‘Dexter: Original Sin’ Star Patrick Gibson Didn’t Want to Be a ‘Mirror Impression’ of Michael C. Hall

Patrick Gibson may be playing a younger version of Michael C. Hall in “Dexter: Original Sin,” but the actor doesn’t want his take on the serial killer to be just a “mirror impression” of his predecessor. So, while Gibson studied Hall closely, he also made sure to remember the timeline of things.

“Dexter: Original Sin” will take place in the ’90s, when Dexter Morgan is just a teenager and only just beginning to act on his murderous urges. With some guidance from his dad Harry (Christian Slater in this series), he develops his guiding code that fans came to know in the original series.

During the “Dexter: Original Sin” panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, it was revealed that not only would Hall be returning to star in a new spinoff — “Dexter: Resurrection” — but he’ll be lending his voice to narrate “Original Sin.” And, according to Gibson, he’s been listening to that voice a lot.

Sitting down with TheWrap at the convention’s IMDboat on Saturday, the actor laughed at himself for admitting to a room of 5,000 fans that he falls asleep listening to Hall’s voice in order to get it right, but added that it’s necessary.

“He has a very specific kind of tone and intonation itself. So I spent a long time studying that,” Gibson explained. “And then honestly, once we go on set, it’s like, you kind of have what comes out, come out.”

In the end, he didn’t want to sound just like Hall, because Hall made the character “so idiosyncratic and himself.”

“And I think, if Dexter was like a mirror impression, you would lose all of that kind of charm that Dexter had,” Gibson said. “So it was really just about having it not bump with the voiceover and sound like the same person, but 10 years, 15 years earlier.”

Molly Brown, who plays Dexter’s sister Debra in “Dexter: Original Sin,” took a different approach than her costar and definitely did not listen to Jennifer Carpenter’s voice while falling asleep. However, Brown did rewatch the series. In fact, she was already in the middle of a rewatch when she got the audition to be Deb. But once she got the part and finished that binge, she quickly realized she couldn’t let herself be too impacted.

“I think what it is, is there’s an element of you have to let that go,” Brown shared. “Luckily, the writing is so strong that like, who Deb is, her voice, is just, it’s already in the script. I think there even was a moment where I was like, ‘Well how would Jennifer Carpenter say this?'”

She continued, “And I had to get out of that because it’s like, I have to do my Deb. But I think that it still is who she is, because it’s a lot of the same writers and it’s already there.”

“Dexter” is available to stream on Netflix, The Roku Channel and Paramount+. “Dexter: Original Sin” premieres this December.

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