Press Tour: Talking "Dollhouse" with Joss Whedon

Tuesday's "Dollhouse" TCA set visit at the Twentieth Century Fox lot included a sitdown press conference with Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku, who stars as Echo. They sat on director's chairs on a bridge over the pond in the middle of giant set they joking call "the Staples Center."And they dished on the origins of the season's most anticipated show, due in January on Fox.

Definitely you should read this previous post for a description of the sets and the show's premise. Here's what Joss said about the Staples Center as we settled in:

"Obviously this is the main space of the Dollhouse. Up here gazing down upon us, as what we refer to as the Staples Center, this is Topher's lab. That is Fran Franz's character; the programmer. He watches over everything all the time from in there. Next to it is the imprint room, where we have the special chair, or we will have the special chair after it has been redesigned to work. Over there, obviously the gym. They spend a lot of time working on their bodies. They are basically like children in here. Very enthusiastic, very optimistic, very slow. They eat fine food in the excellent dining area and it is delicious spa fair. They have a crafts sort of meditation center, over here, where they do some finger painting and what not.

"This behind in here, is the lab of Dr Saunders. You'll notice that it is the one sort of enclosed and darker area. This is next to the massage area. This whole thing is just like all from that dream that I had. Dr Saunders' area, she is the GP. She likes to stay in the shadows a little bit, so she is more enclosed. She is cut off from everybody, and with good reason. She is slightly damaged.

"There are also spaces up here where amazing things are going on, which we will figure out in later episodes. And up there leads to the elevator that goes to Adele's so that she can come and just be in charge of everybody. We have handlers. Every active has a handler. Harry Lennix plays "Boyd," who is Echo's personal handler. He is with her when she is on missions or engagements, as we call them. They all sort of live about here. Everybody kind of moves through the space, doing their exercises, looking at books with no words, and just kind of existing in a very vague state. It is, of course, Echo who eventually realizes that there is more to her than just existing and she might want to figure out who she is or was.

"And this is the koi pond…but there is no koi, so I guess it's the pond, really. We will have digital koi. No we can't. We couldn't afford that. I think I have now described the entire space. You can pretty much see from Topher's lab, it is the one discordant note, in this  perfect…because he is just all the time in motion. Doing thing, playing games, fiddling. He is kind of a genius, and in that way, he can't stop playing around. But he is also very likeable and delightful and kind of amoral. And he looks down on everybody else, and he has got red hair and thinks he is really cool but he is kind of a nerd. I read about a character like that once, so I based him on that."

Read about a character like that. Uh huh.

After the jump: "Dollhouse" Q&A with Joss and Eliza Dushku!

I've grouped quotes to keep like topics together, but the words are direct from the transcript or my recording...

Reporter: Where did you get the idea for the show?

Whedon: She will be coming out in a minute. I think some people know that it actually literally came from Eliza. I was sitting, talking to her about her opportunities, and her range, and all of the things she can be, and the ways in which she could get constricted, and the ways in which she could be free, and literally the show came from that. So…wearing a brand new outfit, ladies and gentlemen may I present, my actual physical muse, Eliza Dushku. ...

 I literally just came up with the idea based on our conversation about her as an actress and what she was capable of. I was just like, "you can play so many people," but there were certain things, she was saying, "that people expect me to be," and then I went, "Oh, wait a minute...that's the show."

Dushku: I mean honestly, I don't know how many of you know my history as an actress, but ... the way that I see it is that everything my career so far has been, "man, I've had some really awesome luck, but the real luck was when I met joss and when I was seventeen and I came out to LA to do Buffy and he was really one of the first people that made it ultra exciting for me, and it was so wrapped up in a bow, you know?" I came into this successful show and I was getting all of this praise and I was doing all of this material that I really felt and that I really loved and that actually made me really start to love acting and then, hey maybe I'll defer my college application and stick around for a while and be an actress.

And then I did a few films and you can't win them all. ... I did get typecast as this bad girl and I played myself a lot and so I was picking a lot of roles that did that, and then as I hit this point of like, "okay, what now?" And I called Joss because I just knew that he was someone that for everything that we had done together, he saw me in different ways and he would tell me about it. Every time he did, and he came and saw me in a play or would say, "that piece of work that you did was special and important because this and it showed you doing that," which most people don't see. So I was sort of at a point where I was like, "well what now?" So I called the guy that I trust most and the guy that I had trusted the most in my seventeen years in the business.

Yeah, it has been that long, I swear, and he just did the ultimate thing, he came through and he accepted and I bought him a hot steamy gouda pizza at the Ivy and four hours later here we are and I really just described to him that in my career I've had this pressure and this identity crisis everyday where it is like, "who do people want me to be?" and everyone thinks they know how to sum up my career. Or that I'm typecast as this, and on the one hand I'm never ashamed or never threatened or made uncomfortable when people ask me how I feel about being typecast as a strong , smart, young woman. I can think of worse things to be typecast as. But with him, this is just an opportunity to grow and show more of my colors that I haven't had the opportunity to do.

Reporter: Ok, with that said, you have thirteen , now are they stand alones or is there mythology like all of your shows. Will they exist so you can watch them out of order? How is that going to work?

Whedon: It is going to work like all of the first seasons would, which is both. Very much every episode is self-contained. There is an engagement. There is a resolution to that engagement and whether its adventures on, romantic, frightening or all of the above, at the same time there is the arc story of Echo's burgeoning awareness and the people around her. So every episode, you can come at any episode. We will make very sure of that because you have to, especially in the first bunch. But at the same time we will be building a mythos around it because the characters have to grow, and the show is literally about that in her. It is, what did she take way from that engagement? Like, what did she learn as Echo who lives in between or what happened to Echo that affects that engagement and affects everyone's understanding of how to handle her? So we will definitely be working both.

Reporter: I have a question for Eliza. How does it feel to be working with Joss again and how does that differ form your other experiences and various other TV shows.

Dushku: I mean everyday I am made aware in some way, of just what…, I mean even just now, to be sitting here is such a relief. No, it's beyond a relief. It's like a dream to be working with someone who has such a serious soul and such as serious voice, and he knows what he is saying and what he is creating and how important and how relevant it is. And he is liberated, man. I mean he is a liberated, clever guy and he wants people to think that he is super cynical, but he is not at all. He has this view of the world. I feel like that is so extraordinary because nothing is sort of black and white, but he can play in that gray area and can play with good versus evil and all of those things so spectacularly that for me, to come in, I think someone asked me earlier, but every script and every piece of material that I get from him is like a joy. It is so exciting to me to be able to play with him in this world. In this entertainment business because he is the only one I have ever met that gave me that.

Reporter: Do the dolls recognize each other in the dollhouse?

Whedon: They do not. They sort of vaguely…they are friendly with each other but they do not remember each other in between assignments/engagements.

Reporter: Do the Dolls talk about (why they're in the dollhouse)?

Whedon: They don't ask questions like that. They say things like, "I try to be my best, I like broccoli. Yes, it is like deathless prose."

Reporter: Because "Buffy" had so many obsessive fans and because "Firefly" had so many obsessive fans, do you feel like every time you do a new project, even "Dr. Horrible," do you have to step up and outdo what you did the last time?

Whedon: Well, I would like to answer that question in two ways. First, in my serious voice. Every time, I'm like "here it comes. This is the big miss. This is where I fail. This is where they tear me down. This is the one that they don't like." And you do feel a little bit of pressure. You do start, once people have recognized that you have done something. But at the same time, you learn to let go off that or not one word can you write. So you have to sort of swing. You have got to swing. And you are going to miss, it's going to happen. But it doesn't necessarily mean, again, not black and white. It could be that not everybody related to it or that one episode, or it could just be "wow, America hated my show." It could be that bad, but if you live in fear of that. The only thing I really live in fear of is that I'll put something out there that I really didn't do my best on. ... If I believe in the story and the rest of the world ends up not, that's a blow that I will have to take and can live with it.

Reporter: Joss, could you talk a little more about the decision to film a new first episode? You said it was your idea and why you thought that, and also, are you going to kind of make it a prequel to what was the pilot, because you said it would be the second episode now?

Joss: It was interesting because when I was talking to the network, I could sense some hesitation about what I had given them and I understood why, and rather than try to take what I had and gut it, which didn't make any sense to me and ultimately never satisfies anyone, you end up with this sort of weird hybrid of trying to please everyone, that's not a show. I believe that episode works very well, but I also believe that their concerns about the audience coming into that world a little more simply were valid, so I hit them with, "let's leave this, I'll tweak some of it, which I was going to do anyway, and let me write what I refer to as a prequel"  ... It's just sort of a question of well there are a lot of aspects of how they interact that we were planning on showing and so what's a nice one to put up front? What is the best way? It was kind of nice to do a dry run and then go back and say, "okay, what is absolutely the most iconic way to introduce this character and this character?"

Dushku: And I, for some reason did not get to wear my leather pants in the first episode, and that was kind of a problem…that was like a deal breaker . We have leather pants for me in the next one.

Whedon: That's right, we worked out the leather pant issue.