It’s still amazing that Hannibal lasted one season, let alone three. NBC’s small-screen adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novels about a stylish cannibal was beautiful but violent — so, so violent. But according to creator Bryan Fuller, there’s only one murder scene that the network said no to. In the season one episode “Rôti,” Dr. Abel Gideon (played by Eddie Izzard) does, well, this.
It’s vicious, but it could have been way more vicious.
Originally the plan was for Gideon to lure tabloid blogger Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) to a psychiatrist’s office, where she would flip a light switch, unwittingly activating a ceiling fan that was attached to an incision in the living doctor’s abdomen. (Via)
“[It] essentially disembowels him by spinning the fan, all in one fell swoop,” Fuller said. “That was the only one where NBC was like, ‘I just don’t know how you’re going to do it.’ We would have pushed back if we also hadn’t been told that financially we didn’t know how we could afford to produce such a gag, because you have intestines swinging around a ceiling fan.”
In related news: Hannibal, please come back for season four. Cannibals are very in.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
