Michael Pitt arrives as Mason Verger in ‘Hannibal’ season 2, he’s ‘charming and despicable’
The second season of Hannibal introduced a key character in the Hannibal Lecter mythos. Mason Verger and his man-eating pigs will be played by Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt.
“We wanted him to be the Joker to Hannibal Lecter’s Batman. With Michael Pitt, I found his take on Mason to be charming and despicable, and yet I liked him as a person. And I needed to like Mason in order to write him because I didn’t want to necessarily write the character in the book who raped his sister repeatedly her entire life,” creator Bryan Fuller says in a Monday interview with The Moderate Voice.
“I can’t get excited about sitting down and writing that character if that’s the core of him. So, we changed his pedophilia and serial raping into a general sadism and curiosity of mankind that could more closely parallel Hannibal’s curiosity with mankind. Mason is constantly introducing choices for the people that he manipulates that hold a little more curiosity. He loves to push buttons and see how people will react to various stimuli in their lives.”
Fans will get a strong dose of Pitt’s Verger here, but Fuller is hopeful for more in a season 3.
“The story line with Margot and Mason and Will (Hugh Dancy) and Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen) crescendos in Episode 11, and it leaves way for Mason and Will and Hannibal to deal with each other more directly. These characters are outside of the psychobabble world that we’re usually contained in and give us this — I was going to say breath of fresh air, but it’s not exactly fresh; it’s rotten — different energy for the second half of the season. We will deliver how Gary Oldman ended up looking the way he did in the Ridley Scott movie playing Mason Verger, but I would love, love, love to have more of Michael Pitt and Mason Verger in Season 3.”
Check out the full interview HERE
Hannibal airs Fridays at 10pm EST on NBC
