do you think an actor's opinion is 100% canon? if they say it then it's true? I ask this because Hugh took a long time to say that there was romance between Hannibal and Will but Mads didn't
I think we often forget that actors are real people. These people are flawed. They're not gods because they portrait characters brilliantly. With that being said, actors have biases. Sometimes, no matter how canon something is, if the actor, for whatever reason, doesn't like it, they might play it off or completely deny it when asked about it. Sometimes out of spite, because again, actors are just people, prone to normal human behavior.
I don't wanna say why I think Hugh played it off at first or why he thought Will had relevant feelings for Alana cause I have zero patience for the backlash I might receive. I'll say one of the reasons, the other I won't: I think, just like Will, because he internalized Will, he was in denial. But whatever because he came through after season three.
Sometimes, an actor likes another fellow actor, sometimes they hate or dislike them, and because they're human and their work ethics are much looser and less demanding, they can get away with a silent bias, meaning, their opinions are not based in canon but in their feelings about other actors they work with, and nobody will actually know it because the true reason is inside their head and the only thing we hear is an actor having an opinion that no one seems to understand why, as in "how are you not seeing this?", or when they try to force a ship that no one else likes and everyone is "why??".
We need to take actors out of the pedestal. Yes, they are living those characters and understand them a lot, but they're still actual people, and people (actually, most) cannot see themselves properly, they lack self awareness. So of course they can have an opinion that is completely wrong because although they're playing the character, they simply lack the ability to actually take a step back and analyze their behavior and actions.
I believe that like Will would 100% deny any romantic feelings towards H, because of what it represented about him, so would Hugh. Just because Hugh plays Will doesn't mean he sees Will in the same way we see Will, in fact, he 100% doesn't, just like you cannot perceive yourself in the same way others perceive you. Our perception of Will is actually manipulated by two lenses: Hannibal's and Alana's/Jack's. That's why the fandom is divided between people who love deranged Will and want to see him in his becoming and fully accepting of his darkness, and the ones who have the copagenda thing and see him as a wounded puppy.
Now, Mads is the exact same, actually. His perception of Hannibal is flawed sometimes. For example, he says Hannibal is happy, a lot of times. Of course H isn't happy, we all know this, but Hannibal himself lives in denial. He crafted a mask of refinery and charisma, to keep that deep rooted depression in check. So it makes sense that Mads would think H is happy, in fact, he needs to in order to play the character in the best possible way, because in this manner, he's not pretending or lying, he's truly in Hannibal's shoes, deluding himself as a happy, satisfied, person.
The actors who think too much or rationalize their characters too much are often the ones we forget about. Actors who engage less in overanalysis often provide responses that appear less intricate compared to fan-generated meta, as they authentically embody their characters rather than engaging in extensive rationalization. This is because the actor is just being, instead of trying to be. They're not rationalizing their own behavior because people, although they think they do, they don't, at most, we judge our own behavior, but that's different than actual rationalization or complex analysis (some people do, of course, me included, but it's not the norm, not the default).
Hey Lamb, need your input on something. Got my friend into Hannibal, but she tapped out after Season 2. Apparently, the scene with Will & Margot didn't sit well with her. She's a lesbian and thinks Bryan pulled an old homophobic conversion trope, you know, the one where a guy fetishizes being with a lesbian. Not pushing her to keep watching, don't want to upset her, but the whole talk kinda left a bittersweet vibe. What do you think?
Definitely not my place to speak since I'm not a lesbian and if your friend is, then she has the position to perceive this in a way I can't, so I'm not going to invalidate her opinion (also because I don't need to be a lesbian to agree, I understand perfectly what she means). If you want an advice to talk to her:
NBC, and every other network (and the industry in general) is extremely homophobic. It's getting better recently but one: Hannibal is not a recent show, and two: it's not actually better, it's just less worse lol.
With that being said, there were many censorship issues in the show, I mean they literally cut out the script lines where they explicitly said Margot was a lesbian. So yes, 100% this scene + whole plot of Alana and Margot was actually just a fetishization. But I don't think it was Bryan's fault or idea, even.
He outright said Alana was a plot device, only "the girlfriend" (last hannibal comic con they went to), and this screams network censorship forcing a female between two male characters to "soften" the homoerotic atmosphere. They do it all the time.
The actress who played Alana was actually the one who suggested the romance between her and Margot, and their sex scene was just another fetishization (two conventionally attractive women can have a sex scene, but god forbid two men have one).
All of this led to the cancellation of the show, which they never talk about because they're not stupid, they need to keep their jobs and a good relationship with the network and the producers. But, the views had gone up, the critics were super positive about the show...But it would be impossible to not go gayer in s4 lol, so they were out. So much so that they didn't know that when they filmed the finale.
So this whole Margot and Will thing, I think it was a way of using the women as a proxy, since they weren't allowed to have m/m sex, so they just made that crazy edit of a 4some lol, as well as the best way the writers found to go around the censorship since it can be read as both Will and Margot not being present, using each other and they drew parallels between Margot and Mason and Hannibal and Will, they even foreshadowed the scar Hannibal gave Will in Mizumono, with the scar Margot got from what Mason did to her.
They needed a reason for the Mason plot and needed Will to have something more personal against him, and I don't see many options other than the baby plot. It was also supposed to mirror Hannibal taking Abigail from Will at the end of the season (hence their scars).
So yeah, absolutely, a part of the scene was what your friend perceived, since we are dealing with the trashy entertainment industry. But then there's a lot more to it. But not arguing.
