Stephen Colbert took over the Late Show from David Letterman in September 2015, but really started drawing the big crowds when Donald Trump was elected President a bit over a year later. Colbert skewers Trump nightly on the late-night show (in fairness, a lot of the material seems to write itself), so when Jodie Foster, who played Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs, the movie that brought Hannibal Lecter to fame in 1991, appeared as a guest on the Late Show last December, it made sense that she would appear as a Special Agent. But instead of working for Jack Crawford, hunting serial killers, she is now working for Robert Mueller, hunting the Russian connection to the President.

Here is part the scene they are spoofing, from The Silence of the Lambs.

Go and watch it again. It’s a classic, and has been used hundreds of times in satirical pieces of all sorts. Hannibal is one of the most iconic figures of our time. Representing voracious appetite, a disavowal of the old humanist ideals of the sanctity of human life, a love of the good things of life, and a wicked sense of humour, it’s pretty clear why that might be so.

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