One of the highlights of season 2, he told us, was seeing how audiences embraced Katharine Isabelle’s Margot Verger character. “I was so happy with that,” he said. “It was one of those things – as we were integrating it into the mythology of our version of the world – that sort of came out of left field and we built them up. But I was always a little self-conscious when dealing with a character like this from the books – could we have integrated them smoother or done something different? I’m glad it landed with folks. Also, she’s never been adapted, so I cared a bit more and also she’s a bit different in the books. There was this sexual abuse that lead to all sorts of things that I thought was a bad message and where I thought ‘That’s not how lesbianism works.'”
“I feel like we got everything in there that we wanted to do,” Fuller added, commenting on whether or not there was a story thread that hitting the cutting room floor this season. “I look at and always, ‘Oh there’s some fat there we could have trimmed off or pulled in a tighter story.’ It’s those types of things, but I’m so meticulous.”
“When you’re in the thick of it, you’re scrambling, you let things get by that sometimes haunt you. When I go back I look at the tailoring like Project Runway and say, ‘Oh, look at the hem,” he laughed.
As for season 3, he’s looking forward to adapting a new group of characters (please see this previous news item). “With season 2 we stole so much from Hannibal with Mason [Verger] and his pigs. Now when we’re telling the second part of that story. We can’t go back and do that again so we’re exploring other options and doing new things. We’ll knock around ideas and say, ‘Yeah, we can see [Thomas] Harris doing that. We’re doing almost fan fiction, we’re mixing and mashing and moving things around so it’s unique to our show and hoping the audience is on the ride for the fanboy version as opposed a literal adaptation.”
