Bryan Fuller, Hannibal’s executive producer, knew instantly when he’d found his cerebral, snappily dressed serial killer. “Mads is very unassuming, but he has a true rock-star presence,” Fuller says. “There’s something uniquely alien and attractive about him. People have said to me, ‘Mads is so unusual on-screen.’ I tell them, ‘You haven’t seen the half of it.’ ” Mikkelsen approaches the role not as a villain but as an ordinary man, albeit one with his own peculiar mind-set: “I simply look at him as a person who sees life differently.