Crave Online: How many more years of life do you see in Dexter?
Michael C. Hall: I don't know. I am very much focused on telling the story we're telling this season as I was last season and the one before. It's a shark, it has to continue to move forward. You can't just sort of luxuriate in the day to day lives of Dexter or any of the other characters. So there will be an end when it comes. I can't really tell you.
Crave Online: Who was the first TV character that you sort of fell in love with as a kid?
Michael C. Hall: The Incredible Hulk, for sure and I see parallels between that character and Dexter in terms of you know this undeniable, un-checkable – well, in Dexter's case maybe it's checkable - but darkness or compulsion or the Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing. I think as a kid, there were lots of things that I liked but that one I remember pretty vividly. I loved that show.
Crave Online: Julie Benz has done like three movies in between seasons. Are you doing any?
Michael C. Hall: I did a movie called Game this past hiatus starring Gerry Butler.
Crave Online: Neveldine and Taylor, right?
Michael C. Hall: Yeah, exactly. And in the upcoming hiatus, it's a ways away yet, but yeah, hopefully I'll be able to you know do something else.
Crave Online: What do you play in Game?
Michael C. Hall: It focuses on this video game in the near future that uses nanotechnology that allows gamers to control real people in a gaming environment. I play the guy who invented the game.
Crave Online: So you're not inside the game?
Michael C. Hall: I'm not in it, yeah.
Crave Online: Good guy or bad guy?
Michael C. Hall: He's a bad guy.
Crave Online: Another morbid sense of humor in that film?
Michael C. Hall: Yeah. There probably is. I may be a different kind of cog in the morbid wheel, but yeah.
Crave Online: The advertising gets more and more morbidly creative every year. How do you like shooting those?
Michael C. Hall: I mean the promo department, the in house people they have at Showtime and the people they hire to do some of the more expansive promo shoots and live action stuff, they're so good and so imaginative and so really in tune with what I feel the heart of the show is. It's really nice to step into those studio shoots or promo shoots and feel that you're stepping into something that really supports and has an appreciation for the nugget of what the show is about.
Crave Online: You seem to know Dexter so well. Do you ever give the writers ideas?
Michael C. Hall: I think maybe because of the nature of the role, I sort of spend as much intimate time with the character as anybody else, or more. Maybe it's just a way to formally acknowledge a relationship that already exists between the writers and myself, I don't aspire to write the show. I enjoy the fact that it's a collaborative thing that we do and enjoy that I trust people to write it and trust them to let me say it the way I see fit. But I think maybe I am able to give some perspective as far as the connective tissue between beats or story developments. Or if that isn't there or isn't quite what maybe it could be, that's where I come in.
Crave Online: Do you think Dexter is capable of feeling?
Michael C. Hall: I'm reluctant to come down either way because I think the sort of ambiguity it creates in the viewer as far as "Is this guy totally faking it? Is he a total self-preservationist? Does he have feelings? If so, are they just subterranean, or is he aware of them?" I think that's part of the fun of the show.
Crave Online: What do you think makes Dexter so damn likeable?
Michael C. Hall: I think a lot of the likeability as far as Dexter goes is taken care of by the way he's presented. In terms of the voiceover element, the fact that we're sort of complicit in what he's doing just by watching him because we're seeing things from his perspective. He is way outside the box in terms of morality, but he does have a code that he adheres to and I think that's admirable in its way.