[2016] Emmy Magazine #6

I have added scans from Emmy Magazine‘s no. 6 issue to our photo archive. You can click on the thumbnails to go to the album.

[May 23, 2016] TV Guide

I have added scans of Hugh with his co-stars Aaron Paul and Michelle Monaghan in the May 23rd issue of TV Guide magazine. Thank you to my friend AliKat from katheryn-winnick.us for sending these our way!

The Path – 1.07 Refugees – Episode Stills

I have updated our photo archive with four high quality stills from The Path. I have included the graphic below for those who might not want to see spoilery images.

Hannibal’s Hugh Dancy heads down a new Path

After three intense seasons battling Mads Mikkelsen’s grand guignol gourmand on Hannibal, Hugh Dancy could have been forgiven for choosing something bright and breezy for his next project.

However, while the 40-year old Brit did pick something closer to the New York home he shares with fellow actor Claire Danes, the subject matter isn’t exactly “light”.

The Path is a 10-part tale focusing on the Meyerist Movement, a religious cult with a distinct set of principals and beliefs. Stoke-on-Trent born Dancy plays Cal, the group’s unofficial leader, but a man whose ambition is at odds with the existing leadership.

Dancy says that apart from the talent already signed up to the show (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, True Detective’s Michelle Monaghan) and the creative minds behind it (Parenthood’s Jessica Goldberg and Jason Katims), what attracted him to the project was its ambiguity.

“That’s what keeps an actor interested. What I loved about this was that while it’s about a cult and has some machiavellian characters, they took the character’s belief system totally seriously and looked at what is like to have your beliefs crumble.”

Helping Dancy get into a character was “an introduction to Meyerism” the showrunners had created and the physical setting – a compound in upstate New York.

“Before we started shooting, we spent a day up there just getting to know one another and while you were sitting there on the grass in the sun it became immediately apparent why somebody might want to be a part of something like this.”

However, he admits that after Hannibal, he wasn’t exactly looking at jumping into just anything.

“If I was going to do another TV show I had to be certain about it. Hannibal was sometimes a tough day at work, but I went home delighted. What I was doing felt real and fun and serious. While I think it was about the relationship between two guys (Dancy’s Will Graham and Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter), it was also about death.

“Although The Path is also dark, it’s not really about death. That might be a fine distinction, but it made me think it was different water enough to throw myself into. Plus, it certainly didn’t hurt that the job was close to home and fitted around the family’s schedule.”

And so is Cal an easy character to leave behind after a long day’s shoot then? “I certainly hope so.”

Dancy says he also enjoyed being drip-fed information about the plot and where his character was headed.

“You have to expect not to know to a certain degree, because it is television, but I had a general sense of where they wanted to go with things. We had all 10 episodes by the time we started shooting episode six and I had some really helpful conversations with Jessica in particular.

“And what I found occasionally when speaking with other actors was that they had been speaking to her and had information about where their character was going. Slowly but surely, by digging around, we all managed to get a picture of where we were going.”

When asked if Cal and The Path is something Dancy would like to return to, he doesn’t hesitate with his answer.

“Obviously everybody hopes we get to do more of this. Cal could end up being like the pope, or in prison, and I’m cool with either of those things.”

The Path is now screening on Lightbox – stuff.co.nz

‘The Path’ 1×03 Recap Chat: Co-Star Hugh Dancy

Cal Robertson comes more fully into view in “A Homecoming,” the first new episode of The Path following last week’s double-decker premiere. If you thought being in a cult warped Cal’s brain, here’s another fact for your diagnosis: His mother is a sad, charmless, drunk hermit played by Kathleen Turner. We sat down with actor Hugh Dancy, who plays Increasingly Complicated Cal, to talk about the episode.

“It’s a show about intimacy to a degree. The people on the show are seeking connection and truth and openness, though they’re not always succeeding.”

You are from the U.K., but I’ve only seen you in shows like Hannibal and The Path where you use an American accent. How did you work out your American accent?

Doing it for a living, I’ve gotten increasingly comfortable with it. I grew up in England, and we were heavily exposed to American culture as you can imagine, so it wasn’t such a huge leap.

And you’re married to an American [Claire Danes].

Yes. I think I was playing an American when we met.

The Path has a much more naturalistic sensibility than Hannibal. Does The Path use a smaller crew?

It’s not necessarily a smaller crew, but the shows operate much differently with the lighting and camera setups. On The Path, we’re using three cameras almost all the time with fairly minimal lighting. On Hannibal, the lighting — or, in some cases, lack of lighting — was much more stylized.

The Path feels like a much more intimate, personal show.

It’s a show about intimacy to a degree. The people on the show are seeking connection and truth and openness, though they’re not always succeeding.

And it’s a show about a family in the way that Parenthood and Friday Night Lights — Jason Katims’ two previous shows — were oriented around families.

That was noticeably absent in Hannibal. [Laughs.]

You are in Peru at the beginning of this episode, so you know that Dr. Stephen Meyer [Keir Dullea] is in a coma, and you tell a few fibs about that. Do you see that as Cal papering over some doubts or being an opportunist?

Cal knew as the season started that Stephen was potentially on his deathbed, so he’s convening at the beginning of this episode there with some of the 10R elders. They have gathered to hear the doctor say that we’ve run out of hope, but that’s not news to them. Cal is not somebody who ever had ambitions of leading the group and he is still a believer, but his original beliefs had Steve leading this group forever. The movement has saved his life, and he needs to bridge to a second generation. To do that he has to keep a lot of secrets, and he sees that as a selfless thing. As the season goes on, that will increasingly dovetail with his own drive and ambition.

The movement is not based on thinking Dr. Meyer is divine, right?

Not exactly. Steve told us that he would provide the 13 rungs that would be The Ladder to progress up until we get to The Garden, and the whole movement is predicated on that. The idea that he’s going to die from mundane causes before he finishes that is a major fault line. It undercuts everything we’ve understood.

“You need a fierce and vulnerable actress to play [Brenda Roberts], and [Kathleen Turner] has both of those things in spades. There’s no vanity about it.”

What is so disturbing to Eddie [Aaron Paul] about seeing Dr. Meyer in that condition?

Sarah [Michelle Monaghan] is talking to Mary [Emma Greenwell] in the first episode and says that Steve is off in Peru completing the final rungs and that he “lives in the light.” That is the line that has been propagated — that he’s reached this level of purity where he’s bathed in light and completing the rungs for their spiritual salvation.

So Eddie feels like he’s been sold some BS about that?

I don’t think he knows what he feels. When you live inside a belief system like that, just seeing Steve like that is not enough for him. He doesn’t think everything he’s been told is bullshit. It takes a while to process that.

Kathleen Turner plays your mother in this episode. Is this the first time you’ve worked with her?

I had not worked with her, but I had shared a train ride with her once. [Laughs.]

So did you see her on set before she was dressed out as the drunk mom?

We shot all of those scenes over a couple of days, so we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. You need a fierce and vulnerable actress to play that kind of part, and she has both of those things in spades. There’s no vanity about it.

Does she want you to take that drink because she wants you to give her something — to do something you don’t want to do — or was it more about getting you to admit something about yourself?

She knows that I have the same weakness that she does, and she’s using that, but mostly she’s trying to pull me back into her life. It infuriates her that I’ve chosen this other parent and this other life over her, and she knows that I’m just a drunk like her.

She explains some of your backstory that you went into the movement fairly young and not of her doing.

That’s right. The backstory is that my father was — like her — an alcoholic, but he extricated himself from that and took me to join this nascent movement. After a certain point, he got out and I was old enough to stick around.

So Steve Meyer then becomes your father figure.

Yes, he was very much my father figure.

“The real thing [Cal is] committing to is loneliness.”

There’s more discussion in this episode than in the first two about the various rankings in the movement. Cal is a 10R. Who are the other 10Rs?

Steve has written 10 of the 13 rungs, so 10R — 10 rungs — is as high as you can progress. Cal is 10R, the two elders who are with Cal at the beginning are 10R, and Silas is 10R.

Do we have enough evidence at this point to know why you would be a 10R and be so much younger than the others?

Cal grew up in the movement and essentially became Steve’s adoptive son. Cal and Sarah and Eddie were young stars in the movement, but Cal dropped away everything in his life that wasn’t related to the movement.

What are Sarah and Eddie’s rank?

Sarah is an 8R. When we see Eddie at the beginning of the series — when he’s on hallucinogens, by the way — he’s in the process of obtaining 6R. We talk more as the season goes on about achieving the rungs. There’s a book for each rung, and there are tasks for each rung. The writers’ room has a clear idea about that underlying structure, but you don’t necessarily see a lot of that.

You’re coming from Hannibal, which had a deep mythology, to another show with a deep mythology. Have you thought much about that?

In the case of Hannibal, the mythology was more the richness of the source material — the Thomas Harris novels — where here the mythology is the underpinnings. I think you could say the same of any good piece of writing. If you’re in a good family drama you’re only going to see the surface, but the actors need to know much more detail about the intricacies and dynamics of the family. I think that’s a quality of good storytelling.

You seem to downplay Cal’s messianic ambitions a bit. Do you think there’s not much evidence of that ambition?

When we shot the scene toward the end of this episode when I come back from Peru and break the news to her in a not-completely-honest way that Steve is working on the final rungs and invite her to recognize that I’ll be a leader, my reading of that was that he was acting out of the shock of the experience of his mother and coming back to where he began and fully committing to that.

The commitment that he’s making is ambitious on paper — he’s committing to the idea of being a leader, and that ambition will grow — but the real thing he’s committing to is loneliness. He’s signing off on never being able to share the truth of what is happening with Steve and everything that means to him, including the fact that he must have some greater doubts about the whole belief system.

Is that the source of the mixed signals he sends Mary?

I think the source of that is that he’s really drawn to her.

Is the implication that he should be alone?

He knows that the nature of his attraction to Mary is not a very elevated one. [Laughs.] Since his teens, Cal has basically been celibate. He’s got big self-control issues, and he has probably been very self-denying. He has also put Sarah on a pedestal and made her a symbol of purity and effortless virtue within the movement. He’s fighting the other side of his nature with Mary. – Source

TVLine and EW Review The Path

The premiere date for The Path is getting closer and closer by each passing minute. And with that comes reviews for the series. Today TVLine and EW posted their reviews and gave the series a B but had good things to say about the series. Each one is singing praise for Hugh and his performance of Cal in the series, which makes us even more excited to see what Hugh has done with this character and how it’ll look in each episode of the series. But then again, as a fan of his career, we all can agree that we didn’t expect any less from him in this role since he always gives it 100% and really can pull a character out of a screen and into anything we’d all like to watch and rewatch (and gif, reblog, tweet, retweet, so on and so forth). You can click to read more below or visit the reviews at their respective links. I have highlighted some parts in the reviews by including them in quotes below. warning: possible spoilers

but Dancy is especially artful at keeping a low-grade darkness beneath the surface of his character’s carefully constructed and relentlessly zen facade. In one especially creepy scene, Cal listens to a self-help CD in his car, pulling down the mirror to practice the art of using his eyes to convey seriousness, amusement, even empathy — and it leaves you wondering if somewhere in his basement, there’s a pit containing a terrified woman, a fluffy white dog and a bottle of lotion.

Buoyed by Dancy’s magnetism, Monaghan’s versatility and Paul’s intensity, The Path may not turn you into a complete convert, but it’ll be hard for you not to at least feel its pull.

The show’s best character is Cal Roberts (Hugh Dancy), the commune’s ambitious leader. His many unresolved flaws betray the limits of Meyerism. He knows a secret that could topple everything. But he doesn’t want to. He believes that with progressive reforms—more activism, empathy, and power sharing; less secrecy, crazy, and cult of personality—Meyerism can do redemptive good, and he chases that idealism with reckless zeal.

Run the race, keep the faith: The Path is a provocative journey.

Continue Reading

January 09 – 2016 Winter TCA Tour – Day 5

I have added high quality images of Hugh attending Day 5 of the 2016 Winter TCA Tour promoting The Path to our photo archive.

EW First Look: The Path

The Path (March 30, Hulu)
It’s an unseasonably warm December day on the set of Hulu’s new drama The Path, and deep in the woods about 90 minutes north of New York City one of its stars, Hugh Dancy, is covered head to toe in mud. “It’s getting a bit itchy,” he says with a grin. That’s pretty much all he (and we) can say as to why he’s so dirty, since part of the fun of this eerie and twisty show — about a family at the center of a controversial religious movement — is guessing what’s around the next turn. Even its actors aren’t immune: “When I got to the end of the first episode I wanted to know what comes next, which is ridiculous because I know what comes next,” Dancy says. –Sara Vilkomerson

Aaron Paul, who plays protagonist Eddie Lane, a husband and father struggling with a crisis of faith, sums things up a bit differently. “S— is about to get real messed up,” he says with a laugh. Indeed. For Paul, choosing a television project to follow the acclaimed Breaking Bad was daunting. “I was very nervous simply because I was a part of what I consider to be the best,” he says. “This is different, but it has that same excitement. When I read scripts I cannot wait to turn the page.” His TV wife, Monaghan, agrees. “It sounds weird to say about this show, but it’s felt kind of blessed.” –Sara Vilkomerson

In March, Hulu will debut The Path, a drama that follows a family at the center of a controversial religious movement. In his first big role since his award-winning turn as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul portrays Eddie Lane, a convert to Meyerism suffering a crisis of faith. Click through for more exclusive photos of the eerie, twisty series, including Hugh Dancy as the movement’s unofficial leader.

Cal Roberts (Hugh Dancy)
Cal is the charismatic, unofficial leader of The Meyerist Movement.

Sarah Lane (Michelle Monaghan)
Born into a Meyerist family, Sarah Lane serves as an important figure in the movement.

Hawk Lane (Kyle Allen) and Ashley Fields (Amy Forsyth)
Hawk is Eddie and Sarah’s teenage son, and Ashley is a popular classmate of Hawk’s who is not a member of Meyerism.

Alison Kemp (Sarah Jones)
Alison is a defector of the Meyerism movement.

Alison Kemp (Sarah Jones)
Alison is a defector of the Meyerism movement.

Detective Abe Gaines (Rockmond Dunbar)
Detective Abe Gaines (Rockmond Dunbar)

Head here for more exclusive intel on The Path, from our First Look issue on stands now or available for purchase here.

Source Links: EW.com [1], EW.com [2], EW.com [3]

Photo Archive Additions

I have updated our photo archive with the following additions: [2011] 006 has been replaced with higher quality images as well as outtakes thanks to theatropath.tumblr.com, I have added additional images to [2015] 003 that were previously unseen, and six albums have been added to DVD/Bluray Features in the Hannibal Season Three section.

Best of 2015 (Behind the Scenes): Hannibal showrunner and stars dissect the gory, glorious series finale

‘It’s a final victory,’ Hugh Dancy says.

NBC’s Hannibal concluded this past August with a bang — or, more accurately, a splash: The season 3 (and series) finale ended with Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) falling off a cliff and presumbly into the sea far, far below after killing Francis Dolarhyde, also known as the Red Dragon.

Dancy, Mikkelsen, and showrunner Bryan Fuller called up EW to talk about the strange relationship between Will and Hannibal, what that last scene really meant, and what they want for Hannibal’s future.

On the series’ final moments

HUGH DANCY: In that final sequence, Hannibal realizes his long-held dream. By the very end, he and Will have killed someone in a kind of ritualistic, cold-blooded fashion. I remember very clearly dripping in blood, and that’s what Hannibal wanted to put it into effect between them at the end of season 2. That’s what he imagined. They go off to Europe like slaughtering people or something. And Will is acknowledging to Hannibal that it was as extraordinary an experience for him as it was for Hannibal. That’s what he’s saying. And I talked to Bryan a lot about that, that the motivation for going off the cliff at the end had to be Will’s realization, not only that this thing had happened, but that he loved it, as opposed to just, “Oh my god, what have I done? I finally arrived at this place I never wanted to be in. Oh, it’s so terrible!” It’s not that. It’s, “This is beautiful.”

MADS MIKKELSEN: [Hannibal’s] been, for three seasons, he’s been trying to make Will Graham see the light, which is [that] there is a wonderful power in killing and doing it for your own purpose. Not to protect yourself, but because you want to. And this is literally what Will is doing at this moment, and they are doing it together. They are doing it as a Bonnie and Clyde couple, which is absolutely perfect in the script that Hannibal wrote.

DANCY: It’s not a real relationship. [Laughs] It’s more, I think, exploration of things which probably we’ve all gone through one way or another, which is slightly obsessive, slightly compulsive. In a sense, it’s just like a really compelling but totally destructive relationship with anybody that you keep coming back to.

BRYAN FULLER: The last moment is [them] nuzzling each other. It actually went further than… Mads was like, “We really went for it!” and I was like, “You actually went a little too for it” because it was like, longing glances, [Laughs] curling lips, and those types of things. I sort of brought it back to the characters and their role without taking it into fan fiction territory. [Laughs]

MIKKELSEN: There is some kind of physicality all of the sudden that becomes almost erotic between them in the very end. It was as if it was impossible not to go there. We basically touched all the other bases with a relationship, and that was kind of like, this has been leading up to this all the time. Whether it’s a physical kiss or it’s just a mental kiss that is being sculpted by our physicality, that is obviously up to the viewers’ eyes, but it just felt unavoidable, that there was no way around it. I think we did a couple versions like that. [Laughs]

It’s definitely a bromance. To Hannibal, Will represents something that he has never really had before, something that is on his level in some senses. And he genuinely loves Will. He could definitely see, not necessarily in a sexual way, a family consisting of him, Will, and Abigail Hobbs. That would be an ideal way of spending the next 10 years of his life. It does not go that way, because Will unfortunately, in Hannibal’s eyes, betrayed him. It is a weird, weird relationship. As Will Graham says in one of the very first scenes they have together, he tells Hannibal that he doesn’t find him that interesting and Hannibal says, “You will.” And that’s what it’s all about. They’ve been getting closer and closer together throughout these seasons.

On the characters’ and the show’s futures

DANCY: I think there’s no question that that’s a big cliff. [Laughs] The only way Will’s ever going to destroy Hannibal is probably to destroy himself. And in that moment, the part of him that’s always fighting against the darkness inside him also thinks, not only is that the only way I’m going to kill Hannibal, it’s better that I should go too. I actually have to end both of us. So that’s what he does.

It’s a final victory. I think what happens is, right up until that last moment, essentially, Hannibal is victorious. He has engineered exactly what he wanted. He’s out of prison, he has Will with him, they’ve gone to this brutal, dark place. And Will manages to pull back a victory. I mean, it’s optimistic in a very, very narrow sense, because they just both killed someone and then jumped off a cliff. But even so. [Laughs]

It’s a very conscious reference to Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. We all know that Sherlock Holmes came back from that. Whether I’m Sherlock or Moriarty in that equation, I don’t even know.

MIKKELSEN: They’d really have to be some super soft rocks down there if Hannibal can make it, right? On the other hand, you see Hannibal getting out of situations that nobody else could get out of it. So if there was a fourth season, we’d have to figure out how he did that. But I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about him. I think he’s mortal like the rest of us, absolutely. But for some reason, God seems to like him. [Laughs] He has a protecting hand carrying Hannibal around all the time. And that is the irony of the show. Why would God simply protect a man like this? It seems like he’s always coming up with a lucky hand.

FULLER: What I would love most about this show is for people to remember Mads Mikkelsen as the definitive Hannibal Lecter. I would love that. As much as I love Anthony Hopkins and think he is brilliant and so amazing in his portrayal as Hannibal Lecter, I am much closer to Mads Mikkelsen’s performance so it would be a great honor if the audience walked away from this series with him as Hannibal Lecter in their minds.

MIKKELSEN: As a human being, I obviously want Hannibal dead a long time ago because it’s absolutely horrendous what he’s doing, but he’s also an extremely interesting character. I would not personally want him wandering around the streets, but if he has to, I think that maybe, that [he and Will] both survived somehow and they have some kind of future friendship where they could put a lid on their urges. And that might be the best solution for the development of those two characters.

DANCY: It’s hard to believe that Hannibal would really die. Because he’s not exactly mortal. And I personally think that if Hannibal’s going to survive, he would save Will. So I don’t know. Let’s just say they’re on a beach somewhere. Drinking something out of a coconut. Or a skull.

The third season of Hannibal is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

EW.com