Exclusive: Hannibal season 3: Richard Armitage on becoming Francis Dolarhyde 

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Following on from his gripping descent into madness in

Richard Armitage is now about to tackle an even darker shade of psychological breakdown in NBC\'s

When we caught up with Armitage today to discuss saying goodbye to Middle-earth, we also grabbed the opportunity to ask him about playing the iconic role of serial killer Francis Dolarhyde.

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"I wasn\'t familiar with the show, and even before I\'d read the script I was already saying yes because it was Bryan Fuller," Armitage told Digital Spy. "I just wanted to work with him.

"I suddenly realised that I was going back on something that I\'d said a long time ago, which was that one of the genres I probably won\'t do is horror. But I just didn\'t see [the role of Dolarhyde] as horror, and I then went and watched

Ralph Fiennes as Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon (2002)

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"To me it sort of sits in a very interesting place, it\'s the horror genre but there\'s something beautifully decadent and gothic about the way that it\'s shot, and the performances are extraordinary. Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne just give it this elevation, so I knew that the bar was high when I went in there."

Fuller told us last week that Armitage is as prominent a presence in the second half of season three as Mikkelsen and Dancy, allowing Dolarhyde to be explored in more depth than either of his big screen portrayals.

"Most movies are maximum two hours long," mused Armitage, "and we get six hours to really explore the fine detail of what it means to be a psychopath, and understand the roots of that, the birth of a child that turns into a monster. It\'s going to be very interesting."

begins on NBC on June 4, with a UK air date on Sky Living yet to be announced.

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