at what point in time do you think hugh and mads made the conscious choice to change the hannigram relationship from platonic to romantic? cause all the quotes and interviews i have seen since i got into hannibal about two weeks ago all have hugh, mads, and bryan saying it is platonic for the first two years and i was just curious if you have answered this before. (although i get confused because mads always said platonic too but made that face when hugh said it at paleyfest lol)
Bryan Fuller: I remember after–like, when, on the day that you were shooting the inserts on stage for the closeups, you both–before I had seen the dailies–you both came running up to me, and Mads was particularly giddy, where he’s like, “We really went for it! We really went to the love story! We almost kissed, and it’s aaalll there, and you can use it! And Mads was giddy–giddy, giddy, giddy as a schoolgirl–about how far the homoeroticism has been pushed.
Hugh Dancy: …It’s the only time in the duration of this entire show that we had the conversation before, as we were about to shoot that scene, like, ‘We have to kind of push in that direction. It’s like there’s no point pretending otherwise.’ I guess we obviously both thought that was great.
–”The Wrath of the Lamb” Blu-ray/DVD commentary, re: the final scene on the cliffside
So…exactly then? XD If we’re to take Hugh at his word, that’s the first and only time they made a conscious choice about it, because by then there was “no point in pretending otherwise.”
I suspect they suffered the same shock that we all did when they read the script.
WHADDAYA MEAN, “LUNGES AT HANNIBAL”??? WHADDAYA MEAN, THEY’RE NOT EVEN TOUCHING EACH OTHER??? HOW IS THIS UPPING THE ANTE FROM “MIZUMONO”???
I also tend to suppose the clear text that they were “in love” in the previous episode partly fed into that. Hugh got a lot of guff in the fandom for a long time for his faithfulness to Bryan’s insistence that the relationship remain platonic, but I think the words “pretending otherwise” are telling here–that after the point when the love story becomes explicit text, playing it down would seem to him to be dishonest and perhaps a little absurd. Hugh was always insistent that the relationship was the heart of the show and that they were never trying to “tease” or bait-and-switch people with it (read: queerbait), so I can imagine that once the line had been crossed really unequivocally into text from subtext, it’s not something his sense of integrity can step back from easily. (Though I’m sure he’d continue to do what Bryan wants him to do in the future.)
As for Mads, I think his playful nod at Paleyfest should not be taken any more seriously than when Bryan played the same trick on Hugh and SDCC in 2013, when Hugh said he didn’t see the relationship as sexual and Bryan said, “OH REALLY?” Obviously Bryan didn’t really mean that, and Mads and Hugh have been good about repeating the party line, as good employees, when they were on the record. They tease each other and are full of mischief, and I suspect Hugh is often the easy mark out of the three of them because he’s so sincere so much of the time.
That said, Mads has always seemed the most open to the romantic interpretation, and I can see that he might have felt it was a little absurd to differentiate all along, given that he’s Hannibal, and Hannibal is obsessed with Will and almost separately obsessed with his own love story (and that he’s even having one). As actors are protective of their character’s motivations, Mads has always been closest to that romantic interpretation. Hannibal has never been torn, like Will has been, and keeping that relationship “heterosexual male friendship” was always Bryan’s big thing, never Mads’s.
When Mads talks about it, he tends to muddy the divisions, as if platonic/romantic/sexual love are not really clearly delineated things in his mind, as much as Tumblr would like to make them out to be. I can relate to this, so it’s always a bit of a hard subject for me to write about, when people ask me to separate them for Hannibal and Will. I hope this suffices.
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