Lauren Velez, David Zayas AND Amy Prenner – Dexter

By starrymag | March 13, 2014

Q) Amy,  Dexter seems like a good fit for NUVO right now.  Where you the first station that went after the rights to the show?

Amy: An opportunity came our way to have this first, exclusive window, and we just jumped at the chance due to our relationships.

Q) It’s an intelligent show, but it’s very edgy.  Do you expect any pushback at all from the audience, because it is kind of an intense show?

Amy: Well, I think David and Lauren can actually speak to this as well.  There were two versions of the show that shot—one in its entirety with every censored type of footage that would be shown on a network like Showtime, and then another version that was edited down for mature audiences.

Q) David and Lauren, we’re wondering if you can remember back to when you were first approached about being in Dexter and what you thought of the concept when you first heard about it?

Lauren: Well, I remember vividly when I first heard about it, and I thought it sounded very edgy, a little scary, and I was looking to do something that was a little bit lighter.  I was told about it before I read the script, but after I read the pilot scriptI was blown away by how it was so brilliantly written, and it completely changed how I felt about it, and I thought, “If I can bring something to this character and have it be part of this role and create a real human being in this whole arena, that would be an incredible thing.” I wanted a chance to work with Michael C. Hall and David Zayas and the wonderful cast that we has.  So what started out as me being a little bit conflicted turned very quickly into me being very excited.

David: I was shooting a film in Toronto, and my manager just sent me the script.  I thought the script was brilliant.  I didn’t know how it would be received, but I wanted to be a part of it, and I flew into New York from Toronto to audition for it.  They called me back, and I was lucky enough to land the show. But yeah, I wanted to do it from the beginning.  I thought it was an exciting concept and one that I wanted to be a part of.

Q) Looking back, now that it’s over, do you have a favorite memory from your time working on the show?

David: Mine, like I said earlier, my favorite memory on the show is working with these professionals that came so prepared that we were able to find spontaneous moments that made the show that much more interesting, and that’s what I miss, and that’s what I looked forward to coming into work every day.

Lauren: Yeah, I have similar memories, but when you said that I always sort of jump back to the first season with “The Ice Truck Killer”, and we came back from some awards show—I think we were all shooting very early that morning—and we’re looking at the box with cut off fingers, and it was such an intense scene.  I think Jennifer started laughing, and it created this ripple effect.  I mean, we just laughed for a few minutes, and they had to hold the cameras.  It was very funny, and we had a lot of moments like that which were just completely different from what you see on screens.

Q) Well, Dexter is long over, but the fan base is still going strong.  It’s on Netflix; it’s now premiering on cable TV.  What do you think it is about the show that grabs audiences’ attention so much?

David: Well, I think that Showtime had a limited audience, and I think that now with the opportunity for being on cable and on Netflix and everything and on NUVOtv now starting on Monday, you’re going to a lot more people that have got the word of mouth out that have heard about the show that are actually going to be able to sit down and watch it. I think that the uniqueness of the show and how you go on this journey with this serial killer and he explains to you exactly what he’s feeling and why he’s doing what he’s doing is unique in television.  I hadn’t seen it prior to that before, so I think that’s what’s pretty interesting about it.

Lauren: Also, I think—it’s completely unplanned—but it’s having sort of a platform release, as David said, with a smaller audience with Showtime and there’s a Netflix audience, and now there’s a NUVOtv audience.  I think it’s pretty special that it’s actually beyond the life of the show without there being this huge gap in between its next incarnation.  It’s just growing, and it’s got its own momentum, and I think that’s really exciting.

Q) Lauren, LaGuerta’s death, I think that changed everything.  It turned everything around for Dexter.  Is that the way you wanted to go do you think?  How was it leaving?

Lauren: It was difficult leaving, but I felt it was the perfect time for her to leave.  I felt that she needed to—I feel like it was a natural evolution for the character and that somewhere in her she always knew that she was going to have to face this particular evil in, not necessarily Dexter, but that’s why she became a cop.  So in a weird way it just seemed sort of right to me that she made a choice to do something which nobody really knew that—she just did it for good and ultimately wanted to make sure that she was on a righteous path. There’s something really wonderfully fulfilling about it and bittersweet about leaving my Dexter family.  But I’m glad that she left the way she did—not the she was shot, but willing to die for what she believed in.

Q) David, Batista made it all the way through.  Personally as a fan I thought since you were the peace symbol in the show I thought after LaGuerta, “It’s all coming down there.  There goes Batista.”  But were you happy that you made it, or do you think you would’ve liked to know Dexter’s secret?

David: Well you know, that’s not for me to decide.  It wasn’t for me to decide.  My job was to whatever they did write, whatever their storyline was, to try to make it as real and is true to Batista as I could.  I think that I was in all 96 episodes, and I really conducted my journey from episode 1 to episode 96 with what was given to me, and I tried to maintain the integrity of the character.

Q) David and Lauren, for viewers that are new to Dexter, what’s one thing that you think will draw them in?

David: I guess one thing that comes to my mind was that they will be in that journey with him, because he allows people to come in, he allows the audience to come in with him.

Lauren: Yeah, which I think is a little surprising—one of the most surprising things about the show.  You start at the beginning, and I think the assumption is that because he’s the serial killer he’s going to be the one that seems more out of place or just obviously something dangerous, and he is so mild-mannered in comparison to everyone else he’s surrounded by, including his sister, and I think it’s a great diversion just having his Dexter normal, everyday self be so different than the serial killer side of him, and everyone else who orbits around him just has their own different, loud issues. So I think that’s one of the things people are going to respond to there.  It’s not going to be what they think.  I mean, to be sure it’s bloody at times, and what he does is definitely pretty gruesome, but there are so many wonderful elements and components to the show.  I think that people were in for a real surprise.

Q) How does it feel to have Dexter on NUVOtv TV and to have a whole new audience exposed to the show?

Lauren: Awesome.  It is awesome.

David: Yeah, there’s going to be a whole new demographic of people, particularly Latinos, that are going to be watching the show and are going to be identify with Latino characters on the show—that they’re going to, number, one see the integrity and in those characters and also recognize the cultural effects of it, the language effects of it, how they deal with family, how they deal with work, how they deal with a lot of things.  It’s going to feel familiar to them, and that’s the wonderful thing about NUVOtv TV, that they’re going to have that kind of an audience.

Q) Lauren and David, I want to throw this out to you.  Can we expect to see one or both of you hosting any episodes on NUVO or creating some new drop-ins or content for the show?

Lauren: I don’t know, but I think that would be a great idea.  Thank you for suggesting it.

David: I’m all for it.

Lauren: I think one of the things that’s really great about it being on NUVO and the way it’s going to be aired—two episodes back to back on Monday—and we’ll see the life of the show, all eight seasons, in this year so we can really see how they started and where they end up, so to speak, and just see the journey that all the characters have taken and their journey together. When Maria and Batista in the first season—you actually see some glimmer of something between them, but you don’t know what it is and how it all evolves.  I think that’s great.  So with that, I think best-of-Maria or best-of-Batista thing would be really cool.

Q) Well, both of you, have you been approached by your fans, especially the younger ones who have seen her character—I mean, I don’t know if parents are censoring the show—but maybe some teens seeing you both on the show and saying, “Wow, those are good people on this show?”

David: I have been approached by a lot of young people.

Lauren: That’s kind of disturbing, because some of them are very young.

David: Yeah, I mean it’s surprising to me that there are so many people familiar with the show, and they come up and they have really, really smart and interesting things to say, which is a credit to the show and how it was communicated out there.  It’s exciting.  It’s exciting to have that.

Q) Given the fact of what the genre is, I wanted to kind of ask you guys how did you feel when you first were approached to do the show in regards to the specific genre, but also given the fact that the show didn’t—in sort of the terms of the Latino characters—didn’t kind of stay synced in any capacity in stereotypical roles?  I mean, you had district attorneys, detectives, lieutenants, and a brilliant professor of religious studies. How did you guys feel about the roles and then also in that capacity how did you each come to find the core of your specific characters?  What did you have to dig to become each of your roles?

David: Well listen, to be honest with you when I was approached with the script, I did not even think about the genre part of it.  I just thought about the story, interesting story.  It was later on that I realized, “Okay, we’re in a specific genre,” but I didn’t think about that in the beginning.  I just was concentrating on the story. What caught me about the story was that they kept the integrity of the characters that were Latino, and they were in a position—like a detective, like a lieutenant, like a district attorney—and they maintained that for the most part throughout the eight years, and that something rare.  You don’t see that on television too much. What caught me about the story was that they kept the integrity of the characters that were Latino, and they were in a position—like a detective, like a lieutenant, like a district attorney—and they maintained that for the most part throughout the eight years, and that something rare.  You don’t see that on television too much.

Lauren: Actually, to something David said, we had a great team of writers and, over the course of the show they really helped keep the integrity of all the characters.  With that said, there were times when we fought for it, and we made sure that they kept it on the path that it had started on, that it originated in, because it was very important for us to make sure that it didn’t become something else other than what it was originally.  So that something we were very lucky with.

Q) Now, going forward after eight seasons—seven for you Lauren—how do you think the show after having been on it so long, 96 episodes—and 95 for you—how do you feel the show impacted you personally as actors in the growth of your craft going forward?  What do you think the leave-behinds have been for you personally?

Lauren: Well for me it’s the longest I’ve been on a show, and it surprising that any show, especially in this day and age, survives that long.  I certainly didn’t think it would be as successful as it was because of the genre.  I thought it was going to be a much smaller niche audience.  But to really be able to grow with the character as you grow as well is wonderful and unique. The years were all different.  The seasons are all different.  There are seasons where my character experiences joy and happiness, and others seasons where she experienced profound loss, and all of those things shape you in a way—or shapes me and the work—much more than I could even tell you, Edwin really.  I mean, it’s really kind of in an intense thing. But I will say that David and I worked together on Oz before we worked on this, and I’m really proud of the work that we did together and the way we grew together not only as friends and familia on the show but as actors, and it’s a very wonderful thing for me to be able to work with him but also create these two characters and create them in this show, and these characters are Latino, and now they’re going to be—the audience on NUVO is going to have a chance to enjoy the characters that we’ve created.  All of that is a really wonderful, wonderful thing.

David: Well, the one thing from Dexter, my eight years, is that as an artist you learn not only about actors—because you work with wonderful actors; you learn a lot from wonderful actors—but I learned about directing.  I learned about writing.  I learned about structure.  You learn about all that as an artist, and that’s invaluable.  It’s invaluable as an actor because you break down a script in a different way.  You break down a script in a much more effective way, and I just learned a lot from a lot of great professionals on the eight years on Dexter.

Q) For Lauren and David, givenDexter’s amazing run, what do you hope viewers have taken away from watching the series?

David: Good question.  I think that not everything is black or white.  I think that you see a show about a serial killer, your initial reaction was this man is bad.  This man is evil.  And in watching this show and watching how they’ve created this character, it is not black or white.  You do go on the journey with him.  There are aspects of his decisions that you agree with, not that you condone what he does, but you start agreeing.  You start seeing his world the way he sees it, and you start to understand—not what he’s doing is right—but you start to understand how his brain is working, and you start to understand how society is affecting that. I think if I was watching the show my initial reaction was, “I’m going to watch a show about a serial killer,” but in watching it and watching his complexity and just the individuality of his choices and why he is doing what he does and his history, it really gives you a new outlook on watching this kind of show.

Q) What did you guys bring to your roles that were not necessarily originally in the script?

Lauren: For me, what I think about LaGuerta is she was written very brilliantly, but I tried to bring a lot of heart to the character and tried to have people understand that—oftentimes a woman in power is looked at if she’s too aggressive or assertive it’s just she’s a bitch; she’s a horrible woman; she’s mean—all of these qualities that people would not assigned to men, but because she’s a woman she’s more subject to that sort of scrutiny.I just wanted people to see her as a human being, not just that—not just somebody who was ambitious and wanted to get ahead, but somebody who really believed in something.  I think that was really my quest.  My work with her was really just to make her as human and understood as possible.

David: I see a lot of characters on television that are cops, and I think what I consciously wanted to do was make him sensitive.  He’s got a good nature about him.  Just because he’s in a position of authority that can arrest people or could even take someone’s life in a situation doesn’t mean that they’re not human, that he doesn’t have a good nature, he doesn’t have strong, sensitive feelings.  So I tried to bring that into the character.  And also my goatee.

Q) Amy, since NUVO is bringingDexter to a whole new audience, what are your hopes for the series on your network?

Amy: We hope that everybody is as excited as we are that they can watch the show, and for viewers that didn’t have access to Showtime or couldn’t afford it or couldn’t watch them as a—what you do they call it when you watch everything at once? Binge, that’s the word we were talking about today—binge session with a Netflix.  This way they can actually watch it and get caught up relatively quickly, because we start on Monday.

Q) Dexter was Showtime’s original content and did very well.  Has NUVO talked about doing more original content on their own?

Amy: That’s a bigger question that will probably be answered in the coming months, but right now we saw this opportunity with Dexter, and we’re really excited about where it’s going to take us.  So you’ll have to kind of stay tuned for that one.

Q) I would like to see Lauren and David teaming up again together on another show.  I want to see Batista’s goatee again.  Can we bring that back somehow?

Amy: Make the goatee have its own show.

Lauren: A spin-off.

David: Good.  I like that.

Q) Are the rights still up in the air for the characters, or are they locked down at this point?

Lauren: I have no idea.  But David and I have worked together numerous times, not only on this show but on Oz and New York Undercover andtheater.  We belong to the same theater company, so we’re going to be working together a lot, I think.

David: Absolutely.

Lauren: So hopefully something else will be coming down the pike on NUVO with us.

Q) I’m really excited to re-watch the series, as I was a really big fan of it the first time around.  But my question, David, for you is you embodied Batista for so long, so I imagine you pretty much know everything that was going on through his mind.  If he would have found out Dexter’s secret, how do you think he would’ve reacted?

David: I don’t quite know except for the fact that I would’ve reacted the way my heart felt.  I would’ve thought about it a long time, but my ultimate reaction to it would’ve been the honest reaction.  Now that reaction—I don’t know what that would be.

Q) Now for what actually did happen, I feel it was a little bit out of character for him and for Quinn when they found out Dexter got revenge for Deb’s death.  Do you agree that it was a bit out of character for him the way he reacted?

David: Sometimes in life you have to do something out of character when the circumstances are way beyond comprehension, and under these circumstances with Debra in the hospital and attacked and not doing well I think there were other things that were pressing than—and that was the last episode.  Maybe if there were more episodes after that who knows what would’ve happened, but that was his reaction.  I think that was the correct reaction at the time for me.

Q) Were you and Lauren, were you guys happy with the way the series ended?

Lauren: I don’t know if happy is a word I would use.  I mean, I don’t know how else it could’ve ended, in truth.  What I found fascinating is that we started with three women, and all three of them were dead by the end of the show’s run.  I don’t know what that says, but Rita, LaGuerta, and obviously Deb all because of Dexter due to him—whether directly or indirectly—died. That’s one of the things about the show that I found absolutely compelling is there’s no sugar coating it.  At the end of the day he is who he is, and while the series itself is often—the episodes can be funny; they can be horrible; they can be tragic.  Whatever they are, it never gets away from what Dexter is, which is a killer, and somehow us getting a glimpse into his life and who he is and that this could be the average person next door is, I think, what makes it so fascinating.

David: As an actor, I’ve always found that my job is not to judge the content in which I’ve agreed to perform in.  What I try to do is just find the truth in every moment that they’ve written.  So to answer your question, it’s not my place to determine.  It’s not a matter of me being happy or not.  It’s a matter of me performing what they’ve written, the story that they’ve come up with, to the best of my ability and find as much truth in it as possible. So yeah, could there have been a number of different ways it could’ve ended?  This is the way they chose, and I think the way it was done was very good.  But when it comes to how it would’ve ended, everybody has an opinion of that, and that’s what makes this media of television so interesting.

Q) Well NUVO be editing for graphic content or curse words?

Amy: Well, this is basic cable, so when the episodes were initially shot they were shot in two versions—one with those things in them, the nudity and the graphics, and one for a more basic cable audience.  So we have that second version that is uncut.

Q) For the past four or five years everybody is talking about the Golden Age of television.  Dexter started like eight years ago.  How was it for you guys seeing that, realizing that you are one of the first shows that really took television to another level?

Lauren: I think it’s interesting.  We hear that now.  I hear that now, but when you’re doing it pretty much you want to do justice to the material and the work and the characters that you’ve created.  So I think hearing all that now is really wonderful for us because that’s not something you go in thinking about.  It’s just, “How can I do the best job I can with what I’ve been given, and how do I make ultimately something I can be proud of and that other people can be proud of?” That it has turned into that is really awesome for both of us.  I know I can say that for David as well.  And that it’s going to be on NUVO is even more awesome because I’m really excited about getting more of the Latino audience access to see the work and see the show and enjoy all the characters—not just ours, but the other actors that we had on the show as well—and just really enjoy the series.

David: Here’s the thing with that.  You’re right.  I feel in watching—being a television watcher for a long time—the past ten years has been kind of a golden age of television to have some of the best shows on television in the past ten years.  The fact that Dexter is even mentioned in that list is a really proud thing for me and wonderful to be part of a show that could be considered involved in that golden age. I think that television now, and maybe for the past ten years, has been wonderful.  There has been a lot of great material, a lot of great stories.  So thank you for pointing that out, and yeah, I’m very proud that Dexter could be mentioned in a list of wonderful shows that is going on right now, that has been going on for the past few years.

Q) Obviously you miss the people that you worked with, but what were the things in your routine, for regular shooting days, that you missed right away after your character or the show ended?

Lauren: I’m thinking the routine of getting to work and going to hair and make-up.  It’s very early in the morning—typically 5:30, 6:00 in the morning—and then going into the rehearsal process.  That’s what I miss the most, when everyone’s starting to get the day’s show, the day’s work together.  It’s just people working together to create something, to create magic.  That’s probably what I miss the most.

David: Yeah, I do.  I miss everybody working hand-in-hand, not only with our wonderful actors, but all the directors and the writers and the crew.  Everybody really cared every time they were on a set.  Everybody cared about the show, and everybody put in—everybody was really, really intent on making the show successful, and I miss that.  I miss that a lot.

Q) Many killers tried to defeat Dexter without succeeding.  If you could give an advice to an enemy, what is the weak point of Dexter?  Where would you go to defeat him?

David: I’ll answer that question as a viewer because I cannot answer it as a character.  But as a viewer of Dexter, probably his weakness would be his family.  His family has always been a weakness because to me that’s what always confused him.  When something happened that involved his family that was always what raised his blood pressure up, and to me that would be it.

Q)  Lauren, I’d love to hear an update on La Lupe.

Lauren: La Lupe, which is now called I Am Lupe, we’re hoping to go into production as early as next month.  This is been my passion project for a long time now, and we’ve got some wonderful talent attached, and I’m just excited about finally moving forward with it.  Hopefully this time next year we’ll be talking about it because you’ve seen it.

Q) David, I was excited to see you pop up on The Following, and I hear you have something called Saint George in the pipeline.  What can you tell me about that?

David: Saint George is a new comedy by George Lopez, and it’s for FX, and it’s very exciting.  It’s very different than Dexter, and I’m looking forward to it.  There are great people involved.  George Lopez is phenomenal, and I’m looking forward to trying my hand at comedy to see what happens.

Q) Talking about the things that you probably are going to miss, Comic-Con was a big event, was a big chance for you to connect with the public.  What is the thing that you remember the most, maybe a funny story or something that happened at Comic-Con?

David: Well the weirdest thing for me the first time I was on Comic-Con is seeing a bunch of people dressed up like my character.  That was kind of jolting to me and kind of weird.  But you know, it was interesting, and it was definitely complementary.  But I had never been at Comic-Con before, and seeing people dressed like characters of our show was—it took me aback a little bit.  I had to get used to that.

Lauren: Well, I went to Comic-Con for the first time last year; I’d only heard of it.  Like David said, it’s very surreal.  But I think the thing that struck me the most is the commitment of the fans, not only to dressing like their favorite characters, but when they came to the panel discussions of the show they were—the questions were so specific and so well thought out and really intelligent, and all of them had to do with the moral ambiguity of the show and how it affected their morality.  They were just really wonderful insightful questions, and I was sort of floored at how committed the audience was to the show.

*CONFERENCE CALL*

NUVOtv is bringing Dexter to a whole new audience! Dexter will air two back-to-back episodes every Monday night beginning Monday, January 13 at 9pm/8c!