Gillian Anderson's Role Is Reason Enough To Watch NBC's 39-Episode Psychological Thriller

Published Aug 30, 2026, 11:05 PM EDT

Hannibal ran for three seasons and starred Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, as well as Hugh Dancy as Will Graham. The show was based on characters and themes from three books by author Thomas Harris: Red Dragon, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising. The show wasn't in the continuity of the films that starred Anthony Hopkins as the famous fictional cannibal, and certain departures from the books actually made the story all the more compelling on screen.

The series earned a dedicated following after it premiered in 2013, but it would ultimately only run for three seasons before coming to an end in 2015. Not all hope is lost about Hannibal season 4, however, so it's entirely possible that Anderson will be among cast members returning to their roles at some point.

Mikkelsen has already shared his one condition for Hannibal's fourth season, and creator Bryan Fuller has openly wanted to revisit that world in the decade since the cancellation. Reprising his Hannibal role would certainly be a big change for Hugh Dancy, after several seasons of Law & Order. Whether or not the characters ever return to the small screen, the availability of the thriller on both Netflix and Prime Video means that all three seasons are just a subscription away for anybody who wants to check out one of Gillian Anderson's best roles.

Gillian Anderson's Bedelia Du Maurier Is One Of Hannibal's Best Characters

While the heart of Hannibal was the complicated relationship between Dr. Lecter and Will Graham, the story was immediately elevated when Gillian Anderson joined the cast halfway through the first season as Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier. Bedelia was the title character's psychiatrist, and it turned out that one has to be at least a little bit twisted if they're going to attempt to treat Hannibal Lecter. The show took its time in showing the complexities of their relationship, and the toll that it took on Bedelia as she became more and more swept up in his crimes.

Bedelia would go on to become one of the most important characters of the series, and arguably the most important person to Hannibal other than Will. The third season went on to reveal that Bedelia and Will had an interesting dynamic of their own, even without the level of intensity that they each separately shared with Hannibal. Above all others, she got the spotlight in the post-credits sequence. Speaking with Vanity Fair nearly a decade after the finale, Anderson reflected on her journey as Bedelia:

I was just gonna come in and do three episodes in the first season, ended up doing a few episodes of the second season, and then did the third season. And it was just fun to play this very enigmatic, odd, sexy, possibly complicit psychiatrist. We didn't know the direction that the writers were going to take our relationship. Every time a script came, it was new information. I think the writers were just having a ball. Bryan Fuller, the executive producer and creator, said to me at one point that they would come up with the craziest paragraphs for me to say, out of fun, to see whether I could make sense of the gobbledegook.

Anderson had plenty of experience in delivering long paragraphs of "gobbledegook" after nine seasons of medical jargon as Agent Scully on The X-Files, but Bedelia was definitely a different character for the actress to play on network TV. She would ultimately go on to be credited with appearing in 22 of the 39 episodes, which was an impressive run for a character whose future wasn't guaranteed by a book counterpart in Red Dragon, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising, or any of Thomas Harris' other works.

Bedelia Du Maurier Was An Original Character Created For The Hannibal Show

TV adaptations that wildly depart from the source material don't always work, but Bedelia is an exception to that rule. While she was an original character created for the show rather than pulled from the pages of one of Thomas Harris' books, she fit right into the ensemble. Gillian Anderson and Mads Mikkelsen were electric as co-stars, whether Bedelia and Hannibal were meeting on friendly or antagonistic terms. Hannibal needed a psychiatrist who was at least a little bit twisted to hold their own opposite Hannibal Lecter, and Bedelia delivered.

Harris hasn't spoken about Bedelia becoming a prominent part of Hannibal despite not originating from his books, but the author is notoriously reclusive. In fact, in a rare interview with The New York Times in 2019, Harris revealed that he hadn't yet watched the NBC show at all, but intended to binge-watch it when he had the time to do it. Bryan Fuller only had good things to say about Anderson, although he originally envisioned an older actress to play Bedelia.

After Anderson was cast, the creator described Bedelia's relationship with Hannibal as a younger woman, telling Den of Geek that "You have this icy, sexy woman across from this icy sexy man and there’s a vibration that happens between them that is really rich and exciting to watch." For now, there's no guarantee that Hannibal will ever return for a fourth season, or that Bedelia would be in any condition to have a leg up in a new story. Whatever the future holds, Anderson's three seasons as the character help to cement the show's legacy as must-see TV.