Dexter Finds New Life on NUVOtv

Courtesy of NUVOtv

Showtime’s Dexter went of the air last September, but now all eight seasons of the serial killer series is going to be run uncut, in its entirety on NUVOtv. In a recent conference call interview, two of the show’s stars — David Zayas and Lauren Velez looked back at the time they were first contacted about the unconventional concept in the mid-2000s.

Zayas, who played Sergeant Angel Batista, was game from the get go. As he recounted, “I was shooting a film in Toronto, and my manager just sent me the script. I thought the script was brilliant. I didn’t know how it would be received, but I wanted to be a part of it, and I flew into New York from Toronto to audition for it. They called me back, and I was lucky enough to land the show. But I wanted to do it from the beginning. I thought it was an exciting concept and one that I wanted to be a part of.”

But the future Lieutenant Maria LaGuerta was a little bit trepidatious. “I remember vividly when I first heard about it, and I thought it sounded very edgy, a little scary, and I was looking to do something that was a little bit lighter,” recalled Velez. “I was told about it before I read the script, but after I read the pilot script I was blown away by how it was so brilliantly written, and it completely changed how I felt about it, and I thought, ‘If I can bring something to this character and have it be part of this role and create a real human being in this whole arena, that would be an incredible thing.’” 

Both stars are happy that the series is finding new life on NUVOtv. Born in Brooklyn to parents who moved from Puerto Rico in the 1950s, Velez noted that Dexter’s launch on NUVOtv has a deeper personal meaning for her. “David and I worked together on Oz before we worked on this, and I’m really proud of the work that we did together and the way we grew together not only as friends and familia on the show but as actors. It’s a very wonderful thing for me to be able to work with him but also create these two characters and create them in this show, and these characters are Latino, and now the audience on NUVO is going to have a chance to enjoy the characters that we’ve created. All of that is a really wonderful, wonderful thing.”

Born in Puerto Rico, Zayas is excited that Dexter will be reaching a different audience on the English-language entertainment network that was created for modern Latinos. “There’s going to be a whole new demographic of people, particularly Latinos, that are going to be watching the show and are going to be identify with Latino characters on the show,” acknowledged Zayas. “They’re going to, number, one see the integrity and in those characters and also recognize the cultural effects of it, the language effects of it, how they deal with family, how they deal with work, how they deal with a lot of things. It’s going to feel familiar to them, and that’s the wonderful thing about NUVOtv TV, that they’re going to have that kind of an audience.”

Beyond that, as Zayas pointed out, the audience will exposed to fascinating characters from a wide variety of cultures, “What caught me about the story was that they kept the integrity of the characters that were Latino and they were in a position — like a detective, like a lieutenant, like a district attorney — and they maintained that for the most part throughout the eight years. And that [is] something rare. You don’t see that on television too much. I was very proud of the fact that I was part of a show that maintained that diversity of ethnicity, because it just wasn’t Latinos: Masuka was a Japanese-American, different African-Americans… It was multiethnic, and that was an important aspect for me to be part of the show and be proud to be part of the show.

Tune in to see Dexter beginning Monday, January 13, 2014 at 9:00 p.m. EST/8 p.m. Central on NUVOtv.

Watch the trailer for Dexter on NUVOtv: