Believe it or not, playing a serial killer is some of the most fun Patrick Gibson’s ever had.
“It’s great craic, honestly,” the Irish actor says. “Which is kind of insane to say . . . I don’t think about what I’m doing until I reflect on it and I’m like, ‘I just sliced someone into pieces today and didn’t think twice about it.’”
The 29-year-old has stepped into the shoes of Dexter Morgan, the serial killer made famous by Michael C. Hall on the Showtime series that aired from 2006 to 2013. Now, Dexter’s origin story is being explored in the prequel series “Dexter: Original Sin,” set in the early 1990s. The show stars Christian Slater, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Dempsey, Christina Milian and Molly Brown and will run through mid-February on Showtime.
“What’s so interesting about this is in a way, Dexter’s urges are so powerful that it’s like it’s kind of his calling. I mean, there’s no alternative for him,” Gibson says. “And I think a character with that much drive, whether it be for good or bad, is really fun to play.”
Gibson was very aware of the Dexter world prior to his audition; he was rather young when it aired, but remembers his brother watching it.
“I actually remember being intrigued by the idea of it and the idea that this guy was a serial killer, but working for the police. But that was as much as I was aware of,” he says. “And then when I got into secondary school I watched the first three seasons and just loved it.”
He didn’t get a chance to meet Hall face-to-face until Comic-Con, well into shooting. The first meeting was during a table read; Gibson was sick so had to call in over Zoom.
“Our pictures would flick back-to-back [on the Zoom screen] and I hadn’t thought of that — and our voices too. And I think that was fun for them to see that for the first time because nobody knew if it was really going to work,” he recalls.
Cut to Comic-Con, when he was on site doing a photoshoot and all of a sudden spotted Hall.
“He was mid-stride walking towards me in true Dexter mode. I remember saying ‘wow, I was feeling kind of cool before you turned up.’ And he was like, ‘I was feeling kind of young before you turned up,’” Gibson says. “He’d lived with that character for so many years. I look forward to meeting him again so I can kind of pick his brains properly. I was a little Dexter-struck.”
He describes the rest of the cast as one big happy family — as cliche as he knows that sounds.
“Sarah [Michelle Gellar] knows what it’s like to do a show where your character is the name of the show. She’s like, ‘that’s a lot of work,’” Gibson says. “She’s been so supportive and always been there to offer guidance.”
Gibson, who normally lives in London but is L.A.-based at the moment for “Dexter,” grew up watching his father, an actor, in the theater world. He was in his first project, a short film, around the age of 6 and loved it immediately.
“It’s a funny impulse to have because there’s a conflict in it where half of it is you’re searching for the truth and authenticity, and lying feels really obvious and ugly when you’re acting. But then also everything that you’re doing is being somebody else that you’re not,” Gibson says. “I think the reasons for doing it kind of change as you grow up as well. I just watched a mate of mine who’s an actor, Harris Dickinson in ‘Babygirl,’ and knowing him, there’s so many elements of his performance that are so authentic to him, even though his voice is different and all that stuff. And I think that’s the new interesting thing to me is to not do it because you’re trying to escape from yourself, but actually get closer to yourself.”
