How Christian Slater went from bad boy to good dad

On a July morning, actor Christian Slater sat on a bench at the Long Beach marina, grimacing in the California sunshine. He sighed, he scowled, he groaned. He looked like a man facing some terrible moral quandary. Or like a man with severe indigestion.

Slater, 55, was filming a scene for Dexter: Original Sin, the latest brand extension of the florid Showtime serial killer series that premiered in 2006. (Dexter: New Blood debuted in 2021; Dexter: Resurrection will air next year.)

Dexter (Patrick Gibson, right) and his dad Harry (Christian Slater) in Dexter: Original Sin.Credit: Paramount+

Original Sin, which premiered on Paramount+ on December 13, is set mostly in the early 1990s and describes the early career of Dexter Morgan, a forensic analyst in Miami who offs serial killers police can’t corral. It features the same central characters as the original show, though they are now played by different, younger actors, Slater among them.

That Slater should join the Dexter universe is no surprise. His résumé includes several killers, some accidental and some absolutely psycho. In the late 1980s and ’90s, he specialised in dark matter, playing anarchic, irresistible characters in movies such as Heathers (directed by Michael Lehmann, a producing director of Original Sin), True Romance and Pump Up the Volume.

Back then, Slater didn’t know how to separate himself from his characters. “I didn’t have an identity enough of my own to really be able to separate or differentiate between the two,” he said. “I was latching on to any sort of personality that I could find.” So that darkness impinged on his personal life too. There were arrests on charges of assault, drunk driving, attempting to board a flight with a gun in his luggage. Interview magazine once called him “the last analog bad boy”.

But Slater is now 19 years sober, and in the past decade he has re-emerged as a trusted television actor. (He is even off nicotine, more recently, after meeting with a hypnotist that comedian John Mulaney uses.) Sometimes, as in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, he has played gently parodic versions of himself. In Mr. Robot, Dr. Death and now Original Sin, he has embraced a new type – the wiser, older mentor encountering a new generation of chaos agents. Moral anguish looks good on him.

Slater doesn’t play a killer in Original Sin. He co-stars as Harry Morgan, a veteran cop who’s trying to keep his son’s homicidal urges in check. That Slater has morphed from bad boy to good dad, in his work at least, is a redemption arc years in the making. Slater sells it.

“It takes a little while to get the ship to turn,” he says, meditatively. (Christian Slater, meditative? I know!) “As far as the business perceiving you in that way, it just takes time.”

Slater didn’t watch Dexter when it first aired. He discovered it a few years later and felt that blend of pleasure and envy that’s particular to many actors. In the original, Harry was played by James Remar, a character actor who also has a way with psychopaths. Remar and Slater don’t look much alike. But there’s an impulsivity to both of them, an unpredictability that’s especially interesting when it’s held in check.

“We weren’t looking for lookalikes,” says Clyde Phillips, who created Dexter. “We were looking for essence-alikes. Christian brings that.”

Slater also brought experience with the mix of tones – comedy, drama, thriller, slasher – that Dexter requires. His past, personal and professional, suggested a comfort with dark material. “Maybe based on my history, they were drawn to me,” Slater says.

Slater was intrigued. He liked how the show made serial killing fun, how it put a perverse spin on otherwise normal conversations and situations. “It’s pretty twisted,” he says. “Yeah, it’s demented.” This is not a criticism. And he appreciates the moral complexity of Harry, a loving father trying to protect and nurture a difficult child.

It was a little strange to find himself an elder statesman on set, though he’d had a similar experience on Mr. Robot, the US drama that spurred this new phase of his career. His younger co-stars knew him from his early movies. They were surprised to find him generous, open, easy in himself.

“He was definitely more gregarious and friendly and kind than I was expecting,” said Patrick Gibson, who plays Dexter in Original Sin. On set, in July, I caught Gibson looking over at Slater, who stood beneath a leggy palm tree in sunglasses. “He looks cool as hell,” Gibson murmured.

Molly Brown, who plays Harry’s daughter, Deb, as a teen, used similar language to describe him. “He’s such a cool role model to have,” she said. But she was most struck by Slater’s obvious enthusiasm.

When he took on the role of Harry, Slater didn’t see many parallels between himself and the character. But in November, just after the season wrapped, he recognised a few. Asked to describe Harry, Slater said he was a good cop, a good partner, a loyal friend.

“He’s made some very questionable choices,” Slater continued. “He’s made mistakes, things he feels a lot of guilt and regret and remorse about. And now he is trying to move to a certain level of decency.” Then he paused. He was, he realised, describing himself.

“It’s nice to be getting the opportunity to play a character where, my life, his life, we’re on a similar trajectory,” he said. Then he couldn’t help but squint and flash that rascal smile. “I’m just not raising my children to be serial killers.”

Dexter: Original Sin screens on Paramount+

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.