit…lol
Hugh Dancy: Fair enough. It would be a weird movie.
Q : Hannibal remake movie in Danish.
Mads Mikkelsen: I mean, if we were writers one of the beauties of our job is that somebody else has an ambition, and when we get off of that ambition, it becomes our ambition, so we’re in the mercy of somebody else’s fantasy, but if I would like to work with Hugh again, absolutely.
Q : On Hannibal season 4…Looking back is there a scene that sticks out to you that you think I really nailed that.
Hugh Dancy: No, I was thinking like there’s kind of too many it’s embarrassing, like Mads said earlier, there’s often so many moments when you’re filming and you come away from it and you think, you’re filming out of order, you don’t know how it’s going to land, you’re not in control of the edit and you think, did I lean too heavily into this?
Did I lean too heavily into that? Every so often, you come away thinking that it feels great. Usually the feeling is something I got ready for, and something happened in that scene I didn’t anticipate, and it was interesting. I’m not gonna name check them all, but it doesn’t happen that frequently, so you can kind of remember it when it does.
Q : Did that happen in Hannibal?
Hugh Dancy: Sure.
Q : Is there one you could name check…
Hugh Dancy: Well, it’s boring to keep coming back to the same thing, but at the end of season two, I don’t think any of us knew what the scene was on paper, but then it opened up to many different moments. Again that moment of turning the gun on Mads at the end of season one felt like that too.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Absolutely.
Mads Mikkelsen: No, it’s got to be repetitive. It is what it is. And funny enough, when you do land something and you feel that was it, the director feels that, the cameraman feels that, doesn’t necessarily turn out to be that one.
Hugh Dancy: That’s right.
Mads Mikkelsen: If something else hadn’t surprised you that turned out to be very interesting. But Yep, but sometimes we are right.
Q : Is there a performance or role of yours that you’d love to see more fans discover?
Hugh Dancy: It’s funny, I feel like you’re just inviting us to congratulate ourselves in different ways. I made a movie in Rwanda called Shooting Dogs in England and Beyond the Gates in America for some reason, another bizarre change of title, actually I know there’s a change of title, because somebody in America said, “basically, we don’t shoot dogs.” Actually what they said was, we’ll call this movie Shooting Humans before we call it Shooting Dogs.
That’s a strange priority. Mostly because it was you know how it is, you’re making a movie and you have an incredible experience and it bears no relation to the success or the size of the movie’s audience, but it was very meaningful for me. So sure there you go.
Q : Absolutely.
Hugh Dancy: There are also movies that I wish nobody would watch.
Mads Mikkelsen: I got a few of those. Slowly but gradually, after I’ve been doing more international stuff, people have gone back and discovered some of my Danish stuff. So I’m not going to sit and whine about people not watching Danish films. Because they are. Especially the last ten years, Danish film has really been traveling a lot, but there are things… Obviously some of the old things would have been nice if more people watched it, but that’s the way it is, it’s out there somewhere.
Q : It sure is. Has there been any advice in your career you received that’s really stayed with you?
Hugh Dancy: Get a good accountant.
Mads Mikkelsen :And lawyer.
Q : We all need that advice.
Hugh Dancy: No…maybe not..
Mads Mikkelsen: The thing about advice is that you put us on the spot, you can’t remember it, but it will dawn on us in a certain situation. It’s like do you have a funny anecdote? No? Then when you go home, you go, Yes, that was that one. Lawrence Fishburne told me after a few weeks to pull myself up by the, what do you call it?
Hugh Dancy: The bootstrap
Mads Mikkelsen: Yeah, in a kind of a more subtle way. Because I had never seen him and he had seen a lot of my Danish works, he was surprised that I didn’t feel as if it was my office. And I totally agree. I was on thin ice the first two weeks doing the show for many reasons, and after the first take he stopped and said, come with me, and he went out for a cigarette, and he said, listen, “I’ve seen you perhaps for the past 15 years, this is your office why do you behave as if it’s somebody else’s office, don’t listen to the DP, don’t listen to the light guy where you should stand and sit, do your thing, you’re the boss of your room. That was very healthy advice for me.
Obviously, it’s Hannibal. He knows where the body is hidden. So that was good advice because I talk a lot about that. I’m normally good at saying this is my room once we start shooting. I forgot that when we started doing Hannibal. I should thank him, and I mean I have thanked him.
Q : Thank you, Lawrence. Halloween’s coming up! Do you have any costume plans?
Mads Mikkelsen: Zombie, Zombie, Zombie..no I don’t have..
Hugh Dancy: Yeah, I’m making costumes for my kids right now.
[Audience said oh…]
Hugh Dancy: You don’t know what I’m making. I’ll be leaving here and going to my basement. But you don’t know what’s in my basement.
[Audience shout, “Do you have scary costumes?]
Hugh Dancy: No, neither are scary costumes. It’s not Harry Potter.
Q : We’re never going to know…
Mads Mikkelsen: I think you should mention one of them you told me yesterday, I want to see how you get away with that costume.
Hugh Dancy: It’s true, that’s Hannibal related. My elder son wants to eat chopped liver. The notion being that when people say, What are you? He can say, What am I? Chopped liver. Which is, it turns out, going to be an awful lot of work for a pretty good gag. Which will last obviously for about an hour and then, it’ll go in the closet, that’ll be the end of that.
Q : That’s very Funny. So, working with Brian was certainly an unique experience, now that you’ve experienced it twice. How is it different working with him on Hannibal, a big series, and on a feature film?
Mads Mikkelsen: When we did the film, the film was written. That was one of the big differences. And the TV show, as Hugh mentioned, it’s currently moving on, it’s a process. And we would literally go to bed and get five new pages for tomorrow, five new scenes.
You can sleep or learn your text, your choice. That was not the case here. We were a bit more on top of the whole thing here. But then we went away to a foreign country and there’s a lot of things that can go wrong, and a lot of them did go wrong…He’s a brilliant man to work with.
His visions are as I said about the framework, it’s a different universe when you work with Brian. You have to understand that he was lucky to pick people around him who understood his universe. So, crossing my fingers that it comes across.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Is there anything you can tease about “Dust Bunny” or the world of it?
Mads Mikkelsen:There’s a bunny. I’m not allowed to say anything…hopefully there will be a trailer soon and then I can talk about the trailer.
Q : That would be amazing. Hopefully we’ll get to experience that together soon. In Hannibal, there’s obviously a lot of new kids coming every day. In Hannibal, like you said, new pages are coming every day…What was the toughest piece of text you ever had to learn?
Mads Mikkelsen: I can’t remember it. When you learn it fast, it also disappears fast. When I was jumping around in different languages, and also into the art world, and a lot of specific terms, In Hungarian, it was just You’re just learning fanatically, you look as if you know what you’re talking about. Hannibal faked it a lot that way.
Hugh Dancy: It’s a funny description of acting.
Mads Mikkelsen: You know, he’s everything has to be fine taste, everything is leveled, right? And so I was dealing with stuff I literally never heard about before. Constantly. I would ask my dialect coach and she would go, don’t ask me, I had no clue, So I just said, Google everything.
Hugh Dancy: There was a line about a rollercoaster. Obviously, it wasn’t literally about a roller coaster, it was an analogy and I can’t remember the line was, but I remember delivering it, and then Lawrence saying, Oh yeah, I recognize that line, he tried to have me say that line, and I said, I’m not saying that. Brian just hung on to it, and I had a feeling he’d like to try, maybe Hannibal would say…so he made me say it.
Q : Laurence is the fountain of advice on the Hannibal set, Hugh, did you ever imagine or desire a big fight scene for Will?
Hugh Dancy: Yeah, I don’t know that it would have made so much sense, it made sense for Laurence just because he’s Laurence. He can do that so well. Same with Mads, right? He’s done a lot of it. But also in the world that Brian imagined, it just made sense that they would have this epic battle. I don’t think it makes sense for Will. That’s not how he’s fighting. It’s more up here.(Pointing his head)
Q : Yeah, absolutely, were there deleted scenes that you ever shot that didn’t make it to…
Hugh Dancy: There were a bunch of scenes that Brian saw and then said we’re not putting that in the show, and then we reshot them.
Hugh Dancy: He did it the first season in particular, he did a lot of reshaping, but I think he reimagined the shape of the whole season halfway through. I can’t remember the details, but what was episode four got turned into episode seven. I’m making up the numbers, right? But I think he wanted to delay the kind of reveal. So he revisited a lot of things and scrapped them. But I don’t think there was a lot that was just like you saw the outtakes, obviously.
Q : So nothing major short of changed from like that you saw..how do you feel your perceptions of Will and Hannibal evolved from when you began to when you finished? Did anything you thought about them change?
Hugh Dancy: Probably. Almost certainly, as we were saying because Brian was not reimagining it but expanding it and shaping it as he went on. So we had to the beginning like the bare minimum. He was a Hannibal and I worked for the FBI and stuff. And where do we start? So yeah, for sure. But then when you look back, it’s hard to remember where you started from.
Q : And where would you say you ended?
Hugh Dancy: In the sea..
Mads Mikkelsen: Probably.
Q : Because then it’s in a helicopter, right?
Hugh Dancy: I mean that’s right, the famous helicopter scene from the later Thomas Harris novels.
Mads Mikkelsen: Oh, you want me to add something…
Q : If you’d like.
Mads Mikkelsen: I’ll say the same as this guy. One, obviously he’s on a journey that is surprising. And it’s a journey where you have to ask a lot of questions as an actor. How do we get from A to B to C, eventually ending up here. Hannibal is not like that. Hannibal is manoeuvrable in a different way, right? Whatever it takes for him to get his way, he will do it. That also means that he will behave in a certain way, he will do certain things, he will look in a certain way, in order to get what he wants.
So that nothing can really surprise me as an actor. When it turns up on the next episode, it’s yeah, Hannibal will probably do that, right? Where the classical way of developing a character is obviously something that Hugh went through as an actor, right? And it’s quite a development, I would say.
Hannibal not so much. He’s as I said, the fallen angel. He’s out to get what he wants and whatever it takes, he’ll do it.
Q : So do you think he changed at all from the start to the end of the show?
Mads Mikkelsen: He changes constantly. He’s a chameleon constantly
Q : But in a basic way…
Mads Mikkelsen: No, I think we really work hard to make him human in the sense that he has empathy. He just chooses when to have it. Whereas he has empathy but he has no control over it, right?(looking at Hugh’s direction) So it should not be empty emotions from Hannibal’s side. It should be true and honest, but it’s also in control of them, as opposed to Will.
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Q : Absolutely. And so we’re reaching the last few minutes of our time. I’ll take a big picture together. But a final question, we talked a little bit about it, but Is there anything that you feel that you were able to add to Will and Hannibal when you were performing them.
Hugh Dancy: I mean I hope so.
Q : Yes. Yeah. But then you feel like, you were like, that’s, aha, I suggested this.
Hugh Dancy: Yeah, I think the understanding of what Byan, this is probably basic, we had the script, so the script’s as stated with the Bible. They kept coming, we kept developing, but that’s where we’re working from. But then, beyond that, there was a sense of particular relationship between these two guys that we were figuring out beyond that.
So there’s a bit of it, and then there’s the lines that are just really basic stuff, and then the blocking and shaping of it, and the development of it. So yeah, of course we were contributing to that. And Brian is collaborative and I’ve talked about this before, I remember both of us did this at different times, we were trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing, so we would write them slightly panicky emails. Basically, the subtext was always, please can I have the script?
But you would write these emails disguised as a character discussion, and then you get the script the next day, and you’re like, wait, I wrote that line in my email last night. Because you’re trying to get through Brian on his level because I use his language. Which is heightened. And he would be like “I’ll have that”..then you’re saying it. I guess that’s a type of collaboration.
Q : Do you remember a line like that?
Hugh Dancy: Yeah. There’s a line In the art gallery where, but I can’t remember the details of it, saying something like it’s every crime you’ve ever committed or every murder, that was just one of those panicky emails to Brian.
Hugh Dancy: There’s a line about being like a pack animal or something dumb I said to Brian while I was drinking whiskey, you know like that.
Q : Yeah, that’s great.
Hugh Dancy: And I remember him saying the same thing. It was like an email I don’t know what you’d written. He takes the most pretentious bit.
Mads Mikkelsen: I can’t remember anything specific, but it’s true. I think Hugh and I were very interested in the development between the two guys. Did he know that I knew that he knew that kind of thing? And then we would come to the conclusion, you know what, we can’t say this in this scene yet. We have to push that for the very last scene. Because that is just too heavily indicating whatever. So we wirelike detectives on that a lot together. And Will and Brian would understand right away and say, you’re absolutely right, we’ll move it around. So that was a lot of the job of description I would say. And then learn your lines.
Q : Amazing. Okay. I think if the kind folks want to raise the light, then we can all take a final picture together and call it on your Comic-con panel. Thank you!
Photo by NBC/Brooke Palmer/NBC – © 2015 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
If you like this Q&A, share your thought below!