TV News
“We Wanted to Redeem Ourselves”: How ‘Dexter’ Killed Its Lumberjack Legacy
Published
2 years agoon
By
Sawah
[This story contains spoilers from the Dexter: New Blood finale.]
When Showtime’s Dexter wrapped its original eight-season run in late 2013, then-showrunner Scott Buck wanted to leave the ending up to the audience. The result, as Michael C. Hall’s serial killer with a code traded Miami Metro for a lumberjack life in exile, was one of the most critically panned series finales of all time. “We didn’t do it justice in the end,” Showtime entertainment president Gary Levine recently proclaimed.
Clyde Phillips — who served as showrunner before departing at the end of season four — made no secret that the September 2013 episode was not how he would have ended the show. Phillips has maintained for years that he envisioned a series ender in which Dexter faced up to his crimes while awaiting execution on Death Row.
With Dexter: New Blood, Phillips hopes he was able to rewrite Dexter’s much maligned “first finale” with a definitive ending for Hall’s Dexter Morgan. While Showtime had tried mounting a Dexter revival for years since the show’s initial conclusion, it was Phillips who pitched Hall and the network that the famed anti-hero would end the limited series in his own blood. “This was inevitable,” Phillips tells The Hollywood Reporter about his decision kill Dexter.
New Blood explored the relationship between fathers and sons as Dexter learned of Harrison’s (Jack Alcott) own Dark Passenger and, despite objections from his late sister, Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), teaches the teen the code that is the Morgan family business. At the same time, local sheriff Angela (Julia Jones) connects the dots and collars Dexter as the real Bay Harbor Butcher. Backed into a corner, Dexter kills off Harrison’s beloved wrestling coach/deputy Logan (Alano Miller) in a bid to escape extradition to Florida and the Death Penalty.
Harrison, who initially considered his father a superhero for killing bad guys, ultimately channels the words Dexter wrote in his letter leaving his son to Hannah (Yvonne Strahovski) after he faked his own death in the 2013 finale: “Let me die so my son can live.” Facing death at the hands of his own son, Dexter talks Harrison through pulling the trigger.
Below, Phillips opens up about the redemption journey behind the Dexter: New Blood series finale, why Harrison had to pull the trigger and the future of the franchise.
How early in the creation of Dexter: New Blood did you know that Dexter would die? And why did you want this to end with his death?
Very early in the process. In talking with Michael and Showtime and once I hired a writers room, I presented that to them and asked for the best way to do this. We owed it to the audience. After the bad taste in their mouth that a lot of people had at the end of season eight — what we’re calling the “first finale” — we knew that to have Dexter escape and have him continue doing this, the show was done. The storytelling of it was done. The legitimacy, honesty, dignity and integrity of the character of Dexter that we so carefully built up over a almost a decade almost required that we end the show this way. We wanted the viewers to hopefully be sad by this loss and feel satisfied and to understand that this had to happen; that this was inevitable. Hopefully they’re satisfied with the storytelling. … At the end [of the final scene], I remember Michael calling out from 10 yards away, “Thanks for the words, Clyde.” What better feeling can a writer have than that?
Talk me through the decision to have Harrison effectively carry out Dexter’s wishes — “let me die so my son can live,” which is something Dexter wrote to Hannah when he left Harrison with her.
The germ of all of that is that Dexter is making the ultimate sacrifice for his son. Dexter says as he’s urging Harrison to do it, “Remember, you have to take off the safety just like I showed you.” He’s giving Harrison permission and saying there’s no other way. And Harrison says with tears streaming down his face, “For both of us.” They’re trapped in this. When Harrison yells, “Open your eyes and and look at what you’ve done!” and we do the flashback of Lundy (Keith Carradine), Doakes (Erik King), Rita (Julie Benz), Deb and LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez), that’s an Easter Egg. That’s the first thing that Dexter says in the pilot when he’s killing a choir master and he screams at him, “Open your eyes and look at what you’ve done; look at the truth!” It was like bringing back “Hello, Dexter Morgan,” a few times that was left over from the Trinity Killer with John Lithgow.
Was it always the plan to have Harrison — who carries Dexter’s letter to Hannah with him — be the one to kill him? Harrison, in the episode prior, went from learning the code and thinking his father was a superhero to killing him.
Yes, it was always the intention to do that. There’s a phrase, not in a dangerous way, that I’ve learned from decades of therapy: “A son has to kill his father so that he can be his own man,” whether in it’s in business or in relationships or how you talk to your dad as you become a young adult. I had a pretty lousy father and fathers and sons is the theme of the season and the title of the last episode is “Sins of the Father.” Dexter finally understands that he indeed is a criminal. He’s a killer. Harrison brought this sort of teenage optimism to it in the previous episode where he says, “If we kill all these people, think of the thousands of lives that we’re saving.” Dexter never thought of that. Dexter was thinking about it as his code from Harry: don’t get caught, kill for good. Harrison, in his youthful optimism, comes up with the superhero part of that and that pleases Dexter but it also shows Dexter that there’s a way to bring Harrison on board.
When the flagship ended, you envisioned an ending for the series that sees Dexter about to be executed for his crimes. You flirted with that idea in this finale. Was there ever a point where you wanted to carry out that ending for the character?
No. It needed to be Harrison. It is complicated, messy and makes sense and paints us into a corner. This was the best idea. We talked about other stuff but kept landing back at the same place and you write to it. The ending was one of the most satisfying weeks I’ve had writing Dexter.
When I was watching the finale, my first thought was that Deb was right that Dexter should have kept his Dark Passenger from Harrison. Was this your effort to give Deb a better ending than her death in the first finale?
That wasn’t intentional. Deb, we had to remind ourselves, doesn’t exist. She’s that pixel in the corner that we all have in our head: she’s Dexter’s doubt. It had nothing to do with anything in the past. We were so lucky to get Jennifer back, she elevated everything.
You’ve said from the get-go that Dexter: New Blood ends Dexter’s story. But Harrison still very much has a story to tell: out on his own, both of his parents now dead and having been let go by the local sheriff. Is there more that you’d like to explore with Harrison? He still knows of The Code and has his own Dark Passenger.
Yes, there’s a lot I’d like to explore. I don’t have permission yet from Showtime to explore it. But if they were to call — much like Gary Levine called to do what became New Blood — and say we want to do Harrison, I’d drop everything and say yes in a minute.
Could Michael C. Hall ever embody the character of Dexter Morgan again, perhaps as Harrison’s version of Harry or even Deb? Or is this definitively the end of Michael as Dexter Morgan/Jim Lindsay?
I honestly don’t know. We’re talking about a hypothetical show here. My instinct is maybe once just to charge up Harrison and charge up the audience or maybe never. It’s either the best idea in the world or the most obvious idea in the world. If Showtime says yes and I can put together a writing room, that’s a question I’ll bring up to them. Right now, I just don’t know.
In the end, a small-town female cop cracks the Bay Harbor Butcher case. Why was this important to you? Why does Angela let Harrison go and call it in as an officer-involved shooting?
Her cop instincts are pushed aside for a moment and her maternal and humane instincts come forward. Look at all the death that she has seen in this episode: she just saw 30 bodies in Kurt’s tomb. Life is terrible and she has a chance to do something good. She knows Dexter killed Logan. It also complicates, in a surprising way, the storytelling. You don’t expect it and that’s another aspect of it being satisfying.
The finale featured a number of old faces, Doakes, LaGuerta, Rita, and the return of Angel Bautista (David Zayas). Was there anyone you wanted to return but couldn’t get?
No. Anybody we wanted, we got. I called John Lithgow and he was on a plane the next day. Anybody we invited back was too happy to come join us.
If this is truly the end of the Dexter franchise, what do you hope the larger legacy of the show is?
The legacy is the audience. I want the audience to say, “I was entertained; I learned something; I was stimulated; I was surprised; I was frightened and I’m satisfied.”
The first finale of Dexter ranks among — if not at the top of — the list of the worst series-enders of all time. Was redemption — and getting off of that list — in the back of your mind as you were crafting how New Blood ended?
Absolutely. We wanted to redeem ourselves. That ending in season eight left a bad taste in the audience’s mouth, which tarnished the legacy of a great show. I also wrote the finale of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and it was a challenge. I wrote it with Tom Straw and it was a challenge to take Jackie (Edie Falco), who hurt so many people, and feel something for her. People don’t know if she actually died or not and we left it as an interactive thing. With Dexter: New Blood, [Dexter’s death] had to happen. I hope the audience feels shocked. I often watch audience reaction videos on YouTube and can’t wait to watch those for this episode. I think they’re going to lean to the side of awesome on this one.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
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TV News
After Driving Again And More, Britney Spears Shares Her Latest Taste Of Post-Conservatorship Freedom
Published
1 year agoon
August 3, 2022By
Sawah
They say it’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary, and that’s likely particularly true if you’ve been denied access to those things for an extended period of time. After Britney Spears was released from the conservatorship she’d been under, the singer has been reintroducing herself to some of life’s simple pleasures. Last summer Spears was super pumped about regaining the freedom to drive, and in January the “Toxic” singer documented drinking her first glass of wine in over a decade. The newlywed continued to celebrate the post-conservatorship life by sharing her first trip to a bar.
Fans of the former pop singer are accustomed to seeing Britney Spears dancing and twirling and modeling different outfits at her and Sam Asghari’s new home. However, the “Toxic” singer took her followers on an exciting field trip, in which she and her assistant patronized a local drinking establishment. She shared her trip — and a sarcastic remark — on Instagram:
As she and her assistant Victoria Asher apparently enjoyed a drink and an app, Britney Spears couldn’t help but throw a little shade at her family, remarking that she was “so so grateful” for not being allowed to have a cocktail for the 13 years after her father Jamie Spears took control of her life. In fact, the 40-year-old said in her post this is her first time to partake in such an adventure. In the video, she shared:
This is my first time at a bar. First time. I feel so fancy, and I feel so sophisticated.
Britney Spears definitely deserves to enjoy all of the fancy and sophisticated things in life. It was a lot more than the keys to the car and a glass of wine that were denied Britney for those 13 years. She’s compared her Jamie’s Spears’ treatment of her to sex trafficking, saying she was forced to work against her will seven days a week with no days off. She testified that she was not allowed to get married or remove her IUD to try to have another baby.
She also said she was not allowed to perform new music or remix her old songs, and it seems like that’s another freedom she’s taking back. It’s been reported that the “Baby One More Time” singer met with Elton John to do a duet of “Tiny Dancer in a “super secret” recording session. Her new husband Sam Asghari also has hinted that his wife hopes to return to performing at some point.
Speaking of Sam Asghari, the end of the conservatorship meant that Britney Spears was finally allowed to marry her longtime boyfriend, who proposed in September 2021. Spears and Asghari tied the knot in a fairytale wedding June 9, in front of friends including Paris Hilton, Drew Barrymore and Madonna, before embarking on a two-week yacht honeymoon. The free life certainly looks good on the former pop star, and even as the court battles related to Spears’ conservatorship continue, we love to see her taking full advantage of her freedom.
TV News
How ‘Yellowjackets’ Stars Survived Hollywood
Published
1 year agoon
August 3, 2022By
Sawah
Sure, they may have eaten a person back in the day. But there are some things the grown women of Yellowjackets just wouldn’t do. On this, the actresses who play them — Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci — agree, as they gather in a backyard in L.A.’s Topanga Canyon in late July, just a few weeks before they start filming the second season of their breakout show.
The Showtime survival thriller, created and executive produced by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, earned seven Emmy nominations, including outstanding drama series and acting nominations for Lynskey and Ricci. The Yellowjackets storyline alternates between 1996 and the present day as it follows members of a high school girls soccer team whose plane crashes and strands them for 19 months in the wilderness, where they resort to cannibalism to survive.
Part of the show’s nostalgic appeal relies on its casting of these actresses, three of whom audiences knew as young women for their slyly offbeat roles in films like The Addams Family (Ricci), Cape Fear (Lewis) and Heavenly Creatures (Lynskey), to play the crash survivors as adults. In this conversation with THR, Cypress, Lewis, Lynskey and Ricci disclose their ’90s regrets, share what it means when you call an actress “quirky” and reveal how survival bonds women — including in the trenches of Hollywood.
Who here knew each other before the show?
MELANIE LYNSKEY (Points to Christina Ricci.) We knew each other a little bit. I went to a Nick Cave concert by myself, and Christina came up and —
CHRISTINA RICCI I was very excited to see you.
LYNSKEY So excited. We were having a lovely chat, and then she’s like, “Are you here by yourself?” She’s the coolest person of all time, and I was intimidated. I just felt embarrassed to say, “I’ve come to a concert by myself.” I was like 24 or something.
RICCI I was impressed because I couldn’t go anywhere by myself.
LYNSKEY I also went to see Clay Aiken by myself because nobody would come with me.
It’s surprising that none of you had worked together over the years.
JULIETTE LEWIS It’s wild when you’ve been around so long, and you sort of have a kindred connection to people. There’s certain actors you’re like, “Mmm, we’re not of the same tree,” and then there’s other actors you’re like, “Oh, yeah. We have some roots.”
Juliette, Melanie and Christina, all three of your Wikipedia entries say some version of, “Often plays quirky or offbeat characters.” What do those words mean to you?
LEWIS Real people, specific and unpredictable.
LYNSKEY I remember I got cast in a movie when I was like 21, and the description of the character before I auditioned was “Blah, blah, blah, the beautiful girl who sits next to him in school.” Then, at the table read, it had been changed to “Blah, blah, blah, cute and quirky.” I was like, “You don’t need to change it. Just keep it …” They’re like, “We better change this description or people will be like, wrong actress.” So, sometimes it feels … I don’t know. I never liked that word, “quirky.”
RICCI When you say that all of us had this description, that to me speaks to a past time, when, if you weren’t the leading-lady ingenue then you were quirky and offbeat. All right, so there’s two groups for actresses? In a way, I’m fine with being in the category I’m in because what it means to me is that I have made an effort in my career to do things that I feel like I haven’t seen before. So, in some ways, I like it. In other ways, I’m like, “Ugh.” It’s a little dismissive. A little cute and dismissive.
LEWIS We come from the ’90s where, when I had blond hair, I was the pretty airhead, and then I dyed my hair dark, and I was the wisecracking, sarcastic girl. But yeah, I think it’s really neat that we’ve all carved this path of range and specificity.
Isn’t another term for that “character actor”?
RICCI But “character actress” used to be something they used to describe an ugly woman.
TAWNY CYPRESS Or Abe Vigoda.
RICCI Back in the late ’90s, my agents were always like, “We have to be so careful you don’t become a character actress. If we’re not careful, you’re going to end up just like Jennifer Jason Leigh.” I was like, “I like her.” They were so afraid of me not being a leading lady, of me not being sexually attractive to people. It was really the last thing I ever wanted, was for anyone to be attracted to me.
LEWIS My dad was a character actor. So to me, it was something that was super noble. It was a world of adventure and not limiting. I rebelled against the system, the PR system of being in some bizarre idea of beauty. I really revolted against that, for better or for worse. Crying in a bathroom at a photo shoot, like, “I won’t come out.” They want these doe-eyed looks. That’s for sure what I didn’t do in pictures, so I always looked slightly insane, which I prefer over, like, “Do you want to fuck me?”
Tawny, what was your sense of what the expectations were for you when you were starting out?
CYPRESS I’ve had a different row to hoe. I’ve spent my whole career doing shitty roles of the sassy one on the side. Honestly, growing up as an actor, I wanted to be an ingenue.
LEWIS Isn’t that funny? And I wanted to be sassy and opinionated.
CYPRESS I couldn’t be an ingenue. I just couldn’t. It’s just not in me, you know? I was never presented with those roles, ever, and I was like, “Oh, OK. That’s not who I am.” I sort of, growing older, have embraced my Jersey side, and I am who I am, and this is what you get.
LYNSKEY I started calling myself a character actor in interviews when I was really young because I think it was reclaiming the term or something. I think I just was like, “That’s what I am.” My agents had all that kind of intensity around it, too. I remember when I did Coyote Ugly —
RICCI Oh my God, you got a piece in that? I went up for that, and I didn’t get it.
CYPRESS I did too.
LYNSKEY I played the best friend from Jersey. But the scrutiny that was on Piper [Perabo], who’s one of the coolest, smartest women, just the way people were talking about her body, talking about her appearance, focusing on what she was eating. All the girls had this regimen they had to go on. It was ridiculous. I was already starving myself and as thin as I could possibly be for this body, and I was still a [size] four. That was already people putting a lot of Spanx on me in wardrobe fittings and being very disappointed when they saw me, the costume designer being like, “Nobody told me there would be girls like you.” Really intense feedback about my physicality, my body, people doing my makeup and being like, “I’m just going to help you out by giving you a bit more of a jawline and stuff.” Just the feedback was constantly like, “You’re not beautiful. You’re not beautiful.” In your early 20s, so much of it is about beauty, and how people respond to you, and do people want to fuck you? Do people think you’re their best friend? Even the best friend thing, I started to be like, “I don’t want to do that too many times.”
Did you have to unlearn anything that people tried to teach you when you were starting out?
LEWIS I had developed such a survival mechanism to protect my autonomy, sort of, “You don’t own me. You don’t tell me my value. Only I do.” I was extremely self-critical — it still happens — of my work. It’s almost like a defense mechanism that no one could talk shit about me more than I can. There’s all these things that are wrapped up in how to survive a system. That’s what I’m unlearning today — to be softer. This is a really remarkable industry to be a part of. I feel honored to be a part of it and what it gave me, but I do still hold on to what it took from me in my youth.
Given what you all experienced coming into the industry, do you feel at all protective of the younger actresses who play the younger versions of your characters?
LYNSKEY (Begins to cry.) So much. I feel very protective. At the beginning of production, I sent them all an email, and I just was like, “Whatever you need, if you need a voice, if you need someone to go to the producers for you, whatever you need,” and they were kind of like, “Cool. Thanks.” They’re fine.
CYPRESS Totally fine. Jas [Jasmin Savoy Brown] was a boss on set. She’s like, “This is how we’re doing my hair. This is what we’re doing.”
RICCI They’re very much of a different generation.
CYPRESS I am protective of Jas in the fact that she is so sexually positive, which I love. She has taught me so much, just knowing her as a person. But I’m like a mama bear to her, or a big sister. I’m like, “What are you putting online right now?” She’s like, “Whatever. Whatever. This is life, man. I love myself.” I’m protective, but I’m also in awe of her, you know?
LEWIS But there is a thing I always want to say to young people: Cultivate other interests deeply so that you’re not getting all your life’s blood from this industry, or your self-worth.
Is there anything you miss about the ’90s?
LYNSKEY I have a lot of love letters from the ’90s.
RICCI Someone used to fax me love letters when he was on tour. I did not save them. I throw everything out. I had a specific thing when I was a child, that we would be punished by the things that we loved being destroyed. My husband, who is a much healthier individual, has gone back and found all my old magazine covers on Etsy because he thinks it’s horrible that I never saved them. As a child, I learned that this is going to be taken from me, so why save it anyway?
LYNSKEY That’s heartbreaking. Well, I saved everything because I’m basically an emotional hoarder. I have this literal suitcase, an old-fashioned suitcase.
RICCI This is very dark, but I would just like to go back to that age and do it over again and not make so many fucking mistakes. Honestly, I regret so much.
CYPRESS Me too. One thousand percent.
LEWIS Me too.
RICCI I’d like to go back to 1996 and be like, “All right … we had a practice run. It went OK, but it wasn’t really as great as we wanted it to be. We’re going to do this again.” People who are like, “I have no regrets.” What fucking magic life did you live?
LEWIS Where they go, “I don’t regret anything because that led up to this moment.” Really? The thing that could’ve put my dad in an early grave, I fucking regret it. Yes. I was very scary as a young teenage person.
CYPRESS Yeah. I hurt a lot of people growing up, and I wish that I didn’t. I was going through my memory box. It was my great-great-grandmother’s she brought over from Hungary. It’s huge, and it’s filled to the brim with everything from my life. I came across a note from high school. It was my first gay friend, and it broke my heart because he was like, “I want to thank you for not talking to me anymore and just cutting me off the way that you did. It made it hurt less.” I literally was crying, and I had to call him and be like, “I just came across this note, and I’m so sorry that I was that person to you.” When I think back, I think how wonderful our relationship was, but I was a shit, you know? I would definitely do so many things differently.
LEWIS I’ve had those moments where I turned into … Because I’ve been bullied, but when I was 11 and got in a fight with a girl, I was mean [the same way] how a girl was mean to me. I was really vicious.
LYNSKEY I think people without regrets are narcissists. I think they’re lying to themselves.
RICCI Denial is the only way to get up that river.
What did you all feel when you learned that Roe v. Wade was overturned?
RICCI It’s really horrible to be told so plainly what your value is.
LEWIS I wish the two factions can talk, like, “Hey, what do you do with a bad situation, poverty and drug addiction, and rape?” You have to have an option that is salvageable or is sustainable for the survival of a person, a woman who’s living.
CYPRESS I don’t really give a shit what your reason to have an abortion is. It’s your fucking body. I don’t really fucking care. You don’t want to be a mom, right? That’s your fucking decision. Look, we can put morals on it and say, “Well, only when you’re raped, or only if it’s …” It’s like no, dude. It’s either in or out. We’re either telling women what to do with their bodies or we let them have their own choice. I am of the mind, choice. I’m not going to judge you for making that decision.
LYNSKEY And there seems to be this general lack of compassion and empathy that’s just growing and growing. There’s so much hatred, and people are unable to look at another person’s life and go, “Oh, you know, that’s an untenable situation,” or even, “That’s a difficult situation.” There’s no grace given to anybody else. There’s no empathy. You don’t get to make decisions for somebody else. You don’t know what’s right for them.
Is there a place for TV and film in that conversation?
CYPRESS I mean, that’s what TV and film do. That’s what art is. On Yellowjackets, let’s talk about Shauna’s baby in the woods, you know? Yeah. I think we have a lot of room to speak on this subject, and I hope we do.
Did anybody have their kids on set for season one?
LYNSKEY (Points to Ricci.) We did.
RICCI And I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone but these ladies that I was pregnant for six months. When we started, I was six weeks pregnant. It was difficult. There were so many times where I was like, “Ooh, when they find out I’m pregnant, and they made me sit in this smoky room all day. When they realize that they made me stand for eight hours, and I’m pregnant, and I have this horrible sciatica, and it’s 100 degrees, oh, they’re going to feel so bad.” They didn’t feel bad at all. But anyway, it was fine. In fact, it would’ve been helpful if I was playing a more emotional character because I can give a real good performance when I’m pregnant, real emo.
How would you finish the sentence, “Yellowjackets is really about …”?
CYPRESS Women. PTSD.
LYNSKEY Trauma.
CYPRESS Friendship.
RICCI Haunting, the way trauma haunts you. The way you can never escape. The way it twists people in different ways.
LEWIS Aberrant survival tactics.
We know that these characters have done a bunch of aberrant things, as you say, including cannibalism. But do you have in your mind an idea that, “OK, she may have eaten another human being, but she would never do this“?
RICCI I know when they confront me because I’m like, “OK, she wouldn’t do that.” Misty wouldn’t drink that drink. Originally, in the script, she was drinking a Brandy Alexander, and I said, “No, Misty would drink a chocolate martini.” I have rules and stuff for her in my head, and they do conflict with the writers sometimes. I don’t think she actually is interested in men, at all. I think she does it because she’s bored, or because she thinks that’s what she’s supposed to do. Then, she’s also realized that she can have a lot of fun trying to trick them into having sex with her when they don’t want to. It’s like men will kind of know that you don’t want to have sex with them, but if they can get you to have sex with them, they won.
LEWIS It’s a power thing.
RICCI Misty’s way of doing it is through this really horrible manipulation, making him feel guilty and having sex with her while feeling guilty, which would be a terrible experience.
When you have a different perspective on your character than the writers, what do you do?
RICCI That’s part of the thing with TV that I’ve learned now, being involved in a production but not being one of the EPs, so you aren’t a part of creating what people do. “OK, they wrote this scene. I have to play this scene. If she was in this situation, how the fuck would she be in this situation, and why would she be?” Then, you don’t have to tell other people what you come up with. They can find out about it later when you do press.
Does anybody else have a line in their mind that their character wouldn’t cross?
LYNSKEY I had one. There was something written into a script where I was going on a date with my lover, and they had me going into my daughter’s bedroom and taking her underwear, which was just not practical because I wouldn’t fit it. She’s little. But also, ew. I think there was something, apparently, somewhere, people liked the thing in the pilot where I’m masturbating in my daughter’s bedroom. I was like, “Can that just be an isolated incident? I don’t want it to be a theme.” So I just was like, “I don’t want to do that.” They were great about it.
LEWIS It comes, I think, with experience and respect, that they appreciate if you have a point of view. I have an “anything goes” stamp on me, which they all know. But I have strong ideas, especially about my trajectory in midlife. I’ve looked at Natural Born Killers recently, and I’m like, “Jesus.” Thank goodness I had a partner like Woody Harrelson, but it is so sexual. No one forced me into that. I was a young nihilist who didn’t give a fuck, and I felt comfortable with Woody, and I liked the material. But nowadays, I’m very particular. So, they had written a sex scene, and I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t know that she even gets off. I don’t know that she even can have orgasms.” That’s how deep I went. So it was more like, is she doing something to get something? At the end of the day, I just didn’t even think she fucks, sorry to be so graphic, at this juncture that you saw in season one. I think she might’ve had relationships with all of them in the wilderness. I don’t know if they’re going to write it, but that’s what I’d like to think of Natalie.
LYNSKEY That’s what I think too.
RICCI What? I never thought of that. Who would they be making out with? I guess each other.
The finale hints that there may be additional Yellowjackets who survived into adulthood. Have actors been cast for those roles?
LEWIS Wait, Melanie, didn’t you say that on our chain, that someone we like is cast to be … (At this point there is meaningful eye contact among the four women.)
RICCI We don’t know for sure. That’s what we’ve heard was close to happening.
LYNSKEY We don’t know anything.
On season one, you were making this show under the radar. Now there’s so much fan speculation. Does that change the way you approach the work?
RICCI There’s more pressure going into season two.
CYPRESS Have you guys also had that feeling of like, “Can I do this? Is it going to be good, the second season? Am I going to fuck this character up?”
LYNSKEY I have those fears.
RICCI Me too, but because TV is so fast, and you have so little time with the information, the process of talking about the show afterward helps you to evolve your take on your character. To understand things that were intended with the character that maybe weren’t clear originally because you get to hear the EPs talk about it. I’m going to make changes in the next season based on what I have come to realize through all this talking.
Like what?
RICCI Well, that’s a secret.
How much do you want to know about the path that your character is on?
CYPRESS Fuck, I want to know everything. I sit there, and when I think about the show, I think, “What the fuck are they going to do with this character?” There’s so many different parts to her right now. The dog thing. She’s now a senator. There may be an old love coming back, you know? I’m like, “How are they going to do this?” I just want to know.
LYNSKEY Now you’re a full-time dog killer.
RICCI I didn’t even know that you were supposed to be the one that killed the dog.
CYPRESS What?
RICCI I thought, “Oh, well maybe somebody broke in.”
LYNSKEY That could still be, right?
CYPRESS Wait, give me more to think about.
So you don’t go to the writers and say, “To be clear, did I kill the dog?”
CYPRESS Oh, we do. They just say, “Mmm.”
RICCI “We don’t know.”
CYPRESS But they do know.
RICCI I don’t think they’re trying to control us with no information or anything. Sometimes, they don’t want to commit to something that hasn’t been necessarily set in stone. I do find it frustrating to not know, and we’re never able to know fully. I have decided to learn how to function with knowing nothing.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in the Aug. 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
TV News
James Gunn Addresses Peacemaker Future Amid Batgirl Cancelation
Published
1 year agoon
August 3, 2022By
Sawah
Shockwaves from Warner Bros.’s cancelation of Batgirl have had many fans questioning the possibility of other DC-connected projects following suit. Amid outcries from fans of Batgirl, Michael Keaton, Brendan Fraser, and even Snyderverse fans who are always eager to picket Warner Bros., Peacemaker fans started asking James Gunn whether there was any possibility that his DC work was going to suffer amid the company’s cost-cutting exercise. Ironically, considering the history that led James Gunn to work with DCEU characters, it seems that the director and his shows are the only ones who are “safe.”
What seems like a lifetime ago, James Gunn was all set to start work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 for Disney and Marvel Studios when some old Twitter posts led to him being unceremoniously sacked. By the time Disney backtracked on their firing, Gunn was already committed to directing The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros., which is why Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has taken so long to arrive. Now, during all the chaos at Warner Bros., it appears that Gunn is not worried at all about the second season of Peacemaker getting the ax. When asked if the show was safe, Gunn simply replied:
“Yes, guys, calm down.”
That is a relief for fans of the small sub-universe Gunn is building inside the DCEU, which along with The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, is set to include at least another unannounced project and be linked to the Amanda Waller series that is in development. At least that side of the franchise doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
Related: Peacemaker: Will More Suicide Squad Members Appear in Season 2?
Is Warner Bros. Still Planning on Rebooting The DCEU?
There have been rumors of a “soft-reboot” coming to the DCEU for a long time, and while it seems at times like Warner Bros. is heading in that direction, they have constantly denied any such intention. During San Diego Comic-Con, the entire focus of the Warner Bros. live-action DC panel was on Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Both of these movies have their small links to the wider DCEU, and once again, Warner Bros. seemed to be causing confusion by including a Justice League montage within the Shazam sequel while at the same time professing that they are not revisiting that particular DCEU set up in any way.
One thing clear from Dwayne Johnson’s appearance at SDCC is that he believes that Black Adam is setting the tone for a new DCEU, and based on everything else that is happening, he could be right. While there is no way of telling exactly where the franchise will be heading beyond The Flash in 2023, with new additional entries like Wonder Woman 3 constantly being stuck in limbo, it has been made clear that some big changes are being made in regards to the DCEU and fans will be hoping that those changes bring some kind of consistency to the franchise before it ends up crashing down around itself.

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