Uma Thurman is alive, well and returning for Season 2 of the Paramount+ series "Dexter: Resurrection" (premiering Friday, Oct. 30), raising some killer questions.
Now that twisted billionaire Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage
) was killed in the "Dexter" sequel's Season 1 finale, will Prater's former right-hand woman, Special Ops Officer Charley Brown (Thurman), strike up a romance with recovering serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)?Or will Charley end up on the wrong end of the vigilante's knife like her boss? Or both?
Thurman, 56, who was married to actorEthan Hawke for seven years from 1998-2005, suggests that Charley might be Dexter's perfect emotionally unavailable match.
"They're both avoidant when it comes to relationship issues," Thurman
tells USA TODAY. "I can relate to that aspect. I understand it very well."
Hall, 55, agrees there's potential for something beyond a strictly professional partnership, even if Dexter's romantic history is littered with casualties – including his wife, Rita Morgan (Julie Benz), who was murdered by the Trinity Killer.
"I think Dexter, given his appetite to be appreciated and seen, is vulnerable to what Charley represents," Hall says. "But it's a fraught proposition. We'll see."
Dexter is keeping his head down, working as an Uber driver in New York City to remain close to his son Harrison (Jack Alcott). His official reason for the alliance with Charley is personal: to rid the city of Prater's collection of depraved serial killers, including the New York Ripper (a derangedBrian Cox of "Succession") and the Five Borough Killer (Dan Stevens).
The quietly disturbed duo even enjoy intimate meetings at an upscale restaurant, where Charley shares an $8,000 bottle of wine, thanks to full access to dead Prater's deep pockets. The acting duo is convincing sipping the fake expensive wine.
Not that Thurman, who grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts, the daughter of Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, would ever dream of dropping $8,000 on wine.
"I'm from Massachusetts. I would never consider such a thing," Thurman says. "Maybe if I was at someone's daughter's wedding, I'd be like, 'Sure,' and try it."
Michael C. Hall faces Dexter's killer midlife crisis
Dexter has his own problems in Season 2, including a growing midlife crisis. But Proud Gen X-er Hall, who first played the blood-spatter analyst and secret serial killer on Showtime 20 years ago, doesn't need to stretch for this role.
"Sometimes, writers will be like, you know, 'Dexter's older now,' and I'm like, 'Yes, so am I,'" Hall says. "I don't have to sort of indicate that 20 years have passed because 20 years have, in fact, passed. A lot of it takes care of itself."
Even Dexter's weakening eyesight comes naturally.
"I need glasses, too. So I can relate," Hall says. "I like it better this way. It softens the world up."
Dexter hasn't lost is his knack for sending villains to a grisly end. Prater learned that lesson in the Season 1 finale, when the billionaire serial killer enthusiast and ringleader ended up strapped to Dexter's signature plastic-wrapped kill table inside his own macabre trophy vault.
It's wasn't just Prater's violent death that made the scene memorable. It was Dexter's refusal to preserve a single souvenir of the billionaire, who had spent years idolizing serial killers.
"What Dexter did, or in that case, didn't do to him, telling Prater that he hoped to not remember him," Hall says. "This guy was desperate to sort of be alive in the imagination of these people he fetishized."
Hall relished the showdown with Dinklage, especially in Prater's sinister vault filled with trophies and grisly memorabilia from notorious serial killers.
"Peter's amazing," Hall says. "He's genuinely playful in the best way and he mixes things up. And that was the first time there'd been a kill in a room in which so much had happened. That vault was like a charged environment."
Uma Thurman is ready for more action – or even Dexter's kill table
Thurman, whose bloody katana-wielding exploits in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies cemented action icon status, wouldn't mind getting more physical in "Dexter: Resurrection."
"I keep thinking that there'll come a day where maybe I'll remind myself about a little more action here or there. But I don't know. That day may not come," Thurman says. "I'm really loving playing this character and being deep inside someone so complicated. These layers of her are unfurling and it gives me a lot of inspiration to come to work."
Of course, there's always the danger that few people remain in Dexter's orbit for long, and some end up wrapped in plastic. Charley doesn't fit Dexter's code of shrink-wrap killing those who really deserve it – fiends who have committed murder and escaped justice. But Thurman is game for the gruesome exit if the show producers come calling.
"I had been thinking, 'I don't know if they're going to put me on that table,'" Thurman says, laughing nervously and getting a "you never know" shrug from Hall.
"I trusted [the writers] to do what was right for the show," Thurman adds, laughing. "Charley doesn't fit the code. So if Charley had ended up on [Dexter's] table I would have do something really fun to get there."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Dexter: Resurrection' star Uma Thurman talks 'relationship issues' in Season 2
