Michael C. Hall adds ‘New Blood’ to ‘Dexter’ revival
Old habits die hard, as Dexter Morgan is about to reaffirm.
Showtime revives one of its most popular dramas as Michael C. Hall resumes the title role of the wellintentioned serial killer in “Dexter: New Blood,” premiering Sunday, Nov. 7. Set a decade after Dexter left Miami amid a hurricane, the new series establishes him in an upstate New York town with a new identity and a romance with the police chief (Julia Jones) ... but that doesn’t keep him from resorting to his lethal former ways when fresh circumstances prompt that.
“There were all kinds of things that would float through my mind,” Hall reflects of continuing “Dexter” after the supposed finale in 2013. “I think my mother wanted him to be in a monastery. She just wanted to watch him meditate for 10 hours. That didn’t happen. Honestly, I think from the day the show ended until we started – and perhaps even finished principal photography on – this revisitation, it’s been percolating. It’s been something that’s been maybe a sometimes unconscious preoccupation. There’s been a sense of it being unfinished business.”
Indeed, Hall acknowledges criticism from many “Dexter” devotees about the ending eight years ago: “I think a lot of what was mystifying or dissatisfying to people is a lot of what creates the appetite we’re hopefully satisfying now. The show did not end in a way that was definitive for people, or gave anybody a sense of closure. We didn’t hear from Dexter; he didn’t say anything to us when the
show ended, and I think it left audiences, if nothing else, in a sense of suspended animation. I think a big part of our motivation was to definitively answer the question of what happened to this guy.”
Other familiar faces also resurface, including Jennifer Carpenter as Dexter’s sister Debra and John Lithgow, who won a Primetime Emmy Award as the so-called “Trinity Killer” ... though fans of the original show may question how they could reappear. Carpenter says she deems Debra, in her “New Blood” form, “more of a link or an echo or an inconvenient truth for Dexter. That’s what I was attracted
to.” Dexter’s son Harrison also figures into the plot, now played by Jack Alcott.
Hall also returns as a “Dexter” executive producer, along with Clyde Phillips, Scott Reynolds and Marcos Siega. The “New Blood” shoot was completed in just under four months in Massachusetts (doubling for fictional Iron Lake, New York), and Phillips calls it “an extraordinary undertaking,” particularly under pandemic conditions. “It was the hardest I think all of us have ever worked, and we’re really proud of the fact that we accomplished what we set out to do.”