Before the NBC “Hannibal” TV show premiered, it was hard to get Anthony Hopkins Oscar-winning performance out of your head. Then Mads Mikkelsen came along and proved to be the perfect choice to take over the role of the sinister Hannibal Lecter. Now, showrunner Bryan Fuller reveals that the network wanted to go in a slightly different direction, with John Cusack or even Hugh Grant in the role of Hannibal.
Speaking with Collider, Bryan Fuller detailed the months-long fight to cast Mads Mikkelsen in the show. “There was a casting kerfuffle on who to cast for Hannibal Lecter, and there was a difference of opinion on what a traditional television network would want as a leading man and what we would want as an actor playing Hannibal Lecter to personify playing that character,” Fuller said. “I think the network wanted somebody that was much more poppy, much more mainstream, much more American I think in some ways.”
As Fuller tells it, he wanted Mikkelsen from the get-go, but the network resisted “because he was European.” NBC executives seemingly thought that just by looking at Mikkelsen people would think “Yeah I buy that he eats people,” and so their solution was to cast an everyday American actor — like John Cusack or even the incredibly American Hugh Grant.
“It was an interesting dance because I’d say, ‘Mads Mikkelsen!’ and they’d say, ‘No, how about Hugh Grant?'” Fuller adds. “I’d say, ‘Great, make an offer, he’s gonna say no,’ then they’d make an offer and he’d say no, and I’d be like, ‘What about Mads Mikkelsen?’ and they’d be like, ‘Well what about John Cusack?'”
This went on for months until Fuller stuck to his guns, and the rest is history, but the fight didn’t end there. Fuller tells that because of the casting of Mikkelsen, NBC’s marketing department sort of gave up on the show. Thankfully, Fuller seems to think that this allowed the show to become as audacious as it did.
“The gift of casting Mads Mikkelsen, is that their investment in the show became dramatically decreased, and so that allowed us to do a lot of things that we wouldn’t have been able to do [otherwise].”