Q: Hannibal manipulates all of his patients, Will in particular. He even endangers Will. Is that some sort of tough love?
Mads: It helps to know what season I’m endangering him in. Is there a specific danger you’re thinking of?
Q: Let’s start early on, in season one, when Will is actually sick and Hannibal is taking advantage of it, and setting him up to take the fall.
Mads: Well, that is a necessity, right? I would love the story to go somewhere else, but the arrows are pointing in Hannibal’s way, so he needs a scapegoat, and that will be Will Graham for the time being. He just needs that for a while until he can come up with a Plan B. So it’s not a long-term thing. He was definitely going to walk down the path to joy together with Will eventually, but it’s something of a necessity.
Q: What about in season three? The tides have turned, Hannibal has been captured and he sets the Red Dragon on Will’s family. What about that?
Mads: Oh, that one. Yeah [he and Dancy laugh]. Well, even though he’s the smartest man in the room, you can’t avoid the fact that there’s a certain vanity inside of him. It’s not a direct jealousy, but there’s a vanity. And you know that family? I’m not sure Hannibal is, like, super-fond of it. So that comes in handy, that the Red Dragon is around. Hannibal basically just wants it to be Will and himself, and that’s it. [Pause] I didn’t say, “Kill Will,” did I, though?
Q: You did say, “Kill them all…”
Hugh: You could say that during the second half [of season three]-I mean, obviously we’re jumping ahead here, but Will comes back to Hannibal. He’s now got this family, and Will, independently and pretty quickly, starts coming to the conclusion that it’s not sustainable for him to have that family. Like, he’s not the guy. He’s not the right person to be able to look after them, to live with them. It’s not compatible with who he really is. And you could argue that Hannibal is just driving him more quickly to come to that realization. So in that sense, it is kind of brutal, tough love. His love is saying, “Know thyself.”
Mads: As Hugh is saying, it’s unavoidable. It’s going to happen sooner or later. Might as well happen sooner, before he’s stuck.
[x]
He was definitely going to walk down the path to joy together with Will eventually. WELL JUST FUCK.ME.UP.
