“That spiral, that progression over the course of the 13 episodes was so well charted out…I knew where I was going. Dark as it may be, it was incredibly fun and rewarding.”

His wife, Claire Danes, went through a similar journey on “Homeland.” At night, the two would compare notes.

“There’s a real insecurity that comes from playing a character who’s on the edge and sometimes going over the edge,” he explains. “We both ended up the first seasons of our shows being institutionalized. It’s like nobody’s trusting us. I’d go home and say, ‘You’ve gone through this. I’m not completely overdoing it, right?’ And she understood. It can be quite a lonely place as an actor doing that. We’re moving very fast in television. You really have to trust that you’re judging it right.”

In the second season, Dancy’s Will Graham is locked in a mental institution accused of Lecter’s crimes.

“He’s incredibly elastic,” Dancy says. ‘He can go off in any direction, so I don’t exactly get surprised. But, by virtue of being a prequel, we kind of know where we’re headed. There’s only so far we can veer off track.”