‘Dexter’ starts wrapping up filming in Grafton
The Grafton Country Store has lured multiple people from the Dexter crew. 
The crew gets the set ready for another long night of shooting. 
The front door at 3 Chestnut Street is shielded from view. 
Catering tents are set up Dauphinais Park. 
Grafton Police block traffic from entering Chestnut Street. 
Crew set up for the day at 3 Chestnut Street. 
Crew set up for the day at 3 Chestnut Street. 
Crew set up for the day at 3 Chestnut Street. 
Crew set up for the day at 3 Chestnut Street. 
Crew set up for the day at 3 Chestnut Street. 
Catering tents are set up Dauphinais Park. 
The parking lot across the street from the Grafton Flea Market was taken over by crew. 
The parking lot across the street from the Grafton Flea Market was taken over by crew.
Audrey was hanging out by the side of the road on Chestnut Street, dressed in her pink pajamas, hoping to catch a movie star.
She was up past her bedtime, but there was murder in the air.
“You won’t be watching this show,” her mother, Ashley Ralph, told the 6-year-old. “Mommy and Daddy will.”
A crew member walking by with a bucket of — are those drops of red paint dripping from the lid? — chuckled with approval. “Definitely not THIS show.”
The mother-daughter pair was among multiple Graftonites who have spent the past week casually strolling past 3 Chestnut Street, a pale blue historic home now forever known as the place where the revival of Showtime’s “Dexter” was shot.
Shot? Maybe it was a stabbing. Maybe inside there was a plastic-shrouded kill room where the titular serial killer (you may kinda-sorta root for him — he only kills bad people) has a choice of sharp objects. Despite the friendliness of the crew, they’re close-lipped about exactly how what’s happening in Grafton fits into the plot.
This is what is known: the 10-episode Season 9 picks up with Dexter (Michael C. Hall) far from the original series’ Miami. Grafton, along with multiple Central Mass towns, is filling in for upstate New York, where snow coats the ground and Christmas lights twinkle in homes.
“It looks like real snow!” Audrey said, cautiously bending down to touch a drift on the ground. “It feels like a big blanket with cotton balls!”
Lesley University film major Haley Hebert has worked on the set all week as a PA thanks to a flier left on the car windshield of Gordon Wheeler, her uncle. She jumped at the chance to get time behind the scenes.
“How often do you get this kind of chance?” she asked.
Signs of filming are all around town, with arrows pointing trucks to various locations — crew parking and transportation at the Grafton Flea Market, truck storage at the former DPW, catering tents at Dauphinais Park on North Street. The code name on the signs is “Marble,” but the show was outed well before it came to Grafton.
Crew members — about 80 percent of whom are local to Central Mass — have also hit several Grafton business. At the Grafton Country Store, chalkboards welcome the crew, while the neighboring Town House Tavern added speciality cocktails to the menu: the “Kill Room Cosmo,” a “Bloody Rita,” and a “Dark Passenger” shot.
Friday night’s shoot was expected to finish around dawn, with possibly another day in town.
Help support Grafton’s only independent source of news with a donation!
