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HBO's decision last year to blow up its beloved Western series "Deadwood" left fans enraged and also left a number of hugely talented and much in-demand actors scattered to the four winds. Many of them, such as Tim Olyphant and Ian McShane, have quickly adjusted to a career more focused on film, and now joining them is Kim Dickens, known to series fans as whore-turned-madam Joanie Stubbs, a naive girl who grows more mature and cunning over the course of the three year show. Prior to landing her role in "Deadwood", Dickens had already amassed a resume of supporting roles in movies such as Thank You for Smoking and House of Sand and Fog, and now that her commitment to the show is done, expect to see much more of her -- in fact, only a scheduling snafu prevented her from accepting the female lead in Stallone's latest Rambo film.

At this year's Sundance, Dickens could be seen in one of the most talked-about films of the fest, a revenge fable called Red, about an old recluse (played by the great Brian Cox) who goes after the no-good punks who killed his beloved dog. I met Dickens in the lobby of a Main Street hotel at the festival to talk about the film, and we quickly decided to find a place as close to the roaring fireplace as possible, to thaw out while we talked.

Ryan Stewart: Have you had a chance yet to work through your feelings about the abrupt way HBO ended "Deadwood"? I spoke with Ian McShane about it recently, and he certainly wasn't over it. His general feeling was that their decision was fucked. Are you over it?

Kim Dickens: No. It still hurts. I'm with Ian, it still hurts. I just saw Ian on Broadway in The Homecoming and some others from the cast and some writers were all there and we all had dinner with Ian and his wife and we all felt really bonded by it. It was such a unique experience. Such great material, such great production design, costumes and story and period and actors. It was one of those things that was really, really special and it's kind of the reason ... I can speak for a lot of us, it's kind of the reason we all wanted to be actors, to do that kind of material. And it still hurts. The loss of it, it not ending properly, still stings. We've all moved on, I have another job now that I'm completely in love with and I think it's fantastic, but to not have resolved that properly doesn't feel right. I think it was a bad business decision on their part. I think it was ridiculous. It had so much ... I think we were number two behind "The Sopranos" and "The Sopranos" was ending! We had so far to go.

RS: I assume it must have been exorbitantly expensive to keep a Western ranch going for the duration of the series? That seems to be their rationale.

KD: I don't think so. I mean, I'm not a business person but apparently "Rome" was so much more expensive and they signed on right away to do a second season of that. "John from Cincinnati" is expensive ... and the sets were there. The costumes were already there. The actors were in place, you know what I mean? They'd already built the stages there. It was fully working, it's not like we needed a lot more. It's not like the town was gonna expand a lot more, it was all there. What's one more season? Finish it. That's all he [David Milch] wanted.

RS: Especially considering the fan uprising that resulted from their decision.

KD: I know! It just doesn't make any sense to me, and that's the thing that hurts about it.

RS: I've thought before that it would make a good stand-alone feature film. Tim Olyphant is a movie star, Ian is very well known, so why not?

KD: I thought so too, absolutely, and I think everybody would be willing to do it. I mean, like I said, we all move on, we all know what it's like to move on. I think everybody would be game to do it, but moving on is part of our business. You take the hits.

RS: I never realized how layered the show was until I listened to a David Milch commentary on one of your episodes in the second season. He went on and on about these psycho-sexual tensions that existed between your character and Wolcott, the serial killer. Was that your biggest acting challenge to date?

KD: Yeah, probably. I would say it was. You didn't have the material a lot in advance and it was very dense material and the language was very dense. It took more work than just contemporary language. But that makes it more fun, for me to have to stick to every word exactly. It's prose. That's art. You can't fill it in with stupid, "well, ums" and "you know what I means." I don't like to embellish. I like a writer to write it for me and I know that it's there and it's solid and I don't need to embellish it to make it real or anything, so it takes a lot of concentration and it takes a lot of courage I think, on an actor's part, cause you don't know what you're gonna do. You don't know what he's gonna have you do, or what you're gonna have to call upon, so you have to be available. But that's what we're all about, that's the kind of actors he picks, people that are willing to do that, especially for "Deadwood", I would say and probably for "NYPD Blue" too, you know? People that just come with the goods, show up each day with the goods. You're all on the same team.

RS: So will you have time to see any of the films at the festival or are you just here to promote your new movie?

KD: I just came with our movie and I'm going home today. I've just seen my movie.

RS: So what can you tell me about Red? Thanks to the extremely limited Sundance press screening schedule, I haven't been able to see it yet. What's it about in a nutshell?

KD: It's a guy seeking redemption. There was a crime committed against him and he comes up against small-town politics. The law ends up being fruitless and he takes matters into his own hands. I happen to play a small-town reporter from another town who catches wind of it and sort of comes in to help him break the story. Use the press to break the story.

RS: Is the idea that the police don't consider it a big deal that a dog was murdered, so that's why he has to take matters into his own hands?

KD: Kind of. There are all kinds of embedded laws concerning animal cruelty, I don't remember what they are in the film, but it's also the small-town politics of it -- the guy is kind of a heavy, the parent of the kids that do it, so he's kind of a heavy in the town and a bully.

RS: Why would they kill a dog in the first place, by the way?

KD: He just has a mean streak, the kid. It's like an angry, mean, teen-act, you know?

RS: And your character is sort of a small-town Southern reporter?

KD: [Laughs] I don't know if she's Southern. You know, I got this at the last minute because they had to finish filming -- they did two segments of filming and this was the last ten days they did that was well-apart from the original production, so I came in at the last minute. It was a very last-minute thing. It's not Southern, but you may hear my Southern accent!

RS: I was expecting to hear a Joanie Stubbs accent when you walked in today, but I didn't.

KD: No, I have it, I'm a Southerner, but sometimes it comes out and sometimes it doesn't. I got this because I believe the manager or the director knew Things Behind the Sun, and said that I'd be good for it, and it was sort of kismet because I'd worked with Brian Cox in "Deadwood", we had a significant storyline. In the third season we had this big storyline and we just sort of fell in together. I think we have good chemistry. We have a good time together.

RS: Can we expect a lot of violence in this one? It's gonna be R-rated?

KD: Yes, it's R-rated. It's not overly 'that' but when it happens it's very shocking. You know, it's not really gratuitous I would say. It's only in the name of the story.

RS: Do we get to know the dog on screen before it's actually offed?

KD: A little bit. You know him well enough through Brian's character.

RS: I'm sure they had ten dogs running around on set that all looked alike.

KD: No, it was so low-budget I think they had one dog. With a wrangler, of course.

RS: And if something happens to that dog --

KD: -- Stop production!

RS: So is it a movie that will appeal to revenge-genre lovers? Is it a heavier drama?

KD: Probably thriller. Probably Jack Ketchum's genre. It's creepy. It's kind of creepy-thrillerish, psychologically. He's walking a line, seeking this revenge. It's not really the right thing he should do, you know?

RS: Guess it depends on how badly he was wronged, right?

KD: Yeah, he was wronged, but he seeks revenge. It depends on how far you wanna go. That's what makes it very ... you walk this line when you're watching it. You root for him, but it's like how far can he go?

RS: You have to be a dog lover to appreciate it, maybe.

KD: Yeah, it's for dog lovers! I'm an animal person. I don't have any right now, but I was raised with them, tons of them.

RS: Is there anything that would cause you to go outside the system and seek bloody revenge?

KD: I'm sure there is. I'm only human. Hurt someone in my family or something like that, it would activate the need to seek bloody revenge. If somebody hurt somebody or killed somebody that I loved, yeah.

RS: Is the movie closed to being sold yet? Anything in the works?

KD: I bet it will be, but I don't know. I heard some people chirping around.yesterday, so I don't know.

RS: What was the project you referred to earlier, the new job you're onto now?

KD: Yeah, that's my new job. It's another HBO series, it's called "Twelve Miles of Bad Road". It's so great. It's an hour-long comedy and it's pretty broad. It's created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. She and her husband did The Man from Hope, the Clinton documentary and Linda was a creator of "Designing Women" and she wrote so many of them. So she's doing this and it's a big Southern family. Lily Tomlin is the matriarch and I play her Christian evangelical daughter-in-law and Gary Cole is my husband. It's so a-typical though, it's an a-typical evangelical Christian. It's subversive and really funny.

RS: Does being a Southern actor mean anything to you? Do you aspire to play Tennessee Williams and stuff like that?

KD: I love Tennessee Williams. That's the stuff that sort of got me interested in the beginning. Movies like Baby Doll and other movies too. I started out in New York and I didn't play Southern at all. I was in Palookaville and Great Expectations, which I guess was Southern. Zero Effect, Mercury Rising, things like that and then when I moved to L.A. my Southern accent came back cause there wasn't so much of a counter-acting to it, like in New York. So then it came back and I started playing a lot of Southern things. I like doing Southern stuff.

RS: Have you had a chance to do international accents yet?

KD: Gosh, what have I done ... I feel like I have, but it could have just been in theater stuff. I did English and Russian. I don't know if I've done anything actually on film.

RS: And I'm sure you don't feel the need to tamp down the twang in your L.A. meetings.

KD: No, but I'm kind of lazy about it now because I spent so much time getting rid of it and then it comes back. I've been doing this for so long, you know, I just assume people know I can adapt another accent if I need to.

For more information on Red go here