I love it when a plan comes together
Julie Benz talks about being on “Dexter” and her new TV series “Defiance” in a recent interview forMTV. Read it after the jump.
In “Defiance,” which premieres April 15th (the game launches two weeks prior), Julie Benz plays Amanda Rosewater, newly-appointed mayor of the town for which the show is named. “She’s a bit in over her head as far as her job goes,” says Benz of her character. “Her heart’s in the right place, but that doesn’t always serve her well.”
“It’s not a pretty show,” says Benz. “It’s not like I had great clothes and I got lots of hair and make-up.”But it was work that the actress nonetheless enjoyed. “I had to go through automatic weapons training, which was pretty intense and pretty cool.”
Rita Morgan, loving wife of Michael C. Hall’s principled serial killer on “Dexter,” suffered the same fate at the end of season 4 as the majority of the people who entered Dexter’s life. “No one was more shocked than me,” Benz says. “I found out an hour before they put out the sсript for that final episode.”Dexter’s discovery of Rita’s dead body is one of the most disturbing images from the series, but Julie Benz’s immediate thoughts had little to do with that. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh my god, I just lost my job,’” she remembers. “But creatively I could see what it was they were trying to do. And I respected that, because it really did reset the show in many ways.”
Benz still misses Rita, but she’s grateful to have had the opportunity to play an important role in what turned out to be a huge game-changer for the show. “It was a powerful moment and one I’m so honored to be a part of.”