On a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jodie Foster reprised her Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs role of Clarice Starling. While the sketch she participates in is - like most things on Colbert's show - very politically charged, it's still quite fascinating to see Foster play Clarice again after so many years, regardless of one's political affiliation. Colbert's Hannibal Lecter is also surprisingly not too bad, at least for comedic purposes. He's clearly just impersonating Anthony Hopkins' portrayal, but it works well enough in context.
Foster first gained fame as a child actor in 70s hits like Freaky Friday and Taxi Driver, the latter of which earned her an Oscar nomination. She won her first Oscar for 1988 courtroom drama The Accused, and picked up her second for Silence of the Lambs. As much as Hopkins commanded the screen as Lecter, Foster's Clarice was the true central star of the film, and she did an excellent job of bringing Thomas Harris' book character to life.
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In more recent years, Foster has been spending more time behind the camera than in front of it, having transitioned over to the world of directing. She directed her first film - Little Man Tate - back in 1991, but she didn't make directing her main focus until the current decade. Foster helmed the star-studded drama Money Monster in 2016, as well as episodes of Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards. Her latest effort is the "Arkangel" episode of Black Mirror season 4, which premieres on Netflix on December 29. Despite having all that going on, Foster still made time to reprise Clarice for The Late Show on Friday night, and the full sketch can be seen above.
The actual premise of the sketch plays off of the ongoing investigation into the Donald Trump administration's ties with Russia, presenting FBI agent Clarice Starling as working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and having her seek answers related to Trump from Colbert's Lecter. Politics aside though, what's really striking here is just how easily Foster drops right back into Clarice's southern accent and physical mannerisms after having not played the character in over 25 years. It's sure to be a bit eerie for Silence of the Lambs fans.
As mentioned above, Colbert's take on Lecter isn't that bad either, although obviously nobody would expect an Oscar-worthy performance from the Late Show host. In a fun twist, the sketch ends with Clarice asking to come inside Lecter's cell, because she now finds the outside world scarier than the prospect of being eaten by the cannibalistic killer. While likely not intended as anything more than a joke, it's actually a nice nod to the Harris novels, which actually saw Clarice and Hannibal run away together and begin a romantic relationship. Yeah, the books got weird.
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Source: The Late Show