Richard Armitage’s Hannibal Experience: A Conversation in Three Acts – Act III

Originally posted in All Film website as
Richard Armitage di Serial Hannibal: Perbincangan Tiga Babak – Babak III.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hannibal S3.

Actor Richard Armitage speaks to All Film magazine about his character, Francis Dolarhyde, in Hannibal TV series. Continued from Act II. This is the third and final part.

Act III: Fans and Fullerverse

Bryan Fuller is said to be a collaborative showrunner. Is that what you experienced?

Yeah, I mean, it was one of the highlights of the experience for me. Any ideas I was sharing with him, he absolutely took on board and absorbed into creating of the episodes. But also a lot of the time, we’d email more or less at the same moment, and I would be asking for something at the same time that he was offering exactly the same thing, so we were very in tune with each other. There were very few occasions – I can’t even think of one occasion – where I disagreed with a choice that he was making and everything that I was given to say, everything that I was given to do, or where, just felt completely appropriate. And you know, when  those things were all in place, you can work in a way where you think, “Well, what about if we go here?” and I can jump a little bit higher, I can go further, and so that was exactly what happened.

Richard Armitage’s Hannibal Experience: A Conversation in Three Acts – Act II

Originally posted in All Film website as
Richard Armitage di Serial Hannibal: Perbincangan Tiga Babak – Babak II.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hannibal S3.

Actor Richard Armitage speaks to All Film magazine about his character, Francis Dolarhyde, in Hannibal TV series. Continued from Act I.

Act II: Finding the Beauty Behind the Beast

This show is distinctively about Hannibal Lecter’s and Will Graham’s relationship with each other. Francis Dolarhyde is said to be trapped between Hannibal wanting to corrupt him further and Will wanting to kind of save his soul. How do you find this dynamic, and is this something that you feel is true to the original Thomas Harris story?

No… that’s the new element. That, in a way, suspends Dolarhyde appropriately in the existing Hannibal TV series universe. In the book, Dolarhyde is a very standalone character and Hannibal isn’t really… they never really meet, they don’t have very much to do with each other, and of course you can’t play that character in a series that’s called Hannibal [in which] Will Graham is such a featured character. So that is a construct that is designed to place Dolarhyde in a part of the story whereby he can engage with Hannibal Lecter and play against Will Graham.

Richard Armitage’s Hannibal Experience: A Conversation in Three Acts – Act I

Originally posted in All Film website as
Richard Armitage di Serial Hannibal: Perbincangan Tiga Babak – Babak I.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hannibal S3.

Hannibal the Cannibal finds himself in a quagmire. Entering the second half of its third season Hannibal Lecter (or the Chesapeake Ripper, if you prefer his serial killer name), played by Mads Mikkelsen, has landed himself in prison. Meanwhile, outside the TV show’s universe, Hannibal the NBC show is also in trouble – it’s been cancelled by its American broadcaster, NBC, and has yet to find a new home for its fourth season.

Ironically, just as NBC moved the show to a different, quieter night (originally Thursday night in the US and Friday in Asia; now it’s on Saturday night in the US and Sunday in Asia) and as fans fret over the loss of Dr. Lecter’s sumptuous dinner parties and his next nefarious plan to manipulate Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham from behind bars, the show is unleashing its most epic weapon of destruction ever: Francis Dolarhyde.

The character, same as Hannibal, Will and Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne), came from Thomas Harris’ famous novel, Red Dragon. A quick Google search will point out that he’s an iconic one that’s been played twice before. Tom Noonan played him in Manhunter (1986) and Ralph Fiennes in Red Dragon (2002), both of which are feature films. Now Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller has recruited yet another actor for the television series, making him the third to play Francis on screen. But despite being the third, this actor is set to make serial killer Dolarhyde, aka The Tooth Fairy, entirely his own. And his might just be the best; after all, the new Francis is played by none other than Richard Armitage.

We have interviewed Armitage twice before, specifically for his role in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit movies as dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield. We know him from those previous sessions to be courteous, eloquent and incredibly generous with information. There are few other actors All Film loves to interview more than the former Spooks and Strike Back leading man, especially because when we interview Armitage, we can let his own words do the work. Descriptions of experiences on a film set, character development and story arcs are naturally built upon his answers.

Rather than bore you with the details, without further ado, here is what Richard Armitage has to say about the saga of Francis Dolarhyde and the Great Red Dragon. Completely in his own words.