Crave Online: Were the plots on Six Feet Under as secret as they are on Dexter?

Michael C. Hall: Well, I know that the scripts were for your eyes only, please do not disseminate to anyone outside the Six Feet Under family and that goes for Dexter as well. I think that's probably customary for a show that generates any kind of interest.

Crave Online: Where is Dexter in Rita's relationship this year?

Michael C. Hall: At the top of the season it's in a very, very good place, about as good a place as it's ever been. You know the plot, things develop in ways that immediately complicate that situation, but yeah, they're in a really good place.

Crave Online: It's not a show where people stay happy, is it?

 

Michael C. Hall: No. Nobody wants to watch that.

Crave Online: Are you going to miss Erik King as an actor?

Michael C. Hall: Absolutely. I miss Erik every time I step into the bullpen. It's weird that he's not there. He actually sent me a really sweet text yesterday and we communicated yesterday. I was sad to see him go as an actor.

Crave Online: Will that storyline continue with Laguarta's suspicions about his death?

Michael C. Hall: I think that is lying dormant at the moment, but it's there and is a source of tension whether it's explicit right now that that will probably resurface at some point.  

Crave Online: Do you think Dexter will ever break down and open up to Deb?

Michael C. Hall: I don't know. I mean once that happens, however it happens, it's happened. So I think maintaining that possibility or that tension was really of value. I think that tension ebbs and flows but ultimately intensifies as more time passes, as she becomes more and more capable as a detective and therefore more of a potential threat.

Crave Online: Does Dexter know what kind of trouble he's going to get himself into this year?

Michael C. Hall: No. No. He's basically thrust into a situation, I mean an immediate in the moment situation where he has no choice but to do something that in turn sets a great deal of what the third season focuses on, in motion. But it's not something that he appreciates at the time.

Crave Online: Do you enjoy talking so vaguely about these stories?

Michael C. Hall: It's a skill that I've developed. Yeah, I feel like a press secretary or something.

Crave Online: Now that you've gotten so much more exposure, how are people reacting to you when they recognize you on the street?

Michael C. Hall: You know people don't, anybody who makes a point to approach doesn't approach with any skittishness or anything like that. It's just to express their enthusiasm about the show.

Crave Online: Are you recognized more for Dexter or more for Six Feet Under?

Michael C. Hall: I think right now anybody who makes a point to say something it's probably 80 to 90 percent of the time for Dexter just because that's what sort of on people's radar right now.

Crave Online: And your face is everywhere.

Michael C. Hall: Yeah, but people do certainly approach me and talk about Six Feet Under still, which is nice.

Crave Online: When you first got the role, was there any hesitation on anyone's part that you could make such a dramatic switch from Six Feet Under?

Michael C. Hall: I think the pilot started in such a way that you met Dexter in the midst of his acting on his compulsion and you're sort of just thrust right into this new energy and this new person and so not really. I know that some people had trouble wrapping their minds around it conceptually, but I think once they watched the show that was over.

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.