Jack Alcott is coming off a busy year, crossing off dreams he has realized from a checklist he began when he was a young boy.
Not only did he make his big return as Harrison Morgan, son of Michael C. Hall’s serial killer character Dexter Morgan, in Showtime’s Dexter: Resurrection, but he is also making a splash in the Ned Crowley-directed feature Killing Faith.
In Resurrection, Harrison stepped into the spotlight properly, peeling back the layers of a character that was still very much a mystery after Dexter: New Blood. In the limited series, Harrison appears as a young adult for the first time, having been a child in the original series, looking for the father who abandoned him years ago.
All of that is enough to throw anyone for a loop. Still, when you add the fact that your dad is a serial killer, your mom was killed by one, and you have the instincts to become one too, its enough to break anyone’s spirit. These are the moments when Alcott is at his best, navigating the murky waters of Harrison’s life with no Slice of Life to keep him afloat.
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In Season 1 of Resurrection, Harrison is not just trying out to figure out his place in his father’s world, but he’s building his future and making mistakes along the way. Harrison has the urge to kill bad people like Dexter, and even un-alived a person in Season 1. However, the young Morgan controls his urges in ways his dad cannot. Following the crazy events of the freshman series’ finale, Alcott will have another go at fleshing out his character more, following the show’s recent Season 2 renewal.
Alcott spoke with Deadline between Resurrection and promotion for his new film Killing Faith, where fans will get to see more of his range as an actor. He stars alongside Bill Pullman, Guy Pearce and DeWanda Wise.
DEADLINE: What insight can you share on expanding the character of Harrison in Resurrection from what you set up in New Blood?
JACK ALCOTT: New Blood was the best role and experience that I had ever had. I didn’t think I was going to get to explore that character anymore. It was the coolest thing, I mean, it’s Dexter. It’s a show about a lot of things, like evolution. It’s a character study of Michael and the way he evolves this character and how his performance evolves, which is so phenomenal. He’s simultaneously carrying all of Dexter’s history, and he wears it so well as he continues to change and grow, and I get a taste of that myself.
We start with this indignant teenager who wants, needs, and deserves answers. That’s a really compelling place to start. Then, in Resurrection, we got to explore the father-son dynamic more. There was so much to wrestle with, so many things, and each one of them was a blessing, because I had a lot of time to explore all of these facets of Harrison.
DEADLINE: As much as Resurrection is a story centered on a father and son, there was a lot of Harrison’s mother, Rita, in the undertones of the season. There’s definitely a conversation here about nature vs. nurture, no?
ALCOTT: That’s been another favorite thing I’ve explored about this character: his duality. On one hand, you’ve got Dexter, and a whole lot of nature. Then you’ve got Rita, whose nurturing Harrison never got to experience, so she’s nature too. Despite this, Harrison is a very empathetic character, and he cares very, very deeply about other people.
Dexter has his own version of caring, but it’s for a very select few people. Outside of that, it feels like that’s been shut off. For Harrison, it feels as if it’s been turned all the way up. His empathy drives a lot of really great decisions, and a lot of really poor decisions. What may or may not motivate some crazy choices that feel attached to Dexter, would that be Harrison’s attachment to his father’s nature or something else, perhaps a little of both?
DEADLINE: It was interesting to see how Harrison handled the situation with his friend Elsa’s (Emilia Suárez) unscrupulous landlord. As a protector, Harrison had a good case to off him, but chose not to. What insight can you give into his thought process?
ALCOTT: Harrison is so internally mixed up, he coulnd’t articulate where these feelings come from himself. It comes out in a really impulsive way. It’s how the kill in the [hotel] bathroom came about, which was incredibly impulsive, and this [landlord situation] feels the same way. The only difference is that [the landlord kill] doesn’t happen, but it plays out in Harrison’s mind. He has no control over it like when he does kill Ryan, and he’s mortified. He switches off a bit to chop the body up, and he goes cold. He remembers what his father taught him. But when he snaps back to reality, he is shocked and mortified.
What makes it so scary for Harrison, is that he feels like he doesn’t have any control over it. He does control the way that he reacts and he doesn’t kill the guy, but he can’t control the feelings inside him. Am I a monster like my dad? There’s nothing scarier than the things you don’t understand.
DEADLINE: In the finale, Harrison gets to be part of the action. How much fun was it to shoot that episode?
ALCOTT: I was so excited. I remember shooting it and going into all of the scenes at the gala and feeling like it’s a miniature secret agent movie. I’ve always wanted to do a little espionage. This is, father and son spy time. I got to navigate through the party with a secret earpiece, and the little the little kid in me is screaming and jumping around for joy. Every day on that set was a blast.
Now we’ve got this version of Harrison that is hopeful and all of a sudden, he has everything to lose. I almost don’t know what’s more compelling. You don’t mess with the guy who has nothing to lose, but you also don’t mess with the guy that has everything to lose.
DEADLINE: Uma Thurman’s character Charley ominously tells Dexter she will one day kill Harrison. Was this foreshadowing, perhaps?
ALCOTT: I hadn’t thought about that but I guess that’s very possible. But at the same time, she got out of that pretty clean. She’d have to have a personal thing to want to hunt down Harrison, I guess.
DEADLINE: You worked alongside so many great actors this season, like Uma and Peter Dinklage, as well as David Dastmalchian, David Zayas and Krysten Ritter. As a young actor, what were you most excited to see from them?
ALCOTT: It was like a gazillion different master classes all happening at the same time. I got to see an actor I always wanted the opportunity to watch in person talking to another actor that I’ve always wanted to have the chance to watch in person, and so on. Sharing scenes with Uma, I’m gonna brag about that for the rest of my life. [Laughs]
DEADLINE: Pivoting to the big screen, you just premiered your new movie Killing Faith at Beyond Fest last month. What attracted you to the role of Edward?
ALCOTT: The character of Edward particularly excited me because in a script that’s already incredibly unusual, he managed to stand out as unique. In a story that’s so dark, it was very, very satisfying to get the chance to inhabit a character that brought nothing but light and joy. All the characters in Killing Faith have experienced massive amounts of trauma, and somehow Edward is the only one who doesn’t wear his. It just seems to slide off him as he happily rides along on his rickety old bike. Learning to ride Edward’s “bone shaker” was by far the toughest challenge I faced shooting this film.
DEADLINE: I heard there’s a Dexter connection with the new movie. What can you share?
ALCOTT: I knew DeWanda before we started Killing Faith! I met her through her husband Alano Miller on the set of Dexter: New Blood, who also acted on the series. Learning that DeWanda was cast in Killing Faith was a phenomenal surprise. She’s a true pleasure to work with. She can carry so much power and weight in all her performances, all the while having a blast on set. She brings a truly effortless sense of fun to her work that’s incredibly contagious.
While I didn’t know Guy before we started, I was well acquainted with his work, The Count of Monte Cristo is still one of my favorite movies. Like D, his professionalism and talent was matched by his ability to bring fun and adventure into the dark desert world we created in Santa Fe. Exceedingly grim stories like Killing Faith can be taxing to tell without a sense of levity on set, and having both Guy and DeWanda lead us on screen with Ned Crowley at the helm made the experience feel a lot like summer camp. I think that sense of fun shines through in the film that we made together — guts, hearts and all.