Article: Erik King: The Man Who Keeps "Dexter" Up At Night

Michael C. Hall and Erik King on "Dexter"

By Terry Keefe

The last time this writer saw Sgt. Doakes, the character Erik King plays on “Dexter,” he had been thrown into a cage somewhere in the Everglades by the title character/serial killer portrayed by Michael C. Hall. Things weren’t looking so good for Doakes in that cage, so it was nice to hear Erik King’s very-much-alive voice on the other end of the phone when we spoke at the end of November.
“The one thing I can reveal is that he doesn’t die this next weekend,” laughs King when pumped for details of the coming episode. It’s safe for him to do that, because of magazine lead time, but there seems little getting around the fact that if Dexter is caught, then there’s no more show. Or there may be. It’s a series filled with surprises, and so it might be not be wise to write off Doakes just yet.

The second season of “Dexter” has contained some big scenes and pivotal plot points for Doakes, who has finally caught Dexter red-handed in one of his acts of butchery after two seasons of tailing him. King has crafted the relentless Doakes into the perfect adversary for Dexter, tailing him like a never-sleeping combination of a phantom and the Terminator. “Things always have to make sense to Doakes,” says King of his driven character. “He knows something is wrong with Dexter, and it drives Doakes nuts when he doesn’t have answers. He’s very myopic. Everything has to make order to the exclusion of other things. But that’s his downfall in a lot of other ways.” Indeed, the same qualities which make Doakes the only one who can figure Dexter for what he really is have also managed to get Doakes suspended from the department. King elaborates using an example from a recent episode, “There’s that moment when Doakes is right in front of Agent Lundy (Keith Carradine) and he could tell him what he knows about Dexter, but he chooses not to. He has to be the lone wolf and solve the case himself.”

One quality that Doakes definitely seems to lack on the show is much sense of humor, which is not the case with the man who portrays him. Says King about Doakes, “He cracks me up. The way Doakes eats and the way he talks. I probably shouldn’t be saying this but people have stopped me and said, ‘Doakes needs to get laid. What’s his problem?’” Not that King and his television alter-ego don’t share a few things in common. “The passionate part of Doakes is very much me. And the part about how he feels there’s a right way for things to be. My father was in law enforcement, and I very much grew up in a household where I was taught there was a right way, and a wrong way, to do things. As well as a right way, and a wrong way, to treat people,” he says. When asked what his parents think of the show, King explains that his father loves the show, as does his mother, although she sometimes thinks it’s a little gory. “My mom watches it during the day,” he says. “She can’t sleep if she watches it at night.”

The traditional character dichotomy that would normally take place in a story about a cop pursuing a serial killer is reversed in “Dexter,” and it’s Doakes who the audience winds up rooting against, although he is ostensibly the good guy. “People have stopped me on the Century City mall escalator and said, ‘Leave Dexter alone.’”, laughs King. “It’s a credit to the writers that they’ve made Dexter sympathetic. It’s partially because you hear his inner monologue. Now, if Doakes had an inner monologue, you might be rooting for him!”