NBC’s ‘Hannibal’ season 3 Comic-Con interview: Will Chilton get a scar? Raul Esparza explains
If you are like us, then you may still be reeling from one of the biggest surprises from the “Hannibal” panel at San Diego Comic-Con yesterday: Chilton’s alive! This is a guy who was literally shot in the face, and it’s thanks to that we were 99.9% confident that he was dead. If you watched our podcast this past season, you know that our co-host Jason Prager strongly felt he was still alive, and we’re going to be getting all sorts of grief over that in the near future.
When you do see Chilton again, the one thing it is safe to say is that he’s not going to look exactly the same as he once did. While you may not get a Joker-esque “do you want to know how I got these scars?” sort of story, you will for sure see some sort of mark left over, even with a reported time jump of a year in between the end of one season and the beginning of the next.
We spoke with Comic-Con surprise guest Raul Esparza yesterday about his character’s potential scar, and he delighted us with a nice story as a response:
“I told Bryan [Fuller] that I wanted to go all David Cronenberg on this one. There was actually an exhibit of Cronenberg’s stuff in Toronto while we were filming, and I was like ‘what if we do a whole Ed Harris – A History of Violence tribute here?’. I don’t know if we will go that far, but I kind of would like to.
“And also, playing Barba on [‘Law & Order: SVU’] … That was why I had a beard the first season as Chilton, because it timed out right. I was so concerned that we needed to physically separate these guys, but I don’t need to worry. They’re great [and naturally separated]. However, I did say to Bryan ‘I want to have a scar,’ and he said ‘why don’t we earn it?’ So now… (laughs).”
It’s safe to say that getting shot in the face is Chilton “earning it,” and there is one other important bit of scoop he dropped during our roundtable discussion: Whatever happens to stop Hannibal Lecter, Chilton will be “instrumental” in it. The man has revenge on the mind, and he could be even darker than you remember him from the first two seasons.
This story is just one of many season 3 teasers that we’ve posted from Comic-Con in the past 24 hours. Click here for Fuller’s explanation on why Chilton is back, or here to find out if Caroline Dhavernas is returning as Alana Bloom.
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Photo: NBC