'If I Could Just Get Some Giraffe Meat': Hannibal's Food Stylist Speaks

Hannibal was recently cancelled by NBC, putting an ailing show out of its misery, as well as those of us who knew it started flailing after its first season yet were forced to read endless television critics blathering on about its supposed brilliance. (Seriously, guys; all the dark lighting and creepy sound effects couldn’t make up for its labyrinthine nonsensical plot devices at this point.)

Anyway! One person who has done a consistently great job on this series, aside from Mads Mikkelsen, is food stylist Janice Poon, who was tasked with making Hannibal’s various revolting cuts of human meat look realistically human, via cuts of non-human meat. In an intriguingly disgusting interview with Hopes and Fears, Poon details every gross tactic she used to make Hannibal the Cannibal’s various limbs and organs convincing:

I was making a fake arm with a hand, and obviously I couldn’t fake a hand, so we used a prosthetic arm with a hand and then switched it out for an arm that Hannibal could carve into this… thing, which you’ll see.

The departments are all astonishing. I was getting a coffee, and one of the actresses pulled up her robe sleeve, and it looked like the skin on her arm had been taken off entirely. The makeup people had painted her arm to look like prosciutto. It looked just like raw meat, and the funny thing is that my first thought was, “Exactly! I can use slices of prosciutto!”

Poon also discusses her desire to “just get some giraffe meat” because of the length of the limb: “I did make a few calls, ‘There must be a zoo that’s lost a giraffe recently. They can FedEx it to me.’” She also talks about how French people would probably taste better than most people, should one ever decide to actually eat people. Gruesome! Macabre! Obviously very talented! Read the full interview with Poon here, and read more of her tricks at her blog here.