The first season of Dexter was pretty much based on the book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. There weren't spoilers so much as there were dramatizations of the novel. Season two went off with an original story, though still resolving some issues from season one. Now entering its third season, everything is fair game on Dexter.
SuicideGirls joined the show's star, Michael C. Hall, and executive producer, Clyde Phillips, before the Television Critics Association this month. Experts at talking to the press without revealing any spoilers, Phillips and Hall teased the upcoming episodes with specific references to dangling threads, but only enough to make you that much more eager to watch.
Question: What can you say about the new season?
Clyde Phillips: What can I say about the new season of Dexter? There are a couple of huge surprises.
Q: Well, you've explored so much of his psychology, where do you go?
CP: Well, we have explored a lot of psychology but what we haven't done is made him whole.
Q: Is that the overall goal, to eventually complete him?
CP: Perhaps in the course of a number of years but once he's completed as a person, the show's over. Once the true morality of what he does comes to the fore and the moral ambiguity goes away, we're done. This year, Dexter inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life -- not only for this year -- but change his life forever. I really can't do spoilers
Q: No, we don't want spoilers. But to continue being vague, this pebble that's being set in motion, is this something Dexter is aware of when he does it?
Michael C. Hall: No. No, he's basically thrust into an immediate, in the moment situation where he has no choice but to do something that, in turn, sets a great deal of what the third season focuses on in motion. But it's not something that he appreciates at the time.
Q: Is he still being hunted, even with Doakes out of the picture?
CP: Well, we're done with that. That doesn't mean that he's not in great jeopardy, but in season one we had the book. We had the Ice Truck Killer and we had the brother and we had all of that stuff. Season two we had the bodies coming up, we had the FBI coming in, we had Sergeant Doakes saying, "I'm watching you, motherfucker" and all of that. Season three we had to basically start it all over. We really had to cut it from whole cloth. So he is always going to be in jeopardy because he basically is a killer among us. He's a killer among this family of his relationship with his girlfriend, his relationship with her children, his relationship with his sister, his relationship with the police department. So he's always looking over his shoulder. That's the best I can tell you without giving anything away.
Q: Are you going to miss Erik King as an actor?
MCH: Absolutely. I miss Erik every time I step into the bullpen. It's weird that he's not there and he actually sent me a really sweet text yesterday and we communicated yesterday. Yeah, I was sad to see him go as an actor.
Q: Could Laguerta follow up and keep pursuing that?
MCH: Yeah, I mean I think that is lying dormant at the moment, but it's there and is a source of tension. Whether it's explicit right now that that will probably resurface at some point.
Q: What is Jimmy Smits' part going to be?
CP: It's interesting. What a get for us. We are so pleased. He's been spectacular. He plays an assistant district attorney who is a rising star in the city of Miami, whose brother dies in the first episode. He and Dexter form an alliance. Jimmy Smits is going to go, I believe, places he's never explored before as an actor or as a character. It is really the first adult friend that Dexter has had and it's new to him and what Dexter strives for or perhaps longs for. We get into the whole thing of how dented is he really is and whether that's camouflaged or whether it's genuine is something that we continue to explore. As that friendship progresses, Dexter becomes more and more open with the Jimmy Smits' character and is able to talk, not through voiceover, but in reality, in our reality, for the first time and open up a little bit about who he is and that's what we're going to explore this year.
Q: Michael, what's your reaction when you hear about that casting?
MCH: That I was going to look really short. No, that we can attract people of that caliber to sign on to an open-ended, sort of not-entirely-defined commitment is a testament to the fact that our show is appealing to actors. It's a real shot in the arm when that happens.
Q: Is there an unhappy love story for Debra?
CP: It's funny you ask that. That's such a great question because we have noticed the pattern that we've created and now we have that character, his sister, Debra commenting on the fact that, "I got engaged to the Ice Truck Killer and then I fell in love with an older man. What is it about me?" So we do explore a love story with her but I won't tell you whether it's happy or unhappy. She's very self aware.
Q: Do you think Dexter will ever open up to her?
MCH: I don't know. I mean once that happens, however it happens, it's happened. I think maintaining that possibility or that tension was really of value. That tension ebbs and flows but ultimately intensifies as more time passes, as she becomes more and more capable as a detective and therefore more of a potential threat.
Q: How do all these new developments affect Rita?
CP: Rita is very involved in what goes on. She's in fact pivotal to what goes on in the year. Again, because we're that kind of show, it's like asking the guys on Lost what's going to happen. I just can't tell you the specifics. All I can tell you is that she's part of what changes Dexter's life.
Q: Where is Dexter and Rita's relationship at the start of the season?
MCH: At the top of the season it's in a very, very good place, about as good a place as it's ever been. You know the plot, things develop in ways that immediately complicate that situation, but yeah, they're in a really good place.
Q: It's not a show where people stay happy, is it?
MCH: No. Nobody wants to watch that.
Q: How do you balance the horror and the humor?
CP: That's a good question. It's more instinct. In fact, there's not that much horror. When we aired on CBS, when we went from Showtime to CBS because of the strike, they made the following changes in the show in the following order: 1) Minutes. We had to cut because we're a cable show and they're a commercial show so we had to cut out seven or eight minutes. 2) Language for obvious reason. "I'm watching you, motherlover." 3) Nudity and then gore. Gore is really the bottom of it so it's psychological. I often have said that if you think of Reservoir Dogs, great movie, and if anybody thinks of one scene in Reservoir Dogs, it's cutting off the cop's ear. They never show it. If we added up all the minutes in 24 [episodes], now we've just finished the 25th episode, if we added all the minutes of actually seeing blood caused by Dexter rather than a police crime or something, it's a minute and a half. It's seconds per show.
Q: Do you shoot alternate scenes?
CP: No we don't shoot alternate scenes but we do go in and dub. We don't have time to shoot alternate scenes so we go in and dub but we write alternate dialogue for them and then they go in and try to fill it in but it turns out a little bit like a Japanese movie. Again, "I'm watching you, motherlover." Friggin' that.
Q: Does Showtime ever give you notes?
CP: Often we will get notes from them saying, "This scene was a little gory." We shoot everything and then pull back from it to make it. Let me just say one thing. This is a character show. It's not a horror show. I just want to make sure. But yes, I do find that ironic that they cut back or they want to cut back and we're happy with that, but then I go to Hollywood and Highland and they've got a fountain of blood, or there are fountains of blood all over the country. Then when they advertise it on the air, they're showing mostly the gory stuff. They know what they're doing. The show's a hit. We're doing all we can to keep it that way.
Q: How many more seasons do you imagine Dexter going?
CP: Well, I'm not sure. I was talking with Bob Greenblatt who's the president of the network the other day, with my partners John Goldwyn and Sarah Colleton. We're sort of plotting out the rest of this year. He had mentioned just in conversation, six seasons. That was just a conversational thing but you always like hearing that on your end. You don't want to hear, "This is your last season." You want to get as much as you can that will support the character. As much as you can that your star wants to continue to do and wants to stay fully involved. It's a big challenge every day and every week to do the show. It's a difficult show.
MCH: I don't know. I am very much focused on telling the story we're telling this season as I was last season and the one before. It's a shark. It has to continue to move forward. You can just sort of luxuriate in the day to day lives of Dexter or any of the other characters. So there will be an end when it comes. I can't really tell you.
Q: There are more books. Would you ever go back to them?
CP: We had to sort of launch it and own it. We harvested the best of that book and then our characters just sort of went off on their own and we just followed them.
Q: What can we look forward to in the season two DVD?
CP: Actually, I don't know what the plans are. I know it's coming out soon. We did commentary but there's not a lot that I know of. I wasn't involved with the DVD the way some shows are. I think I did the commentary but I don't really see the DVD. I don't know what the other stuff, I don't think there's a lot of un-shown scenes.
Q: How much recognition do each of you get for Dexter?
CP: I went to the movies with my daughter the other day. I had a Dexter T-shirt on under a shirt. People came up to me. I suddenly had four or five people who wanted to talk about the show and they all talk about they're watching it in marathons. I get everybody's card and I send them all DVDs. You guys want DVDs? I'll send you DVDs.
[Note: True to his word, Clyde sent me both seasons on DVD.]
MCH: I think right now anybody who makes a point to say something it's probably 80 to 90 percent of the time for Dexter just because that's what sort of on people's radar right now. But people do certainly approach me and talk about Six Feet Under still, which is nice.
Season three of Dexter premieres September 28 on Showtime. For more information go to www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do.
SuicideGirls joined the show's star, Michael C. Hall, and executive producer, Clyde Phillips, before the Television Critics Association this month. Experts at talking to the press without revealing any spoilers, Phillips and Hall teased the upcoming episodes with specific references to dangling threads, but only enough to make you that much more eager to watch.
Question: What can you say about the new season?
Clyde Phillips: What can I say about the new season of Dexter? There are a couple of huge surprises.
Q: Well, you've explored so much of his psychology, where do you go?
CP: Well, we have explored a lot of psychology but what we haven't done is made him whole.
Q: Is that the overall goal, to eventually complete him?
CP: Perhaps in the course of a number of years but once he's completed as a person, the show's over. Once the true morality of what he does comes to the fore and the moral ambiguity goes away, we're done. This year, Dexter inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life -- not only for this year -- but change his life forever. I really can't do spoilers
Q: No, we don't want spoilers. But to continue being vague, this pebble that's being set in motion, is this something Dexter is aware of when he does it?
Michael C. Hall: No. No, he's basically thrust into an immediate, in the moment situation where he has no choice but to do something that, in turn, sets a great deal of what the third season focuses on in motion. But it's not something that he appreciates at the time.
Q: Is he still being hunted, even with Doakes out of the picture?
CP: Well, we're done with that. That doesn't mean that he's not in great jeopardy, but in season one we had the book. We had the Ice Truck Killer and we had the brother and we had all of that stuff. Season two we had the bodies coming up, we had the FBI coming in, we had Sergeant Doakes saying, "I'm watching you, motherfucker" and all of that. Season three we had to basically start it all over. We really had to cut it from whole cloth. So he is always going to be in jeopardy because he basically is a killer among us. He's a killer among this family of his relationship with his girlfriend, his relationship with her children, his relationship with his sister, his relationship with the police department. So he's always looking over his shoulder. That's the best I can tell you without giving anything away.
Q: Are you going to miss Erik King as an actor?
MCH: Absolutely. I miss Erik every time I step into the bullpen. It's weird that he's not there and he actually sent me a really sweet text yesterday and we communicated yesterday. Yeah, I was sad to see him go as an actor.
Q: Could Laguerta follow up and keep pursuing that?
MCH: Yeah, I mean I think that is lying dormant at the moment, but it's there and is a source of tension. Whether it's explicit right now that that will probably resurface at some point.
Q: What is Jimmy Smits' part going to be?
CP: It's interesting. What a get for us. We are so pleased. He's been spectacular. He plays an assistant district attorney who is a rising star in the city of Miami, whose brother dies in the first episode. He and Dexter form an alliance. Jimmy Smits is going to go, I believe, places he's never explored before as an actor or as a character. It is really the first adult friend that Dexter has had and it's new to him and what Dexter strives for or perhaps longs for. We get into the whole thing of how dented is he really is and whether that's camouflaged or whether it's genuine is something that we continue to explore. As that friendship progresses, Dexter becomes more and more open with the Jimmy Smits' character and is able to talk, not through voiceover, but in reality, in our reality, for the first time and open up a little bit about who he is and that's what we're going to explore this year.
Q: Michael, what's your reaction when you hear about that casting?
MCH: That I was going to look really short. No, that we can attract people of that caliber to sign on to an open-ended, sort of not-entirely-defined commitment is a testament to the fact that our show is appealing to actors. It's a real shot in the arm when that happens.
Q: Is there an unhappy love story for Debra?
CP: It's funny you ask that. That's such a great question because we have noticed the pattern that we've created and now we have that character, his sister, Debra commenting on the fact that, "I got engaged to the Ice Truck Killer and then I fell in love with an older man. What is it about me?" So we do explore a love story with her but I won't tell you whether it's happy or unhappy. She's very self aware.
Q: Do you think Dexter will ever open up to her?
MCH: I don't know. I mean once that happens, however it happens, it's happened. I think maintaining that possibility or that tension was really of value. That tension ebbs and flows but ultimately intensifies as more time passes, as she becomes more and more capable as a detective and therefore more of a potential threat.
Q: How do all these new developments affect Rita?
CP: Rita is very involved in what goes on. She's in fact pivotal to what goes on in the year. Again, because we're that kind of show, it's like asking the guys on Lost what's going to happen. I just can't tell you the specifics. All I can tell you is that she's part of what changes Dexter's life.
Q: Where is Dexter and Rita's relationship at the start of the season?
MCH: At the top of the season it's in a very, very good place, about as good a place as it's ever been. You know the plot, things develop in ways that immediately complicate that situation, but yeah, they're in a really good place.
Q: It's not a show where people stay happy, is it?
MCH: No. Nobody wants to watch that.
Q: How do you balance the horror and the humor?
CP: That's a good question. It's more instinct. In fact, there's not that much horror. When we aired on CBS, when we went from Showtime to CBS because of the strike, they made the following changes in the show in the following order: 1) Minutes. We had to cut because we're a cable show and they're a commercial show so we had to cut out seven or eight minutes. 2) Language for obvious reason. "I'm watching you, motherlover." 3) Nudity and then gore. Gore is really the bottom of it so it's psychological. I often have said that if you think of Reservoir Dogs, great movie, and if anybody thinks of one scene in Reservoir Dogs, it's cutting off the cop's ear. They never show it. If we added up all the minutes in 24 [episodes], now we've just finished the 25th episode, if we added all the minutes of actually seeing blood caused by Dexter rather than a police crime or something, it's a minute and a half. It's seconds per show.
Q: Do you shoot alternate scenes?
CP: No we don't shoot alternate scenes but we do go in and dub. We don't have time to shoot alternate scenes so we go in and dub but we write alternate dialogue for them and then they go in and try to fill it in but it turns out a little bit like a Japanese movie. Again, "I'm watching you, motherlover." Friggin' that.
Q: Does Showtime ever give you notes?
CP: Often we will get notes from them saying, "This scene was a little gory." We shoot everything and then pull back from it to make it. Let me just say one thing. This is a character show. It's not a horror show. I just want to make sure. But yes, I do find that ironic that they cut back or they want to cut back and we're happy with that, but then I go to Hollywood and Highland and they've got a fountain of blood, or there are fountains of blood all over the country. Then when they advertise it on the air, they're showing mostly the gory stuff. They know what they're doing. The show's a hit. We're doing all we can to keep it that way.
Q: How many more seasons do you imagine Dexter going?
CP: Well, I'm not sure. I was talking with Bob Greenblatt who's the president of the network the other day, with my partners John Goldwyn and Sarah Colleton. We're sort of plotting out the rest of this year. He had mentioned just in conversation, six seasons. That was just a conversational thing but you always like hearing that on your end. You don't want to hear, "This is your last season." You want to get as much as you can that will support the character. As much as you can that your star wants to continue to do and wants to stay fully involved. It's a big challenge every day and every week to do the show. It's a difficult show.
MCH: I don't know. I am very much focused on telling the story we're telling this season as I was last season and the one before. It's a shark. It has to continue to move forward. You can just sort of luxuriate in the day to day lives of Dexter or any of the other characters. So there will be an end when it comes. I can't really tell you.
Q: There are more books. Would you ever go back to them?
CP: We had to sort of launch it and own it. We harvested the best of that book and then our characters just sort of went off on their own and we just followed them.
Q: What can we look forward to in the season two DVD?
CP: Actually, I don't know what the plans are. I know it's coming out soon. We did commentary but there's not a lot that I know of. I wasn't involved with the DVD the way some shows are. I think I did the commentary but I don't really see the DVD. I don't know what the other stuff, I don't think there's a lot of un-shown scenes.
Q: How much recognition do each of you get for Dexter?
CP: I went to the movies with my daughter the other day. I had a Dexter T-shirt on under a shirt. People came up to me. I suddenly had four or five people who wanted to talk about the show and they all talk about they're watching it in marathons. I get everybody's card and I send them all DVDs. You guys want DVDs? I'll send you DVDs.
[Note: True to his word, Clyde sent me both seasons on DVD.]
MCH: I think right now anybody who makes a point to say something it's probably 80 to 90 percent of the time for Dexter just because that's what sort of on people's radar right now. But people do certainly approach me and talk about Six Feet Under still, which is nice.
Season three of Dexter premieres September 28 on Showtime. For more information go to www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do.
VIEW 25 of 35 COMMENTS
heathen:
Dexter
Dexter
melx:
Great interview. So excited for the new season.