Michael C. Hall is opening up about why now was the right time to revisit Dexter.
Back in October, Showtime announced it was reviving the serial killer drama for a 10-episode season with Hall back as Dexter Morgan, nearly eight years after wrapping the original series. Hall shared that there have been several opportunities over the years for him to bring Dexter back to life -- three, to be more specific. This particular idea, however, felt appropriate and timely.
"I've been approached, unofficially, many times in the streets by people who have ideas. But... I think there have been probably, before this, three legitimate ideas or concepts of what we might do and none of them felt right," Hall tells ET's Ash Crossan, while promoting his band Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum’s debut album, Thanks for Coming, which drops Feb. 12.
"This one, a lot of it has to do with time passed," he continues. "This is going to happen in real time, as if as much time has passed since the finale happened. And yeah, we kind of just got the creative band back together again. Clyde Phillips is back, who was the showrunner for the first four seasons, running the show. And Marcos Siega, who is one of the directors. He's like, 'We're gonna shoot it like a long, 10-hour movie. It was a combination of the scripts and the timing. I always thought maybe the time will reveal itself when it's the right time to do it and it did. And I'm excited. I was just visiting the sets the other day and it's real. It's really happening."
In the 2011 series finale, Dexter is revealed to have faked his death following the death of his sister, Debra, and is working under a new identity as a lumberjack in Oregon. The ending was met with mixed reactions from viewers, something Hall acknowledges now with the benefit of hindsight.
"From a story standpoint [and] from a character standpoint, it made sense to me what he did. But I certainly can appreciate why it left a majority of the viewers feeling left out in the cold or gypped or frustrated because he literally didn't say anything at the end," Hall acknowledges. "He had been talking to us the whole time and he just stared at the camera and it was over. He put his sister in the ocean. What the hell was that?"
The 49-year-old actor promises that the revival will right some wrongs. "The appetite for the reboot is a way facilitated by the fact that it was a less than satisfying ending for people," Hall says. "I want to find out what happened to the guy just as much as everybody else."
If there is one thing Hall hopes the revival addresses, it's this. "I don't know if they're going to go for it, but I'm angling for him to be running his own pizza restaurant," Hall quips, "just because, you know, I don't need to explain why that would be awesome."
The revival begins filming in Massachusetts in February, with Showtime eyeing a fall 2021 premiere.
Joining Hall are Clancy Brown as the revival's main villain, Julia Jones (The Mandalorian), Alano Miller (Sylvie’s Love), Johnny Sequoyah (Believe) and Jack Alcott (The Good Lord Bird). It is unclear whether familiar faces from Dexter lore will be popping back in.
Dexter debuted Oct. 1, 2006 and ran for eight seasons on Showtime, airing 96 episodes during its original run. Hall played Dexter, a complicated and conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami police department who moonlights as a serial killer.
It earned Hall five straight Emmy nominations for Lead Actor in a Drama Series, from 2008 to 2012. He won a Golden Globe for his performance in 2010, alongside John Lithgow. The series was Emmy-nominated four times for Outstanding Drama Series from 2008 to 2011 and Golden Globe-nominated three times for Best Series from 2009 to 2011, and won the Peabody Award in 2008.
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