Hannibal star Hugh Dancy has replaced RuPaul's Drag Race icon Alaska Thunderf**k in scenes from Shudder's new horror series Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror.
Talking exclusively to Digital Spy about his new docu-series which explores the queer history of horror, series director Bryan Fuller explained why he replaced Alaska with Dancy for some scenes.
In the series Alaska reads Frankenstein author Mary Shelley's letters but Fuller also asked her to read letters from Dracula author Bram Stoker to Walt Whitman.
According to the TV creator, Alaska's comic performance wasn't quite right for the Bram Stoker letters so he asked Dancy to step in to perform the more earnest role.
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"As we were looking at the compare and contrast between the letters from Mary Shelley and the letters from Bram Stoker, the letters from Mary Shelley felt like they had the potential to lean into the comedy a bit, because of her perspective and her attitude," Fuller said.
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"Whereas the letters from Bram Stoker to Walt Whitman were much more earnest. And so it felt like that comedy wasn’t perhaps right. So we reached out to Hugh Dancy to see if he would mind putting some emotion and heart into Bram Stoker's experience to kind of contextualise that.
"Because Bram Stoker's story is also really interesting and complicated and multifaceted in terms of his journey of self-acceptance or ultimately self-rejection."
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Though Alaska's Bram Stoker role was cut, Fuller praised her performance as Mary Shelley.
"To have Alaska reading Mary Shelley's letters with an attitude that kind of reflected a bit of Mary Shelley in terms of her… She was truly one of a kind in that era, and incredibly progressive, and seemed to have a dry wit. So it seemed tonally consistent with Alaska's brand as well."
Queer For Fear airs weekly for five weeks from September 30 on Shudder.
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Harriet is a freelance news writer specialising in TV and movies at Digital Spy.
A horror enthusiast, she joined Digital Spy after working on her own horror website, reviewing films and focusing largely on feminism in the genre.
In her spare time, Harriet paints and produces mixed-media art. She graduated from the University of Kingston with a BA in fine art, where she specialised in painting. She also has an MA in journalism from Birkbeck University.
After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
