CraveOnline: In the movie, you seem to be carrying the weight of it all physically. Can you explain what I’m sensing from your performance?
Mads Mikkelsen: I think you’re right. I don’t really know whether I was aware of that. I guess I am aware in an unaware way that physically he’s more tired. I always work with the tempo of the energy of the character, whether he’s fast or slow, or heavy or light. Obviously this guy is getting more and more heavy throughout the film and he’s losing some of his life energy. So it’s there. I can see it but I’m not sure I did it consciously, but it was something that would be strange not to do I think.
I’ve been watching you in very diverse types of roles for many years so in general I was curious: How do you prep for a role? And you can use The Hunt as an example.
The Hunt is a good example actually because for me the most important part is to sit down with the director, and hopefully the writer if he’s around, but most importantly the director and throw all the questions up in the air and try to answer. You might not agree, you might not find all the solutions but we have to touch all the questions somehow so we can start on the same page once we start shooting. Once that work is done – it could be days, it could be a couple weeks – my work kind of starts, my imagining who he is and what he looks like and how his attitude is through different scenes. Maybe he’s not like he is in that scene. Maybe we should rewrite that scene a little to make the character a little more solid, a little more one-way.
When you make a well-rounded person, it’s so difficult because then you can do anything at any time. He can be very serious but he can also be a happy guy. He can also crack a joke, because everybody can do that, but we have to make some choices and throw certain things away in order to make it a little more like a character. So we play around and then we agree that yeah, he’s a little different from the other guys but he’s not a goof, so he can still crack a joke. We’re trying to find that balance. That work is very much in my head and I will come with suggestions. Then the next step is to start shooting and hopefully we land on some foot that we will like to continue on.
When it’s a more iconic role like Le Chiffre or Hannibal Lecter, how do you prepare for those?
Then again, that’s where you throw away a lot of things. You throw away a lot of your own energy because when you say Hannibal or Le Chiffre, they’re both very different characters. They’re both, as you say, iconic, but they’re also extremely vain people, meaning they are extremely aware of who they are and what they do. That vanity is more simple and it’s almost in some ways easier to go and give that black and white contribution. Having said that, they also possess some dilemma, some other sides of the coin. They’re both people with empathy, so we need to fight for that as well. But it’s a different approach. If you have characters who have a certain amount of vanity, it simplifies at least some of the work.
“Hannibal” has been great. Are you excited to be the first Hannibal to ever confront Will Graham in the jail cell?
I’m very excited to be part of this, yeah, and I think it was interesting to work with Hugh Dancy. I knew him from before and it was great. I think the relationship between those two guys, which I believe Bryan Fuller calls a bromance, is solid. Hannibal really loves Will Graham. He sees opportunities with this little young man. He sees potential in him. That doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t kill him one day. It doesn’t mean that he won’t put him into prison, but it means that he’s fascinated and he really has emotions for this guy. Exploring that for 13 episodes has really been great.
But the one thing none of us ever expected was that they’d put Will in the cell before Hannibal gets there.
Exactly, and we’re all very curious where it’s going to take off from now, but we haven’t seen anything. I’m sure that Bryan will come up with something interesting.
When you accept the role of Hannibal, do you want to get in the cell eventually?
Not necessarily. I was pleased that we were not in the cell yet. All the iconic stuff that we’ve seen done to perfection by Anthony Hopkins has taken place in the cell. If I was not to just go into his shoes and fail totally, it was kind of nice to know that we are outside the prison. This is before. This where Hannibal needs to make friends, needs to be to a certain degree humanized. So that will give us some other opportunities to make them a good team that we’ve seen before. I was quite pleased I’m not in the cell yet but I don’t think I can carry that on for many seasons. I think I’m about to land there.
In the 13 episodes we’ve seen so far, have we confirmed that he’s been eating human beings?
Oh yeah, plenty of times.
He’s serving food all the time.
Well, I’m serving food, I’m serving human beings to all my friends. I enjoy that. I think that’s so fun and obviously I take pride in eating it myself. In the very first episode, he’s killing one of the girls. We don’t see it but we understand it and we see she’s gone and she’s missing her lungs, we cut to me cutting out her lungs and eating them. So yes, he has not been starving, let’s put it that way.
So that’s not ambiguous, he’s definitely been serving people.
No, not [ambiguous] at all.
Have you been a fan of television as an actor, and any performances in particular you’ve admired?
I haven’t watched that much TV to be honest. To be honest, I don’t watch that many films anymore. Partly because I don’t have time, secondly because I watch a lot of sports and I love watching sports. I do watch films when they’re recommended to me, but I also find myself in a job where people are constantly quoting and doing things because they’ve seen something else and it’s a dangerous path to go down. If you see too much, you have too many references, like we can’t do that because they did that, or we shouldn’t do that because then we look like her from that episode, from this film. I don’t care. We should do what we feel is right. If I have fewer references, I might not fall in that trap.
Has Ryan Gosling been taking your roles in the Nicolas Winding Refn movies?
I would say he has, right? [Laughs] That evil man. No, he has not. This is a new era of Nicolas Winding Refn. He started out in America and he’s found a partner in Ryan and they’ve been doing a great job together. It’s very important for Nicolas to have someone close to him that understands him and I can tell that Ryan understands Nicolas and that’s a normal process. I’m sure we will work together one day, me and Nicolas, again and hopefully Ryan as well. Ryan has just been right for those parts.
Nicolas produced and lent his blessing to the remake of Pusher. Did you see the new film?
I haven’t seen the film. I read a couple of reviews of it. It sounded okay to me, what I read. I haven’t seen it. I would love to see it one day.
When you did those films, it was eight years between Pusher where you had a supporting role, and Pusher II which made you the lead. Was that a big jump for you, having basically had a whole career in between those movies?
Yeah, it was a big jump in many ways. You rarely go back as an actor to a character. Maybe in TV but not on films. You rarely do that and nothing had happened to my character. My character was just the airhead he was before, the idiot. Obviously a lot of things had happened to me so it was quite difficult coming back and liking him again. Then I shaved and got my tattoos back and I was like, “Yeah, there he is. Guy who believes he’s king of the world and he’s no one.” Really, I loved him from the first second I shaved my head again. But that was a big jump and it was a very interesting jump.
Are you going to be a voice in Kung Fu Panda 3?
They have asked me and right now I think they’re just doing all the work they have to do before we come on board. That can take years, I guess, but they have asked me and it will be interesting to see what it is.
Is it an appealing prospect to you doing a kids movie?
Not necessarily, depending on what it is. This animated world has been a part of my world and part of my kids’ world for all our lives, so I feel quite proud to be invited into that universe.
Was doing Valhalla Rising with no dialogue at all a valuable experience for you?
That was a challenge. That was a dance. He wasn’t even a human being so that was a challenge in every way. It was actually tougher than I thought. Voice is such a powerful tool to be able to express yourself with words. I don’t mind throwing words away but in this case it was all the words. I found it really interesting, a very interesting film.
Since Valhalla, have you been more inclined to strip some dialogue from your scripts?
I’ve always done that. I’ve always been a big fan of stripping dialogue. If this scene is saying what it does without words, I think we should do that. We should not tend to lean towards what TV is doing, that is inform people. If people need to be informed by lines then there’s no reason why the actor is saying the line except for information for the audience, I think there’s something wrong. This is movies, this is motion pictures, we have to be able to tell this in a different way. Dialogue is there, interaction between characters, and I do cherish and love dialogue, but if it’s there just to inform the audience, I think we’re on the wrong track. We should inform them in a different way.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
