Michael C. Hall: The Dark and Light of Dexter

Everyone knows Michael C. Hall as Dexter– the Serial Killer with a heart. Of course he’s had many other career highlights, particularly his role on the hit series Six Feet Under, but right now he’s in his sixth season as the star of this hit SHOWtime series, and going stronger than ever.  He stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about Season Six.  Some excerpts from that interview appear below. 

Ron Bennington: Michael C. Hall is here. The opening sequence for Dexter actually one of the best openings of all time, where everything looks sinister right from the word go. Is this the sixth season now?

Michael C. Hall: Yea, sixth season, there’s two episodes left.

Ron Bennington: And we still, in six years, we don’t get a single moment where we don’t feel nervous for Dexter…and yet he should be caught. I think this season more than ever, he is definitely screwing up his sister’s shot.

Michael C. Hall: Well that’s been a fundamental tension and it’s never been more prevalent than it is right now.

Ron Bennington: It would be easy enough for him to just go, “here’s a little clue, go in this direction, your whole life will be better.” But is the darkness taking over him even more?

Michael C. Hall: I think that as he’s become more human in certain ways, or has had experiences that he never anticipated– being a father, having and losing a wife, etc.– the spectrum is broadened. So as he’s moved more towards conventional human-light characteristics, it’s gotten that much darker too. Yea, I think he has this fundamental desire to rebel against everything he’s been told he is, by his father. And that can mean that he’s going to get married and have a kid, and that can also mean that he completely, periodically at least, throws the code out the window and start to make the water that much hotter for himself.

Ron Bennington: And every single season you guys add some really great guest stars, and this year I think it’s fabulous people who you’ve got working with you. [Edward James] Olmos has been phenomenal, the Hanks kid has really shown a whole different place for himself.

Michael C. Hall: And I think Mos is amazing as Brother Sam. I had such a good time working with him too.

Ron Bennington: Mos Def is such a great actor. Started as a rapper of course, but there’s no way to know what direction he’s ever going to go into, with his career..and even the character.

Michael C. Hall: Exactly. He’s one of the best MC’s ever. But as an actor, he’s not a guy who’s a musician who does some acting. The acting alone would sustain him in terms of his legitimacy, I mean, he’s amazing.

Ron Bennington: He’s phenomenal. And when he left the show this year I felt like it was almost too soon, because I was really digging that dynamic.

Michael C. Hall: Yea, I think that’s a part of what was sad about it. I mean Dexter has had his share of blows. Not that he doesn’t get lucky at every turn too, but it was the first– probably the most legitimate actual friendship that he’d ever started to develop with anyone.

Ron Bennington: And because he had somebody to be philosophical with.

Michael C. Hall: And someone who was initially a potential victim, and somebody who definitely had his own version of a dark passenger and managed to rehabilitate himself in a way through a relationship with God or a spiritual life.

Ron Bennington: It was kind of surprising that religion came in as the theme of the season.

Michael C. Hall: I think what’s interesting is the different versions of that. With the Doomsday Killer, you have someone who is basing absolutely heinous behavior on scripture and then with Brother Sam you have someone who is rehabilitated themselves and was helping other people and so that’s scripturally based too for him. So you see the good and dark side of religious belief and the broad spectrum of that.

Ron Bennington:  And while you’re doing that, there’s always small stories that are always one and done, inside everything. It’s a very complicated show.

Michael C. Hall: Well Scott Buck, who is sitting at the head of the writers table now and has been there basically from the beginning– we’ve had some turnover and some change-up in the writer’s room – but he’s able to hold the whole Rubik’s Cube of the season in his hand and have everything make sense and end up with something that has the same color on each side.

Ron Bennington: Are you protective of Dexter? Do you have to look at these things as new writers come in and say, “look, I know this character.”

Michael C. Hall: Yea, I don’t even have to knock down any doors. I think at this point I’m encouraged to weigh in. I think of myself of the guardian of my sense of that character’s truth. It’s often not what happens but how it happens. Sometimes getting him from point A to point D requires me to suggest a different version of B and C.

Ron Bennington: Now I know you got signed for a couple of more seasons…which really is impossible to think that the character could have sustained for this long. I think this season has been your biggest season. Is there an ending in sight?

Michael C. Hall: It’s a conversation that we’re starting to have in a concrete way. We’ve always known that the show has to end and it’s a many-headed creative monster that makes this thing go, and everybody’s going to weigh in. But yea I think that we’re starting to realize that the end is in sight. But with the way that the sixth season ends, the writers have assured me that the stage is set for the next two.

Ron Bennington: Yea because you think to yourself…I don’t want to see him in a cage, I would hate to see him dead. At the same time I kind of have this feeling that I want everybody who knows him to realize what has been going on under their nose.

Michael C. Hall: We have such an amazing group of actors on this show, and to see them get the chance to play that– I mean I don’t know how it’ going to go down – but that’s an exciting proposition to me. To see– what’s Batista going to do?

Ron Bennington: Because it’s on Showtime, this is the type of character that never would have been able to make it to tv. And now you see television is starting to follow along where you don’t need a hero– it can be somewhat of an anti-hero. And the show probably makes more sense being on tv now than it did six years ago. The landscape has started to change to be almost Dexter-like.

Michael C. Hall: Yea I think that’s true. I think audiences have come to expect material that challenges their sympathies or challenges them to identify with people who are one way or another, fundamentally flawed. And I think people relish that in part because we’re all fundamentally flawed. Maybe not to the extent he is.

Ron Bennington: And it’s interesting keeping this Miami, which is the place of light and darkness for the whole country.

Michael C. Hall: If there’s a place where this all could conceivably in reality go down, I think Miami is the place.

Ron Bennington: I don’t know why but serial killers are attracted to Florida. They will end up there. Maybe it’s because it’s the end of the road, I don’t know why.

Michael C. Hall: The end of the road…there’s an inherent transience to the place…

Ron Bennington: It’s flashy and at the same time, if you pick up the paper, it’s gotten hit by the economy worse than anywhere else…

Michael C. Hall: …especially real estate wise…

Ron Bennington: …Real Estate wise, whatever you owned before is worth a tenth right now, so that I think plays into the Dexter thing of this strangeness in the air.

Michael C. Hall: Strangeness…desperation…some sort of underneath the sheen and underbelly of grit.

Ron Bennington: Thanks so much for stopping by..it Sundays, 9:00 Showtime. And the beauty of it is, you’ve also got the Showtime On Demand so you can set some of these up like it’s a movie and just watch them straight through.

Michael C. Hall: Yea yea, sure thing. It’s a pleasure.

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You can this interview in its entirety, exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Don’t have a subscription yet?  Click here for a free trial.

You can follow the series on twitter at @SHO_Dexter or on their website.