Eliza Dushku

We’re excited to see Eliza Dushku do another Joss Whedon series, and Dollhouse starts in February. Until then, she’s got a cool character in the indie thriller Nobel Son. She plays City Hall, a crazy poet who gets involved with the son of a Nobel prize winner. The plot thickens when the son gets kidnapped and his kidnapper starts making moves on City.

CraveOnline: We’re really excited about Dollhouse, so what can you tell us so far?

Eliza Dushku: One of the great things about Dollhouse and about Joss is that Joss has known me for 10 years. From when he met me on Buffy, he has said over and over that he, through being my friend, just has seen so many different sides of me and saw that according to him, I have some capacity to play all these different roles that other people wouldn’t necessarily envision me playing and he does, so he’s given me this tremendous gift of this show where I get to play multiple characters every week. And it’s so funny, the big joke is that he put me in a ’40s up do for one episode and it tripped me out. He told me, he was like, "I have figured you out. Your comfort zone lies in your hair and I am going to take you out of your comfort zone as much as I can in this show. It’s the craziest thing ever because I can throw you off a building or dunk you in the river or do all these things to you, and the one thing that makes you freak out is a ’40s up do? Something’s up there and I’m going to explore it." I love him for that.

CraveOnline: How much has it changed during from development to reshooting the pilot?

Eliza Dushku: There have been changes but it’s all good. I think the first pilot we shot, and Joss is very honest and he gets on blogs and answers everybody’s questions, he shot it in more of like a noir style. That wasn’t really the way FOX envisioned it so it was his idea to reshoot the pilot, up the action definitely, up the stakes every episode.

CraveOnline: How do you like your Terminator lead in on Fridays?

Eliza Dushku: I think it’s great. I think it’s great. I think it’s great for the show. All the rumors have been going about the Friday night slot but we have confidence that the show is going to strike people as extraordinary.

CraveOnline: We’ve got to see you kick some ass.

Eliza Dushku: And seeing me kick some ass you will. I have bruises all over my body. We have the same stunt coordinator from Buffy and Angel, this guy Mike Massa. He’s awesome. He used to double David so we’ve done these fight scenes. Like we’ve spent weeks fighting, just beating each other senseless.

CraveOnline: What other cool stunts are you doing?

Eliza Dushku: I’ve played 20-something different characters because I play different characters every week because we’re imprinted with these personalities. I ride motorcyles and bow-hunt and river raft and do all these crazy things on a daily basis. It’s just awesome.

CraveOnline: Since it’s TV, how much time do you get to train for those crazy things?

Eliza Dushku: An hour. It’s like the day before. He’ll say, "I’m going to throw you off a roof," and I’m like, "Cool, let’s do it!"

CraveOnline: What is the challenge of playing all these characters?

Eliza Dushku: It’s perfect for me, because I have three older brothers and our whole family sort of has ADHD. We’ve always been sort of go-with-it, it’s much better for me than wearing the same lab coat every day.

CraveOnline: Are there any personalities or activities you’re trying to get written into the script?

Eliza Dushku: We’re really trying to get Fox to approve a story about boy soldiers in Liberia, but we don’t know how we’re going to shoot that. And Fox finds it a bit disturbing and racy, but we’re pushing for it.

CraveOnline: What insight did you have into this Bohemian poet?

Eliza Dushku: I had a great script. I had an awesome writer-director team in Jody [Savin] and Randy [Miller]. The character I think is, you could say, loosely based on Jody. Jody, she’s a trip. They had a vision and then I came in and told them I would do anything they wanted me to do, and I would go to any depths they wanted me to go to. We worked her out.

CraveOnline: Even her speech pattern seems different than your own. Did you adjust that?

Eliza Dushku: Probably. It’s funny, it was a long time ago. I don’t really remember. I just remember I read the script, I wanted this part so badly and I prepared so deeply. Yet also was prepared to just go in and throw that all out the window and do whatever they wanted me to do. I brought props and showed up. I was one of the last people of the day. We did an hour long audition process and did the scene once at the beginning of the session and then completely different opposite end of the spectrum, and then everything in between. We just kind of just kept throwing little nuances and little things into it.

CraveOnline: City believes her own drama, doesn’t she?

Eliza Dushku: I think that’s a tough one. It depends because she knows but she doesn’t know. There’s that important line, "Crazy is just a choice." I think you don’t really know.

CraveOnline: Those intense feelings in the moment, in that moment she believes them, until the next one.

Eliza Dushku: Yeah, for sure. She easily just can turn on a dime and be in an alternate reality.

CraveOnline: Would you consider her a femme fatale?

Eliza Dushku: Sure, sounds hot. I just consider her a twisted sister.

CraveOnline: How did you like her fashion?

Eliza Dushku: A lot of it was some of my own wardrobe. It was kind of a smorgasbord of different pieces but those boots that I wear were these little boots that I picked up in Paris a couple years ago that I love. They were just comfortable and it’s a little bit Bohemian and a little bit what she has picked up off the street or at a flea market. She just kind of puts on what makes her feel pretty.

CraveOnline: I liked it because it’s natural but revealing, provocative and sexy.

Eliza Dushku: I love the dinner scene when she comes to dinner and the hair and the dress, that’s City dressing up for this dinner. Or maybe Shawn Hatosy’s character put her in the dress. Who knows? It was interesting.

CraveOnline: You started your own production company. How are you choosing roles now?

Eliza Dushku: My mother is a great storyteller and I grew up with that. My mother loves people and my mom’s a political science professor. From when we were really young, we traveled the world with my mother. She was a single mom with four kids. She wanted us to travel so she used to agree to chaperone groups of students to different countries around the world in the event that she could always bring a kid for free. She’s taken us through Africa and Russia before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We’ve been all over and wherever we go, she has this uncanny skill of just talking to people and sitting down with a miner in Romania and saying, "Tell me about your life" and getting people to share their stories. People just have fascinating stories and lives. I want to tell stories. I like to explore individuals and so with my production company, my first project is a biopic on Robert Mapplethorpe. My brother’s going to be playing Robert because he’s perfect for it. We have a great filmmaker and we’re going to surround him with this really cool ensemble cast. Then Jody and I are going to do another project that’s like a total female empowerment movie. It’s sort of like Into the Wild meets I don’t know. It’s a story about this woman. Taking a person and exploring as much as you can in an hour and a half in the right kind of creative way is interesting to me, because people are interesting to me.

CraveOnline: You always covered a lot of different genres. Have you always had lots of choices?

Eliza Dushku: You know, I literally tripped and fell into the business. I tripped and fell at my brother’s audition. I used to say it was just kind of dumb luck but I don’t know. I was always as a kid sort of a mimic. I just would pick up on people and differences and then growing up in Boston with three big brothers, I definitely had the tomboy kind of tough girl thing going. I had this feminist mom and so I started out playing these strong young women. It kind of came naturally to me and then every year that I recover from middle school and high school I’m more comfortable with vulnerability and my sort of softer, feminine side and all the colors in between.