Bryan Fuller says NBC wanted John Cusack or Hugh Grant to play Hannibal

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Bryan Fuller's Hannibal quickly became one of my favourite shows of all-time, and a large part of what made the show so successful among fans was the excellent casting. Hugh Dancy starred as FBI special investigator Will Graham alongside Mads Mikkelson as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Although Mikkelson obviously wasn't the first person to play Dr. Lecter, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the role in the series, but if NBC had had their way, we may very well have received a very different Hannibal.

Series creator Bryan Fuller recently spoke with Collider about the long battle he had with NBC over who should take on the role of Hannibal; Fuller wanted Mads Mikkelsen from the very start, but the network wanted someone more American and more mainstream to play the character.

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. I think the network wanted somebody that was much more poppy, much more mainstream, much more American I think in some ways. That was just them thinking about, ‘Okay how do we get the biggest audience for our television show? We have to cast John Cusack as Hannibal Lecter and everybody will tune in because won’t that be surprising?’ I was like, ‘Well go ahead, make an offer.’

Despite NBC's resistance to cast Mads Mikkelsen, Fuller kept bringing him up after the network tried and failed to get actors such as John Cusack and Hugh Grant to take on the role. "It was an interesting dance because I’d say, ‘Mads Mikkelsen!’ and they’d say, ‘No, how about Hugh Grant?’" Fuller said, "and 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?’ and I’d say, ‘Great, make an offer, he’s gonna say no’ and they’d make an offer and he’d say no, I’d say, ‘What about Mads Mikkelsen?’ That carousel went around for three or four months after we had cast Hugh [Dancy], it was going on for a while. Finally I just said, ‘Mads is the guy, that’s the guy I see in the role and I have to write it and I have to champion it and I have to understand it,’ and Jennifer Salke at NBC bless her heart was like, ‘Okay, that’s your guy. I believe you and trust you and I’m excited about your vision for the show.'" At the end of the day, Fuller said that Mikkelsen's casting wound up being the best thing for the series (apart from how brilliantly he played the role) as the marketing department backed off and they were allowed to do things that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise if NBC had to push Hannibal as a mainstream vehicle for a bigger star.