Hannibal EP Bryan Fuller Previews “Primavera” and Talks About His Creative Process 

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

While I loved last week’s “Antipasto,” I was definitely wondering when we’d see Will Graham again. Well, the wait is over.

“Primavera” synopsis, from NBC:

With his wounds now healed, Will Graham heads to Europe eight months after the horrific event that almost took his life, in search of closure with Hannibal Lecter. Following a hunch, Will arrives in Palermo, Italy to find a disturbing gift. Will’s arrival draws suspicion from Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi, who twenty years earlier pursued a Florentine killer known as “Il Mostro” and, after reading Will’s file, believes that Hannibal Lecter and “Il Mostro” are one and the same. Pazzi tries to enlist Will’s help in catching Hannibal, but Will warns that he is unsure of where his own allegiance lies.

TV Goodness talked to EP/Creator Bryan Fuller last month during a press call. He had the following to say about this episode:

“That second episode for me, which is probably the arty-ist, arty-ist thing that we’ve done on the show — and I love pretension. I love cinematic pretension. I think it’s a lot of fun.

But it was really about a poem to grief and what it is for Will Graham to have survived the first two seasons and really getting his head to the point that you don’t know or if you’re awake or if you’re still dreaming.”

Talking about the creative process for such a complex, intricate series, Bryan explains:

“The writing process is always complicated on this show because it’s something that is very hard to guide. Every time I sat down to do a pass at a script, I’m teaching myself how to understand this show. I think that’s a good thing in a way because it always feels fresh and challenging and utterly daunting to make significant something that has been thoroughly explored in the past.

I tell the writers that every scene has three major components. 1/3 Thomas Harris. We have to honor the literature. I scour the novels. If I’m stuck in a scene, I scour the novels for a turn of phrase or quote that we haven’t used, Thomas Harris’s DNA and inject it into this scene so it feels true to his vision of the world even though we’re taking such radical departures in certain ways that we have 1/3 Thomas Harris.

1/3 psychology, like some psychological philosophy that we are exploring with the relationship between the characters. I do a tremendous amount of research in psychological journals to see what’s current, what are people exploring in terms of belief, perception, reality, senses of self, all of those issues. It’s exciting for me as somebody who set out to be a psychiatrist before I understood just how much schooling it involves. It scared me away to Hollywood.

So 1/3 Thomas Harris, 1/3 contemporary genuine psychology and 1/3 of our own magic sauce for what we’re exploring in this very complicated world of relationships with a serial killer. That was one of the things that excited me about doing this series the most, is that we had seen Hannibal in the previous adaptation as very much a lone wolf.”

“This was an opportunity to see him with friendships and to see him interacting with his fellow man or actually not his fellow man because he sees himself as more than a man. But telling a story of the Hannibal Lecter who can actually care about another human being. Even though he’s doing atrocious things to those other human beings, part of him is doing it because he feels that it will access a truer, more honest sense of that person’s self in his dastardly deeds.”

Edited for space and content.

Hannibal airs Thursdays at 10/9c on NBC.