DEXTER at TCA: Live-Blog

With DEXTER returning (on Sunday, November 7 at 9/8) for an event series, the creative team is participating in a virtual Television Critics Association panel.

Follow along (starting at noon PT) to hear what Michael C. Hall( EP/Dexter), Julia Jones (Angela), Jennifer Carpenter (Deb), Clyde Phillips (Showrunner/EP), Scott Reynolds (EP), and Marcos Siega (Director/EP) preview about the return…

12:02 PM PT: “We don’t spend a great deal of time doing anything like a flashback [to] where Dexter has been,” Hall says. They’re picking up with him in a town where he’s “cobbling together a semblance of a normal life.”

12:04 PM PT: There are some touchstones to the look of the show, “but we really wanted to set it apart” with a new visual tone, Seiga says.

12:06 PM PT: A theme of the season is “sins of the father.”

12:07 PM PT: Phillips says this isn’t a ninth season of the show, rather it’s acknowledging that time has passed and a new take on the show.

12:08 PM PT: “There had been different instances where we considered revisiting the show,” Hall says, but with this revival take, they opted to keep Dexter outside of a major city, etc. Hall notes Dexter has come a long way in the time that has passed. But it “felt right” to be in a different place from the Miami location.

Adds Phillips, “He will find himself struggling with the urge, struggling with the Dark Passenger…and finally give into that struggle.”

12:12 PM PT: “I think the way the series ended has a great deal to do with why we’re revisiting the show and the character,” Hall says. “I think a lot of what was mystifying and not satisfying to people is a lot of what creates [the desire to revisit it]…the show did not end in a way that was definitive for people or gave anyone a sense of closure. We didn’t hear from Dexter, he didn’t say anything to us….it left audiences in a state of suspended animation.”

12:15 PM PT: Dexter has an unexpected friend when the show kicks off that helps him handle his urges to kill. “It’s like the methadone” to killing, Hall notes.

12:17 PM PT: Jones is watching the show for the first time now. She notes Dexter has a lot more humanity now than he did in the original run of the drama.

12:19 PM PT: Phillips notes he and Hall have discussed the show returning for years, but “the timing was never right for Michael,” the EP says. “The show has been spectacular.”

Hall says he’s thought of the character over the years. He notes his mother wanted him to be in a monastery. “I think she wanted him to meditate for ten hours,” he jokes.

12:23 PM PT: “She’s definitely more than Dexter’s girlfriend,” Jones says. “She’s passionate, she’s compassionate, she’s strong-willed and flawed.” She’s also the mother of an adopted teen and the chief of police in the small town.

12:24 PM PT: “We’re not going there,” Phillips says of talking about a potential spinoff.

12:25 PM PT: “We took the time to make sure the past decade was well represented,” Phillips says. The show is a whole new world.

12:28 PM PT: “We’re not going to get into the ending of the show,” Phillips says, declining to discuss whether the show could return.

Phillips also notes that though he had an idea of how the show would end back in the day, but it doesn’t mean Showtime would have allowed for it to happen.

12:31 PM PT: Jamie Chung’s character is a true crime murder podcaster and plays a big part in the revival.

12:33 PM PT: Hall didn’t go back and rewatch any of the original series to prep. He admits it was “somewhat daunting” to deal with embodying someone who had essentially kept on existing after he said goodbye to the character. They shot 119 days, 52 locations, and he didn’t have as much time to assess what was going on. “He was still there,” Hall notes, because he spent a lot of time “with and as him.”

“Deb had a different ending than the show had,” Carpenter says. “I wanted to massage Deb’s scar tissue…it was cosmically profound going back.”

12:41 PM PT: The new season takes place over a two-week span.

12:46 PM PT: The new main title sequence won’t be as cheeky as the OG, Phillips says. “Viewers should expect the title sequence—if there even is one—will be very different than what it was before.”

12:47 PM PT: “There are several people coming back,” Phillips says, many of who haven’t been revealed yet. They weren’t going to reveal Carpenter’s return until John Lithgow outed her return.

12:50 PM PT: Hall says there are storytelling possibilities in play this go-round that made a return appealing. He also wanted to return because it allowed them to “get the band back together.”

12:53 PM PT: “I remember that first season it felt like we were in on a secret, and it felt like a secret worth sharing,” Hall says. He hoped they would get a cult following, but no expectations it would be as big as it was.

Carpenter says her car broke down on the way home from the audition and she’s grateful it was that versus on the way there. “This role has been one of the great privileges of my life.”

12:56 PM PT: Hall was thankful they filmed away from home, so he could separate the worlds. “To spend this much intense time preoccupied with the imagined life and psychology of a character that is otherwise words on a page…there has to be some line blurring that happens.”

DEXTER: NEW BLOOD, Premiere, Sunday, November 7, 9/8c, Showtime

RELATED:

• DEXTER: NEW BLOOD: Showtime Sets November Return
• DEXTER: Jennifer Carpenter Returning for Revival

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