Dollhouse

Dollhouse

Eliza Dushku, who is the star and an executive producer of Fox’s upcoming SF series Dollhouse, told reporters that the show in part reflects her own experiences as a young actress in an industry in which everyone wants her to be someone else.

"When I moved out to L.A., I was 17," Dushku said in an interview at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 14. She added: "We were talking about sort of my experience and what it’s like to sort of be a young woman in this business and that feeling, ... that universal theme, of ... you wake up every day and you feel like everyone wants you to be a different person. And you’re trying to, like, figure [it] out. It’s like this identity crisis."

In Dollhouse—which was created by Dushku’s longtime mentor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon—Dushku plays a woman named Echo who literally has her personality wiped clean and implanted with new ones by a mysterious organization, which then hires her out for secret missions. At the end of each mission, she is wiped clean again—but not before her own personality begins to emerge.

The story was inspired by Dushku’s own life, starting as a teen actress in such films as True Lies and such TV series as Whedon’s own Buffy and Angel and, later, Fox’s Tru Calling.

"Eliza is someone who’s, you know, spent her whole career trying to take control of her career," Whedon said in a separate interview. "Which is something I admire enormously."

Dushku, who has a production deal with the Fox, came to Whedon for advice when trying to develop her own series. While having lunch with Dushku, Whedon immediately sparked to the idea of a woman with multiple temporary personalities and wound up developing the series with her, though he had no intention of returning to series television.

"Joss really gets women," Dushku said. "There’s a woman somewhere deep inside of him. ... And so that’s sort of what we just started talking about: the challenge of that and what we face, what I face, in our culture today. And, with that, ... he went to the bathroom, and when he came back, he said, ’The show will be called Dollhouse.’ And I was like, ’OK. I’m in.’ And so here we are." Dollhouse, which begins production on its first 13 episodes this month, is slated to premiere at midseason in early 2009 on Fox.