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Clearing Our Minds in the Dollhouse with Eliza Dushku
by Troy Rogers
 Working with a guy like Joss Whedon early in your career can sometimes pay off down the road in more ways than one. After playing the role of Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel almost a decade ago, Eliza Dushku has matured as an actress since the days of working on Buffy before getting her own series in 2003 with Tru-Calling. Since then Eliza has kept herself busy in both film and TV and now returns to the small-screen in the futuristic mind-bender, Dollhouse, which makes its premieres Friday, February 13 on Fox.
A series that Dushku developed directly with Joss Whedon from idea to pilot, Dollouse follows Eliza in the role of Echo, a young woman who has her mind wiped clean in a world where similar "Dolls" are used to carry out missions, secret activities, and crimes while being watched by a group of "Handlers." Both Dushku and Whedon are aiming to tap into the fanbase left behind by Buffy and start a brand new future where fans can live in their newly created Dollhouse along with the characters.
Earlier this week we hopped on the line for a conference call with Eliza Dushku where she filled us journalist types in on what fans can expect from Dollhouse, how the series came to be, what it's like to work with Joss Whedon, and what deeper, mind-blowing explorations will take place inside Fox's new Dollhouse.
Eliza Dushku on how Dollhouse has changed through the development process since the initial idea:
 "Well, when we first sat down I had just sort of negotiated a deal with Fox to ultimately come up with a show to do with them, and Joss was really the only person on my mind. I thought if he wasn’t going to do a show with me, he at least knew me well enough to sort of guide me and to help me put together the ideas that were in my head and to help me sort of figure out what kind of woman I wanted to play and what I wanted to be a part of.
"So when we sat down and we just started talking about life and talking about our careers and different projects, we’re really like-minded people and we were talking about what it’s like for me, Eliza, waking up every day and having to somewhat be a different person every day. And we were talking about the Internet and how people can get so much and with just the click of a button find anything that they want or need or desire or think that they want or need or desire and then what actually happens when they get that. We were absolutely talking about sexuality and what’s taboo and objectification and just things that are relevant to us.
"Four hours later, Joss absolutely sort of sprang forward with the idea, with the basis for the show and said, 'It will be called Dollhouse and it will be, basically, exactly this. It will be you with the ability to be imprinted to be someone sexy or to be anything, or to be objectified every week or multiple times a week and how that affects people. We’re going to stir people up and we’re going to make people uncomfortable, because that’s sort of interesting to us.'" Here we are 13 episodes later and we think we’ve done that."
Dushku on the characters, Joss Whedon, and her participation in the process:
 "I love Ghost. I love Target. I love the first three, four, five episodes. But the cool thing is, the show gets better even from there. I mean, Joss is really a novelist and you have to give him chapters to tell the story. He and the other writers just - I participated on a lot of levels as producer also with ideas of my own. I mean, the show just goes so deep and it’s so exciting and so thought provoking and relevant."
On what's she's learned from being an executive producer and how it has changed what she sees:
"It’s sort of been what I expected. I have been in this business now for over 15 years. I sort of grew up in this business and it was just exciting. I don’t know. I guess I could say validating to have a friend and a partner like Joss in this, and to have him acknowledge that this was something that he believed, an undertaking that I could make or take with him. He obviously has ten million things to do in a day, most importantly being up in the writers’ room and breaking stories and knowing that this is sort of our baby and this is something that we, at that meal, decided to do together with passion and with enthusiasm and that I would be the constant and on the set every day.
"I have picked up and learned a lot about how the machine operates. It was just more exciting than anything and it also just made me that much more invested in just the fine details of the show. And then just even in things, the political aspects and everything from morale on the set to making sure our crew members felt heard and looking for warning signs. There are just so many elements. But I absolutely loved it, because, again, this is something that I asked for. I mean, I asked for every single bit of it and I can truly say I’ve loved every bit of it, like the responsibilities, the effort, enthusiasm, the whole crew, the whole cast, everyone involved in the show has wanted it as badly as Joss and I have. Those are the people that we wanted to surround ourselves with, and by and so it has certainly been challenging. But it’s been the best kind of challenging, because, I mean, I’ve learned so much but I’ve also just gotten the opportunity to be more hands-on than projects I’ve ever worked on."
Dushku on the aspects of the series that make Dollhouse game changing and mind blowing:
"Well, it’s provocative. It’s disturbing in some ways. It’s controversial. We’re dealing with altering and programming people, and I think that that’s a very sensitive topic. But I think that it’s relevant and I think that it’s exciting because I’ve always wanted to do work that has to do with us evolving and questioning, making people uncomfortable I guess. That’s sort of what interesting storytelling is to me, is asking different questions and taking a closer look at desires and fantasies and taboos and sexuality. And these are all things that Joss and I initially discussed in our infamous first lunch when we were talking about making a show. They were things that I knew he, as a creative genius, which I truly believe he is, had the ability and the imagination to create with me. At the same time, roll in a story that just puts those parts together tightly, cleverly, with drama and humor and pain and joy. Obviously, anyone who [has] known his work in Buffy, and then anyone who knows him as a person, knows that he’s just all of those instruments. That’s, I think, what makes this such an extraordinary show."
Eliza Dusku on if there was a certain character type or personality type that she liked to play most:
 "It surprised me, because on the one hand it’s awesome and exhilarating to be the sexy assassin, but at the same time I’ve been surprised time and time again how much I also really enjoy playing - like I play this blind cultist and it was just so different than anything, than any skin I had ever been in and I really, really enjoyed it. It was challenging and yet it was liberating to have the opportunity and to see the world, not see the world, but to be in the world in these different skins. That was a particularly special episode, as was being the personality of a 50-something-year-old woman in my own body. That was another one that’s coming up that was very interesting. I don’t know if I have a favorite, but they’ve all had their own special nuances and places for me."
Dushku on the central theme or messages that Dollhouse will explore:
"Without over simplifying it too much, I’d say it’s sort of about not the search for one’s true identity, but it’s about identifying what makes us who we are and our thoughts and our surroundings and what happens when you start to allow other people or a big corporation, or a mass of people - I think objectification is a huge theme of the show and just how and why we are authentic individuals and what it means to be an individual and to have that toyed with, or to have that taken from you and what that means. How we come out and how strong our sense of self is at the end of the day no matter up against any kind of technology or any kind of tampering, like what makes us who we are."
On the best aspects of playing many characters within one:
 "Well, the base character, Echo, is in a word, simple. Or in a few words, she’s simple. She’s blank. She’s had her personality and memories erased and she’s ... a child with no inhibition, no fear. She’s sort of a blank slate and it’s exciting in the sense that every week there’s sort of a new star of the show and it’s whatever character I am imprinted to be.
"We found early on that one of the challenges was - each character, when they’re introduced, sort of needs a good scene full of story. You basically need to give this character’s background. And we found that it was nice to get me in the role in some of the easier scenes first, before having me step on set in the outfit as the person with five pages of dialogue explaining who I am. There was something about easing into it whenever possible, and when locations permit and shooting schedules. It’s nice to get in the skin and find something to latch onto that makes that person distinct as opposed to forcing it and using the dialogue or the scene or exposition to tell the story.
"I mean I somehow - I, Eliza - am a really adaptable person. I was just sort of raised that way. It’s like throw me in the water and I can hopefully learn how to swim and survive and get very comfortable very quickly. But there is that initial sort of shock to the system and so we figured that out early on; that it’s helpful to do some of the other scenes first. But some scenes are easier than others to slide into and I have worked with Joss specifically on certain roles."
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