Talking with Jennifer Carpenter of DEXTER

Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2007 issue of Venice Magazine and I had only seen the first few episodes of the season. It’s become even clearer by the end of season two, that Carpenter’s Deb is the character who provides the humanity which anchors the show. When Dexter is almost caught by Erik King’s Doakes (see our interview with King here)in the final episodes, it’s how Deb will react that both Dexter and the audience are most concerned with. She will be devastated if and when her beloved brother is revealed to be a mass murderer and we're hoping it doesn't happen. Much more for her than for him. Carpenter has also managed the acting trick of keeping Deb lovable and almost sweet while also regularly swearing like a sailor and making off-color remarks. My favorite exchange between Deb and Dexter went something like this, and I’m doing it from memory, but I recall that it was over a standing breakfast in the kitchen.
Deb: “So, do you fuck [Dexter’s girlfriend] Rita quiet?”

Dexter, a serial killer, mind you, is disgusted by this question from his sister. He shakes his head.
Dexter: “And she’s off and running. Straight out of the gate."



Jennifer Carpenter
The Serial Killer’s Kid Sister Returns for Another Round on “Dexter.”
By Terry Keefe

You’ll have to excuse her if she’s gotten a little intense these days. That’s Jennifer Carpenter’s character of Debra on her series “Dexter” we’re talking about. Last season she found herself in love with a serial murderer known as the Ice Truck Killer, who tried to add her notch to his belt, and now she’s understandably having a difficult time returning to both dating and her work as a cop where she’s on the task force to find a new murderer in Miami (which just happens to be her own brother, Dexter, played by Michael C. Hall). She loses her cool repeatedly on the job and spends much of the rest of her waking hours beating herself up at the gym in front of a punching bag. But the second season of the hit Showtime series is proving easier for Carpenter herself, if not her onscreen persona. She elaborates, “I had never done TV before, so it was a different experience for me. I look at last season like my ‘freshman year.’ In film, you get to sort of marinate in one scene for a long time and then you’re done. In television, the character arc is longer and you’re sort of living two lives at once while you’re shooting. I’m a little more confident about that now.”

Prior to “Dexter,” Kentucky native Carpenter was best known as the demonically possessed title character of the feature The Exorcism of Emily Rose, where she anchored the film with a terrifying-to-the-point-of-truly-disturbing performance. Her horrified expressions from the trailer alone gave me nightmares, and that reaction wasn’t uncommon. “The producers encouraged me to get a boyfriend before the film came out, so I could still date,” Carpenter recalls with a laugh. But Emily Rose was good preparation for “Dexter” in that the bloody crime scenes her character faces regularly haven’t kept the actress up nights, not after seeing herself possessed by Satan onscreen, that is. “Yeah, if the bad dreams were going to happen anytime, it would have been on Emily Rose,” she says.

Carpenter in Emily Rose.

“Dexter” is a show where the lead character is a serial killer, albeit one who primarily kills criminals who deserve it. Keeping the right tone is crucial for the show, and it manages to never go too comedically macabre or brutally serious. Surprisingly, tone isn’t discussed much amongst the actors, according to Carpenter. She says, “It’s not something we sit down and talk about too much. Partially that’s because we’ve had some incredible directors, who are also real fans of the show. We’ve been able to trust them a lot as to what direction to go tonally.” Carpenter’s character of Debra is sort of a grounding influence for her murdering brother, both for the audience and in the reality of the story, and acts partially as a more human reflection of Dexter. As such, they’re tied at the hip in a lot of ways, made much more interesting by the fact that she’s unwittingly pursuing him in her investigation this season. When asked what’s ahead later in the season, Carpenter doesn’t want to reveal too much, but gives us this, “The walls will start closing in on Dexter. And then things will close in for Debra as well.”