‘Dexter’ Star Julia Stiles Reveals How Showtime Series Impacted Her Career

The rise of prestige TV has led to many film actors making the leap to the small screen, and 10 Things I Hate About You star Julia Stiles is one of them. The actress currently stars in Sundance’s lavish drama Riviera, but Stiles first cut her teeth as Lumen Pierce in the fifth season of Dexter. In a recent interview with Collider, Stiles explained that her time on the serial killer drama was what really opened her eyes to the creative satisfaction that can come from working in television as opposed to film.

“It was great. It was my first introduction to a cable drama,” Stiles explained. “And I remember back then, cable had just started to become great and really appealing to actors. I had always had this fear of, if you sign up for a TV show, which would be like a six-year contract, is it gonna end up being something that you didn’t anticipate or something that wasn’t really what you signed up for? And Dexter totally changed my mind about that so that then I could go on to do Riviera and feel really confident that working on a 13-episode drama is a really fun job and can be really rewarding for actors.”

Stiles also explained that because she was just a season-long guest star, the pressure was off. Dexter was at the height of its popularity in season five, but she was just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. “In some ways the pressure was off because I wasn’t the lead on Dexter,” Stiles said. “I wasn’t a series regular, but to come in and love what they wrote for me and to come in and be able to play that part for one season was really great and it made me want to do more TV.”

At the end of her arc, Lumen ended up leaving the revenge killing behind and managed to walk away still alive. With the return of Dexter for another season, could fans see Stiles again? They’ll just have to wait and see what tricks the creators have up their sleeves for the revival.