Bryan Fuller talks about what Hannibal’s Silence of the Lambs would have been

So, while the future of Hannibal is looking bleak, creator Bryan Fuller has been talking about what might have been, had they gotten to Lecter’s most famous tale, The Silence of the Lambs.

As a massive fan of the series, I would have loved to have seen Mads Mikkelsen tackling the role that made Anthony Hopkins’ take on the character a household name: “I am imagining a parallel structure of Hannibal in the institution,” Fuller said.

“With a severely scarred Chilton, now having returned to his post, and juxtaposing that, back in the heyday of Hannibal as a psychiatrist, perhaps even earlier than we met him the first time, when he had Benjamin Raspail as a patient, and weave that story in and around the modern day Silence of the Lambs tale as we know it….If we got Silence of the Lambs we would be hitting Barney, we would be hitting Benjamin Raspail, we would be hitting Buffalo Bill… there would be the same kind of voracious need to fan fictionalize all of those characters [laughs] and reimagine certain specific scenarios that caused them to cross paths, or uncross paths as their stories were unfolding.”

But what of Clarice Starling, the FBI agent played to perfection by a strong, yet vulnerable Jodie Foster? Well, we love what he was thinking here: “Well, there’s a couple of ways to go. There’s the Ellen Page way, which I think would be fantastic and more kind of in line with the Clarice that we all know.

“But I know I would also like to explore who Clarice would be from a different racial background. There’s something about being poor and white in the South but there’s something else about being poor and black in the South, and I think it could be the necessary gateway into the character, to make Clarice as much our own signature character as we tried to make Will Graham.”

As for Buffalo Bill, the role that made Ted Levine famous? Well, that would be Ronan The Accuser himself, Lee Pace, who Fuller previously worked with on Pushing Daisies: “I would love to cast Lee Pace as Buffalo Bill. His first, most notable, award-winning career move was playing a transgendered person [in 2003’s A Soldier’s Girl], and I think it would be fascinating to return him to that side of his acting skill.”

Well, this is all so good that, frankly, we wish we didn’t know about any of it. And, while we have no issue with Clarice being played by a black actress, the idea of Ellen Paige in the role just feels so right…

Ah, well… c’est la vie

Source: Craveonline