Eliza Dushku

Congrats on the show—this is so exciting. First off, how did it come about?

It was the best scenario. Basically, I went in with Peter [Chernin] and all the heads over at Fox, and they really honestly and really confidently told me that they wanted me to come in as a producer and an actress. They told me to bring them the material that in my heart I wanted to do.

So, I sat on it for a couple of weeks. I knew Joss was working on other things, and his Wonder Woman stuff, but he’s been a friend since I moved out here, when I was 17. He became my favorite writer/genius, and I’ve always said I’ll follow that guy anywhere. So, I called him just to have coffee, and talk about life and what I was going to do with this deal. And we got to talking. He just gets women, which is the most amazing thing. He gets them, and I think that was clear from all his past things, from Buffy.

He can use the science fiction, and he can use these metaphors or exaggerations—but he gets women, and he gets people. He gets down to the real human emotion and the real beating heart.

So, we talked about life, and we were telling each other crazy stories about the things we had done in the past time since we had talked, and the Internet and download that thing, and we talked about hunting, and that person with that fetish, and that thing we were trying to do, and that woman we knew, and that fear that we had, and all of the sudden, it was locked in, and the rest was history, and we have this crazy, exciting bomb-ass new show.

Are you already prepping to be Echo?

Yes, I’m already training and getting ready for it. I’ll be a different Echo every week, which is great for my ADHD personality, it’s truly—the stars aligned in this one, the timing, the people, the creative ability, the potential is really there. I can’t wait for the fans to finally hear about it, because I’ve been asked about it for years, is there going to be a spinoff. Everything happens for a reason, and timing is just right here.

It sounds like you guys developed it together. Can you talk about how you came up with Echo, and the concept of the actual Dollhouse, and not just the show?

We did kind of come up with it together, and that’s one of the cool things—I’ll be one of the producers of the show and it’s eventually kind of a story of my life. I’ve had kind of a crazy life, traveling around the world with my mother at a young age, going on these crazy trips and adventures, and then being in this business. It is the story of who I am, in this business especially, like the objectification of people, and who people want to make other people into, and people clicking a button and thinking they can make something happen.

We have so much control in this day and age with the Internet and television and what we want and our desires and fantasies and thinking we can make them come true. And all of this, I think, just makes this such a smart concept, because it’s all infiltrated in there, and it’s part me and it’s part the world. It’s part people’s fantasies, people’s demons, their high times, their low times, their hilarious times and in between, mixed with—I gotta have some serious action, because that’s just, like, I realized that a procedural show isn’t right for me. I need to be jumping out of a car or kicking butt or making love.

It sounds like you’ll get to do all of that with this. Another thing I liked about the pitch was that there’s a whole bunch of you, you’re all in this dollhouse, and you’re all trying to find yourselves one way or the other. Can you talk about other parts, other casting? Anything like that yet?

Yeah, we have, and it’s nice, again, that we kind of have similar tastes. I think that we all know, we can kind of see it and feel it and taste it, and it’s just kind of about putting it together, and getting the orchestra and getting all the variables into the equation. But we’re both major fans of some of the previous people that we’ve worked with in other shows, and we also have writers from Buffy that are going to be coming over and joining us. It’s just going to be—it’s gonna be fun to watch I think. Because I think people are going to be excited at what we have.

Everyone is super-super-excited I guarantee you—I squealed.

The Red Sox won the World Series again, and things are good—I have my boy [Brad Penny], and he’s going to be playing baseball for the Dodgers next year, and I’ll be here shooting my show for Fox. It’s all gonna be good.