Michael C. Hall Talks New Dexter Revival
Michael C Hall says he owed it to #Dexter fans, the character and himself to try and set things straight after that widely-panned series finale https://t.co/Kk8ZOx3nj9
- GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) November 3, 2021
Michael C Hall spoke wth GQ about the new Dexter revival, Dexter: New Blood which premieres on Showtime this Sunday (November 7, 2021).
The GQ author states in his writeup that the new series bears basically no resemblance to the original show tonally or atmospherically which has OP cautiously intrigued.
On returning to the show after the trash finale that left everyone annoyed:
"I didn't want to return just because we could, I wanted to return because we discovered a story that felt like it was worth telling. Something like this that is dependent on so many moving parts, you never know exactly how it's all going to go, but ultimately I had enough faith to take the leap. And that had to do with the scripts that were all written, the story we decided to tell, this new context we found for the show, and it had to do with the fact that Clyde Phillips was sitting at the head of the writer’s table.
I wanted to give the fans, myself and the character a more satisfying and definitive visit."
On the "jarring" new tone of the revival series compared to the original:
"The tone of the first one was much more wry and Dexter wasn't implicated by his behavior at that point. He had this perfect, monstrous, firing-on-all-cylinders authentic killer self that he indulged and he was able to do so because of this totally simulated inauthentic-but-authentic-seeming person he presented to the world. Whereas [over the course of the series] he started to indulge in this idea of having authentic humanity and that created all this overlap and chaos, to the point where he had to bury the killer entirely and is now making an earnest, baby-steps attempt at having an authentic life. But he's doing so having literally faked his own death and pretending to be someone he’s not by name, even.
So tonally it's a lot more-the Dexter we meet at the beginning is very ordered in his way, and the Dexter we meet now is very much on the edge of, and soon after we start, in the midst of chaos."
A major change is that Deb now fulfills the ghost role, but in a manner that is not a retread of the way Dexter interacted with Harry. There’s a point in one of the episodes where she actually manhandles you. It’s interesting that he’s now envisioning a much more antagonistic companion:
She’s there on the show because of a phenomenon we established where Dexter talks to dead people, but she’s no Harry. The little glimpse we get of their relationship at the top of the episode gives a sense of how it has been: placid, serene, soothing. One of the fruits of his abstinence is he gets to have this imagined relationship with his dead sister that he wasn’t able to have even when she was alive. But he commits the two fundamental crimes, opening the door to his former life-in the form of his son no less-and killing again. And all bets are off. She’s all of a sudden representative of an internal conversation he’s having, and he’s someone who’s very much at odds with himself.
On what he's currently watching:
"I just watched White Lotus but I don't know, I feel like that's old already. But I thought that was pretty great. I really like the writing, the acting, the look of it. I liked the fact that it really boldly took on the cultural moment and managed to give voice to all the various sides of things without planting its flag anywhere and everybody was right and everybody was wrong at the same time."
*Read the rest of the interview at the source*
Will you be watching, ONTD?
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