Image Credit: Brooke Palmer/NBC
Freddie Lounds may be a tabloid journalist more interested in a story than morals, but make no mistake: She is also a sociopath, playing on the same field as Hannibal’s widening bench of crazies. “I think it’s a really interesting character to see on TV: a female sociopath. We don’t often see that,” says Lara Jean Chorostecki, who plays the fiery-haired reporter.
Thus far on the series, we’ve seen Freddie actively interfere with the FBI’s hunt for killers. We’ve also seen her confront other characters with hard truths. That ambiguous balance — who and what concerns her, as with Kacey Rohl’s Abigail, who is suspected of being complicit in her father’s serial killing — continues throughout the rest of the first season, as more of the character’s “complex layers” are revealed: “Freddie isn’t just a foil, as would be so easy to dismiss her,” Chorostecki says.
Fans of Thomas Harris’ novels, upon which Hannibal is based, will remember that Freddie is actually Freddy — she is a he. But the pronoun flip is more than skin-deep. As Chorostecki tells it, creator Bryan Fuller came to her after she was cast with a specific visual inspiration. “[He] said to me, ‘Do you know of Rebekah Brooks?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do, I’ve heard of her, of course.’ And he said, ‘Well here’s a picture. This is what we’re modeling you on.’”
