Joss Whedon Unlocks the Dollhouse

Dollhouse is once again open for business and creator Joss Whedon sat down with reporters to talk about lives, the loves, and the cool guest stars coming up in the new season.  Dollhouse returns to Fox on September 25 at 9:00.

Dollhouse was pretty close to not getting that second season pick-up. Why do you think Fox changed their minds?

Joss: I think it’s the nature of the business and the nature of the fan base.  The nature of the fan base is they’re in it for the long haul, and they’re nurturing, and they’re intense about it and they will see it through.  They will stick with it and that means years after it’s cancelled.  Firefly still sells, Buffy still sells, and that’s also a business thing for the studio.  They’re in it for the long haul because they know the long haul is how my work pays off.  I don’t make hit shows.  I make shows that stick around that people come to long after they would have stopped generating revenue in the old system.

With the advent of DVD and the eventual monetization of Online, there’s a market there that exists beyond your Nielsen numbers, and the fans showing up and DVRing, and buying a DVD, and proving on all my other projects that they don’t do these things lightly, that it runs deep in them, means that the base doesn’t have to be as broad for the studio to think it’s worth it to try and eke out another season.

Eliza Dushku is a huge driving force in the series. How much of a hand did she have in developing the concept and the character of Echo?

Joss: Well, she really wants to dance burlesque.  We keep forgetting to put that in.  Eliza has specific things she’s interested in, specific things she feels comfortable with.  Sometimes I like to go to that place because I know that she can knock it out of the park and sometimes I like to go in the opposite direction to take her out of her comfort zone because that’s the best thing you can do with an actor. (DOLLHOUSE: Joss Whedon (R) directing on set with director of photography Ross Berryman (L). ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Greg Gayne/FOX)

There are many different aspects to [Eliza] the people don’t usually get to see how funny she can be, how elegant.  She doesn’t always have to play the tough girl, but she really just presents.  It was a conversation about all of the different things she was supposed to be, or had been, or was trying to be, or trying to get away from that led to the creation of the show.  It made me think, “Wait a minute.  That’s what the show should be about.”  So it wasn’t so much that she said, “I’d like to be the following things,” although we talked about what the characters are, it’s just that she is so many people that we pluck from them.  She did go bow hunting.  I understand, however, that she herself was not hunted.

Echo’s got a lot to deal with, how will she manage to come into her own?

Joss: Basically, through force of will.  She did have all those personalities dumped into her at once and as we pick up, we’re going to find out that that’s starting to affect her.  Rather than be at sea in between engagements, she’s much more directed and driven, and even in her doll state is growing, and learning and starting to try to access these personalities to see what they can help her with, because she has a mission that she understands now, which is to get back to her personality and get everybody back to theirs.

Let’s talk relationships:

Joss: Victor and Sierra just can’t keep their hands off each other, and they’re like monkeys and it’s something that we’re going to be treating, they’re going to be seeing through for a while.  It makes some people very uncomfortable and sometimes it’s just extremely sweet.  Sometimes it’s just funny.  But Echo is very much building herself and she sees it as an indication that they’re ready to be pushed to a level like hers.  She’s looking for allies and Paul is the first person she’s going to turn to for that.  But then a lot of the season is going to be her attempt to put together some kind of team, even though she has trouble articulating it at first.  She’s looking for the sense of family that I think the audience was looking for last season.  So we’re going to be seeing who’s on her side and who, not so much.

How is Dr. Saunders going to factor into the season?

Joss: Dr. Saunders would factor in much more in the season had we not lost her to another show.  She will factor inasmuch as we are allowed to factor her in, which is exactly three episodes worth.  They will, however, be three extraordinarily memorable episodes.  Amy Acker is ridiculously talented and the character’s dilemma is fascinating to us.  We grit our teeth that we didn’t have the funds, or the support, or the success, to just make her a regular and now we’re paying for it.  It means that every time we have her on screen, we’ll squeeze every drop out of her that we can.  We’re seizing the day.  We just don’t get to seize as many of them as we’d like.

How will the “lost” episode Epitaph One fit into the grand scheme?

Joss: It had originally been my intention to start in that era and then come back, but I just had too much information in my first episode.  What we’re talking about doing is perhaps revisiting that timeline towards the end of the 13 in a similar fashion, but we’re also looking at the show through the lens of that episode and saying, “Well, this is taking us to a more global concept of how this power is used and abused.”  That’s a lot of what informs the season.  You don’t have to have seen it to understand that, but it helps if you do.  I think it adds a layer.

THE GUEST STARS:

Summer Glau:

Joss: The casting of Summer was based on the knowledge that Summer existed and the character was created with the hopes that she would play it, which she is right on stage right now doing.  She’s playing the programmer of another Dollhouse.  It’s a somewhat eccentric part but hopefully different than what we’ve seen her do before.  The most useful part of that is that the writers work twice as hard to make sure that the character really pops and pays off because they know that it’s going to be played by somebody extraordinary.

Jaime Bamber (who “marries’ Echo in the first episode)

Joss: If you were those two, wouldn’t you get married?  They’re so cute.  He came in as the guest star in the first episode, which was just besides a geek dream for me, an extraordinary experience because he’s not just very professional, and precise and talented, but he fleshed out a character that could have been a little bit of a cardboard cutout.  He has such sincerity and gravitas that you feel terrible.  He makes you feel you’ve betrayed him, even if he’s completely in the wrong.  It’s something that he shares with Adelle.  Maybe it’s a British thing; I don’t know. (DOLLHOUSE: Echo (Eliza Dushku, R) and her new husband (guest star Jamie Bamber, L) have a dangerous honeymoon in the DOLLHOUSE season premiere episode “Vows” airing Friday, Sept. 25 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Isabella Vosmikova/FOX)

Ray Wise:

Joss: Ray Wise, I believe, will be appearing in episode six and he’s going to be playing the head of another house, so he’s going to interact with young Olivia and it should be very exciting.

Alexis Denisoff:

Joss: Yes, he’s got his own crusade going.  He’s a very different person than Paul but he’s in a similar position except that he’s gone public with it.  How much the Dollhouse loves a senator who has gone public with an attack on them, we will find out in later episodes.  But he’s not the Paul of the season because he’s going to have a different set of problems thrown at him, but he has a similar vibe in terms of he’s very tenacious and righteous.

Any other Buffy-verse guest stars coming up?

Joss: It’s a death match between Firefly and Battlestar and which of them is going to get all their people.  The fact of the matter is they’re people I admire and they’re people I know I love to work with and this season, I’m a lot less concerned with how the cast is perceived. Last season, we felt like we wanted to make sure that this was new territory and that people didn’t think of it as just, “Oh, it’s just these faces and he’s doing his old thing.”  Now I’m like, “I know these people can act,” and honestly, the people that are watching it are fans anyway.  If they know who these people are, they’ll be thrilled.  If they don’t, they’ll see good acting so it doesn’t matter to me as much.  So yes, I have no fear of throwing anybody that I have worked with or just want to work with in anytime I can.

The big question — Is everybody a doll?

Joss: I’ll tell you right now, everybody is not a doll because it would be very easy for us to pull that trick over and over and ultimately shoot ourselves in the foot, because you would find that nothing was at stake and that everybody would see the plot was coming.  We’ve actually grounded the show fairly heavily.  People who are dolls, are dolls and the other people, every now and then, I’m not saying never, I’m not saying we won’t question reality every now and then but basically, we’re taking the people we have and we’re pushing them around as much as possible.

We’re trying to keep it grounded so that people know that there is something at stake and if somebody did have their personality altered or taken away, that that would be a huge deal.  That’s like the attic; that’s like death.  That’s like the worst thing that can happen to a character so we want to make sure that the characters are grounded enough that people feel those stakes.  If we just make people dolls, Willie-Nillie, then it’s the rabbit hole and none of it really connects or means anything.