At the time of interview, The Emmy Award nominations were due to be announced in just two days. Critics and TV addicts alike were all pretty riled up that the chilling Hannibal which made its debut on NBC earlier in the year would surely make the cut. As can be inferred by the title of the drama, the series delves into the sinister mind of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist made iconic by Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-Winning performance in Silence of the Lambs.

It is hard to imagine performances that top that of the film but, if possible Hannibal has provided some pretty disturbing moments, even surpassing that of the movie. It thus should come as no surprise then that fans anxiously awaited the industry recognition that they feel the show deserves. In particular for the shows lead Hugh Dancy who plays not Lecter but Will Graham, a gifted profiler who seeks the help of Lecter to track down some of the most gruesome serial killers.

Dancy however appeared unperturbed by the anticipation surrounding the awards.
“I honestly had no idea about the nominations.” he chuckled, with a hint of exasperation. “I don’t know if we’ll get one. It’s a very competitive field.”

As it turns out, the actor was right. Dancy-who was nominated once before in the supporting actor category for this portrayal of the Earl of Essex in Elizabeth I-didn’t receive a nomination, which critics have described as one of the biggest omissions of the 2013 Emmys.

But he has other things on his mind. He is currently in the thick of finding a new apartment for his family (wife Claire Danes and 9-month-old son, Cyrus) in Toronto, where he’ll soon begin filming the much anticipated second season of the drama. As the subject matter suggests, the show is pretty provocative, for television, that is. A network is Salt Lake City in the United States even refused to air it.

Much of the “shock factor” can be attributed to Lecter, played by Mads Mikkelsen. But fans of the show attest that it is Dancy’s take on the profiler who is tasked with having to work with Lecter that viewers find engaging.
“A professor with a unique gift to get inside the heads of serial killers. Graham steals the show through his social awkwardness and seemingly divine cunning that allows him to make leaps and connect dots within a case that mere mortals may not have.” Is how the website Policymic describes his performance.
Alongside Graham and Lecter is FBI agent Jack Crawford played by Laurence Fishburne. Together the trio share a chemistry that have kept viewers tuned in.

“They’re both relaxed and confident.” He says “Two of the best screen actors around.”
Dancy’s character is indeed an interesting one. Though highly intelligent, there is a suggestion that he is autistic or perhaps suffers from Asperger’s, a suggestion that Dancy rejected at Comic-Con this year.

“The way I came to think about it is…if there is a spectrum with autism at one end—people who can’t read anything of another person—and then most of us are somewhere [in the middle]…then if you imagine the spectrum extending to the other side, to people who have no control over the information they receive and have no floodgates at all—that’s where Will is,” he explains, “In order to protect himself, he has consciously and deliberately adopted some of the mannerisms of a person with Asperger’s. He’s chosen to block eye contact, he’s chosen to become antisocial and no engage.”

The explanation in itself proof of just how complex the character is. In researching the role, Dancy explored the subject of behavioural science, the discipline that pioneered the subject of profiling.

“I read some of the stuff written by people who work in behavioural science, people who really created that idea of ‘profiling’ serial killers. I building up that science, they do this strange combination of intuition and detective work, and Will is that character, but pushed a little bit further.” He explained at Comic-Con.

It perhaps isn’t surprising that Dancy takes a cerebral approach to his characters. He studied at Oxford and as a young child growing up in Newcastle, located in the North of England, must have been exposed to the intellectual musing of his parents. His mother worked in academic publishing and his father Jonathan Dancy is a philosopher, now Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin.
His foray into acting began as a way of taming a rebellious streak that surfaced while attending boarding school.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Dancy said, “In the theater, suddenly all the hierarchies of school were out the window. The other attraction was that girls from a local school were involved in productions, not because I was desperately lustful, although I’m sure I was, because I was a 13-year-old boy, but I just liked having girls around”.

Dancy was soon cast as Ariel in The Tempest and the rest—as they say—is history. Like most British actors, his early work consists of period drams playing literary characters Daniel Deronda and David Copperfield. Since then he has embarked on more diverse work starring in Black Hawk Down, the cult classic Martha Marcy May Marlene and Hysteria in which he played Mortimer Granville, the inventor of the vibrator. There was also the chick flick Confessions of a Shopaholic.
Will Graham now adds an interesting dimension to a range of roles taken on by the actor. In this interview with August Man, he divulges what it’s like to get into the head of a serial killer.

How are you enjoying your return to episodic television?
Very much so. Episodic TV is its own beast, but unlike The Big C, I’ve really been involved from the start with Hannibal. It’s developed and changed almost as a reaction to what I’m doing on the show. [Producer] Bryan Fuller is very sharing and generous to the degree he wants to involve the actors. One night, I called him with a simple question about the script and I was still on the phone an hour later, as he’s describing the plots seven episodes ahead. Make no mistake: Bryan is the brain of this machine.
The show is based on the Thomas Harris’ book, Red Dragon, in which your character is introduced. How heavily did you reference the novel?
I first began reading Bryan’s description of Will, mainly how he saw the relationship developing between him and Hannibal. It was only after reading Red Dragon that I truly realized Bryan was coming from a place of real loyalty. Once you get past the first episode of the show, the DNA of the thing very much comes from the brain of Thomas Harris.
The graphic nature of the show has not been without controversy. Do you ever read the script and think, “Okay, this is too much”?
Well, let me first say I don’t think you have to push the envelope too far in Salt Lake City to make a scene [laughs] Yes, it’s a bit gruesome, but I have no problem with that as long as it’s in context, serves a purpose and comes with some consequences—and Will certainly suffers those. I do feel like you can have too much of a good thing, but Hannibal has a nice balance, particularly in the second half of the season. The show is character-driven and grown-up in terms of what it asks of the audience—that combination seems fairly new to me compared with what else is on television right now.
One of the creepiest, most impressive, aspects of the show has got to be the food styling. Don’t you agree?
Completely. Will only eats with Hannibal on occasion, so I’m always surprised when I arrived on set. Once, I’d just sit down and this little bird skull arrives on the plate and I’m thinking, “Has nobody considered that Hannibal might perhaps be a little strange?” [laughs] Or the other time when he brings me black chicken soup and it has a tiny bird claw in there. It all speaks to the level of Bryan’s detail.
It really makes the difference between a good show and a great show…
At this point in my career, I have a fairly good bulls**t detector. When Bryan described not just the first season of Hannibal, but how he saw it developing three and four years later, I knew he was for real. I wasn’t just interested, but eager, to be a part of it.
You’ve dabbled in a bit of modeling, as the face of Burberry several years ago. Does style interest you?
I wouldn’t say that it’s a major part of my life, but there’s definitely an overlap between the world of fashion and the world of acting. I own quite a lot of Burberry as a result of that collaboration (and Christopher Bailey). And I do love a good suit. I’m an Englishman, after all.

Thanks to supaaah.tumblr.com for posting great quality of the scans publicly for the fans.