Interviews
[Comic-Con ’13 INTERVIEW] The Cast and Crew On “Hannibal” Season 2! #SDCC
The Woman In Black writes in for Bloody Disgusting and Dread Central as she took part in roundtable interviews with “Hannibal” series star Hugh Dancy (Will Graham), creator/showrunner Bryan Fuller, director/exec producer David Slade, and exec producer Martha De Laurentiis at San Diego Comic-Con (watch the entire panel). They couldn’t divulge a lot of details, but we did learn enough to whet our appetites even more for the continuing adventures of Dr. Lecter and Will.
Slade kicked things off by discussing the look and tone of the show, which he attributes to Fuller being such a visual writer. Bryan gives them all the pieces to create a mini-horror movie each week; his and the other directors’ job is to ground it in reality. All the episodes are shot in a specific way so that while everyone talks about how surprised they are such a “gory” show is allowed on network TV, audience members really just think they are seeing much more than they actually do. Things are suggested or blurred or shot a bit out of frame to get past the censors but still keep the horror crowd happy and engaged.
Filming kicks off September 10th, and Slade will direct the first two episodes, the Season 2 finale, and possibly more depending on his schedule.
Dancy was up next, and he said we have a fair distance to go before we get to see Hannibal behind bars. Will still has to go through a trial and convince others of his belief that Hannibal is the killer. All of his relationships are fractured, especially with Jack, who is now moving much closer to Hannibal. He’s even separated from his dogs!
De Laurentiis touched upon the trial aspect during Season 2 and said we don’t need to worry about it becoming more of a procedural type show. Things will wrap up fairly quickly in that regard. We’ll learn more stories from Hannibal’s past, including his relationship with Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia Du Maurier. Nothing in the show is filler; themes that were introduced in Season 1 will come back later. There are a few loose ends: We still haven’t seen Abigail’s body, nor do we know exactly where Eddie Izzard’s Dr. Gideon is. And let’s not forget about Miriam Lass. And what about tabloid blogger Freddie Lounds? She’s complicit in Hannibal’s shenanigans, but as a friend who truly cared about Abigail, she want to find out what really happened so she’ll keep digging around.
Fuller provided us with the most “meat” in our discussions. Season 2 has been fully arced out with up to Episode 3 completely written and Episode 4 being broken now. As for when “Hannibal” will return, NBC is still deciding if it will be in the spring (like Season 1) or possibly held until summer, which seems to be all the rage right now.
#SDCC 2013: A Few Tasty Morsels of What’s Ahead in Hannibal Season 2Since Will has no proof of Hannibal’s guilt, the good doctor is feeling safe for now, but he still has to be savvy and stay one step ahead of Will. If Season 1 was all about their bromance, Season 2 is their nasty breakup. Will comes out swinging, and there will be a different dynamic. While he has limited resources, we will see Will’s relationship with Dr. Alana Bloom evolve.
What about guest stars? We’ve heard rumors of David Bowie playing Hannibal’s uncle, and they’re still hoping that will come together. If not, Fuller will “park” the character for a while until Bowie is available. And Gillian is in talks to return – they’re just working on the dates. He said they have a great storyline for her. She’s a good foe for Hannibal and will not fall prey to his traps. How much does she know? How much is she figuring out? That is the stuff Fuller’s most excited about. Despite of them being very cold characters, there’s a very sexy heat between them. When asked if possibly Will might share some moments with Dr. Du Maurier, he said he would love to get those characters in a scene together.
Speaking of sex, when asked about Hannibal continuing to pursue Alana, Fuller said he definitely wants “more sexy” in Season 2. So “stay tuned for who is going to be doing who!”
As for whether Hannibal is a sociopath, a psychopath, or what, Fuller feels Hannibal is unique and uncategorizable – a “total work of fiction.” Hannibal works in a way that he is protecting the beauty of the world. He sees himself as an elitist and “better than,” but he is also capable of caring. His caring for Will is genuine, and part of his radically unorthodox therapy of Will is to get him to accept all parts of himself. Hannibal is curious more than anything else. He is curious about the human condition, how he feels, how other people feel.
With Will in prison and Hannibal on the outside, the roles we’re used to seeing them in have been switched where characters will be approaching Will in the institution and seeking advice on cases. He is kind of taking Hannibal’s place. Fuller called the scenario “inversions that will be really fun to explore.”
Fuller wrapped things up with some remarks about how, after working on this show, he looks at food so much differently now. Yeah, Bryan, so do we! Thanks for messing with our heads; we can’t wait to see what sick and twisted, yet tasty, treats await us next year!
Evil Dead Rise final girl Lily Sullivan finds herself coated in blood once more in SOULM8TE, but this time as the killer.
In Blumhouse’s new horror movie, arriving on Digital on August 1, Sullivan stars as Sara, an Artificially Intelligent android whose sole purpose is to serve as the perfect partner for her owner, David (David Rysdahl). But impossible beauty standards and programming safety measures that have been tampered with set this love bot to destroy mode when her relationship with David becomes threatened.
Director Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother), who rewrote an original draft from Rafael Jordan (Salvage Marines), based on a story by James Wan, Ingrid Bisu and Jordan, drew inspiration from ’90s erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction.
They became a guide of sorts to Sara’s villainous turn, Kate Dolan explained to Bloody Disgusting. “All those old movies, when I was re-watching them to prep, I was writing the script, I was like, ‘Damn, these women are really just being driven into these scenarios by these men, these hapless men who are just treating them so badly. These men should really be getting their just desserts.’ But I think that was something we had as a guide for Sara: what really makes her into that femme fatale or that evil woman is just the impossible task of being a perfect woman and trying to balance being the Madonna and the whore and all these different kinds of aspects of being a woman and not being able to compute that. That’s what drives her crazy.
“That was always what really drew me to the story: of how to reframe that femme fatale or that villainous woman of the erotic thriller and do something new with it and something different.”
Lily Sullivan agrees: “She felt like a contemporary evolution of those characters. It’s like processing it all and then putting it through in an output. But it was so fun to try to find the old Hollywood archetypes of women in the 1990s, where it is built around fantasy, projection, desire. Then you’re just, even as the actor, then going through makeup, going through costume, where it’s all of these things that are kind of messed up about the blonde wig, the covering your whole body in paint so you can’t see any of your imperfections, or getting your teeth whitened and a push-up bra, and you’re just like, ‘Whoa. Why am I so angry? Why do I not feel enough? And why am I actually, literally, the male gaze right now?’ I was like, ‘Booked.'”
It turns out, though, that it was the impossible ideal of perfection that Sara represents that terrified Sullivan. She credits Dolan for helping her take on the intimidating role, one she was extremely hesitant to tackle at first.
Sullivan explains, “To do it, I’m like, someone’s going to meet your freak. We’re both choosing to do this. But at first I met Kate, and I felt like I told her all the reasons why I couldn’t do it or shouldn’t do it or why I was worried instead of being like, ‘Yeah, I’d love the role.’ I just weirdly had this verbal diarrhea of freaking out that I was like, ‘I don’t think I can.’ But then usually when you are that scared, it’s usually an indication to walk towards it. But really for me, it was Kate.“
Once she was on board, though, Sullivan grabbed the role by the throat. “Then also just again, to walk into the inky, gross, shadowy stuff of being a woman where I’m like, ‘How about I go over-hypersexualize the hell out of myself?’ But I’m going to make it uncanny valley. I want you to feel as silicone as much as you can. So I’m going to bring my Jim Carrey version of it, The Mask work, the Jacques Lecoq method of finding it through physicality. So there was so much nourishment in the challenge of it. Even reading the words when I was reading Kate’s writing, I’m going into Palisade mode. I was like, ‘I’ve got to go figure out what that language even means.’ And, ‘It better be as jarring as I possibly can.’ We love David, but we judge him for being able to project a whole life onto this wonky woman who’s forced to be there.”
Dolan reveals she did a lot of research into AI, and our home uses of it like Amazon’s Alexa, which informed Sara’s soothing voice and mannerisms. It also informed Sara’s parent company and new owner, David. “I was reading a lot about why that’s appealing, but also bias within the tech industry and how it’s predominantly male-led,” Dolan says. “So, you’re getting a lot of men of a certain background and life experience all thinking that this is the right thing to do.”
The director uses the ’90s thriller framework as an abstract metaphor for how we’re currently engaging with AI now, and “how people engage with them and what you get from that back.” That didn’t just inspire Sara’s look and design, but her methods of murder.
“The kills were very much like, I won’t spoil anything, but it was always ways that the men would be taken down a peg, then emasculated, or just put in a chokehold; literally, it was the kind of concept behind a lot of them,” Dolan explains. “And then it was just like: what would be most fun? What would be really fun to do? What would be fun to film and fun to watch as an audience? I mean, they were great fun, and all our male cast were very eager and excited to have these death scenes. That was the most exciting day on set when they were getting ready to be completely eviscerated.”
If it’s not already apparent, it feels strange to consider Sara a villain when she has no actual agency, though there’s no question she’s the terror of SOULM8TE. And Sullivan had a blast taking on the baddie role. Especially when it came to eviscerating the pursuit of perfection and anyone who dares to get in Sara’s way.
Sullivan teases a favorite kill of hers as she recalls the joy of playing a horror movie psycho, “Even loving the stiletto in the mouth referenced from The Last Seduction, just sets the heart. Even just having the plastic apron as I’m sawing the man’s body like a cello, little wink at American Psycho. It was so fun making a film about AI that’s super tech-based. Obviously our whole lives are bombarded by it, and it’s quite nauseating. If you’re going to make a film about AI, this serving is fun, it’s twisted, but it’s also freaky. And the freak show circus is already here, unfortunately.”
Lily Sullivan and Kate Dolan behind the scenes
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