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Eliza Dushku on Dollhouse
By Fred Topel | Image property of Fox
Dollhouse
Dollhouse is a dream role for Eliza Dushku. She gets to play a different character every week. Echo is an active who is imprinted with a new personality for a client's request, then wiped clean to the blank state. For a restless actress, she'll never get bored.
Dushku Talks Dollhouse
"Basically, Joss [Whedon] and I have had a ten-plus-year friendship at this point and he knows me very well and he knows how hard it is for me to sit still for five minutes, not to mention for an entire episode," Dushku said. "So the premise of the show was sort of based on my own life and on keeping things moving and on keeping me active and having the chance to play and jump around in between these characters every week and sometimes multiple times every show. That was planned from the get-go. I just have a lot of energy and I just have sort of an appetite for people and stories and telling different stories and being in a different place and traveling and experiencing just different emotions. One thing that Joss gave me in this project is the ability to sort of show some other colors of mine that other creators and other writers, directors, executive producers haven’t given me in the past, but he has seen them in me and wanted to give me the stage to act them out. So it’s a gift and it’s a lot of fun."
In return for that blessing, Dushku has the challenge of establishing a unique character every week. "We found sort of 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 sort of 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 sort of easing into it whenever possible and when locations permit and shooting schedules. It’s nice to sort of get in the skin and find something to latch on to 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 some how, I, Eliza, am a really adaptable person. I was just sort of raised that way. It’s sort of 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."
Even so, the first 13 episodes have shown Dushku her boundaries, and let her blast through them. "Some scenes are easier than others to slide into and I have worked with Joss specifically on certain roles. I also have a coach that I’ve worked with since I was ten-years-old, who actually lives in New York and we work on the phone or he comes out to LA. I’ve taken it very seriously and I really want to, as much as possible, take Elizaisms out when they’re not necessary and add other elements and add other colors to these characters to portray the reality that I’m a different person every week as much as possible, so it’s absolutely been challenging. It’s been humbling. It’s been exciting and I’m ready for more, more, more."
Then there's that base state of Echo as a blank canvas. "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 [like 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."
You'll get to see Dushku kick ass and sex it up as a babe, but along the way you might question the very foundation of your existence. "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 sort of 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 sort of how and why we are authentic individuals. I guess I’m now getting so philosophical it’s just getting so big in my head, but just what it means to be an individual and to have that toyed with or to have that taken from you and what that means and how we come out and how strong our sense of self is at the end of the day no matter up against what, any kind of technology or any kind of tampering, like what makes us who we are."
Dollhouse airs Friday nights at 9 on Fox.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Fox
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