Eliza Dushku

The Lady Is a Champ: Eliza Dushku Goes a Few Rounds With Fight Night Champion

On television series like “Buffy” and “Dollhouse,” Eliza Dushku was perfectly comfortable holding her own against tough guys, and maybe throwing a punch or two when the situation required it. So her next role is a bit of a departure, and not only because she isn’t called upon to swing her fists. In the boxing video game Fight Night Champion, which EA Sports will release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 consoles on Tuesday, Ms. Dushku plays the daughter of an unscrupulous fight promoter, and finds herself drawn into an intrigue involving her father and an up-and-coming boxer (played by the actor and athlete LaMonica Garrett). The story, which is told in movie-style sequences that unfold between the game’s playable boxing matches, is written by Will Rokos, an Academy Award-nominated writer and producer of “Monster’s Ball,” and represents the latest effort to bridge the worlds of gaming and cinema. These sequences (which were created using 3-D motion-capture technology) also allowed Ms. Dushku to play a character who was very much herself and yet as unearthly as anything seen on a Joss Whedon show.

Ms. Dushku spoke recently to ArtsBeat about the making of Fight Night Champion and her role in the game, and the burdens of being an able-bodied woman in the entertainment industry. These are excerpts from that conversation.

Q. I thought it was very brave of you to allow yourself to be photographed during your motion-capture session with your face covered with all those – uh, what do you call them?

A. Dots. It’s a very technical name. Motion-cap dots. My makeup artist from “Dollhouse,” her name’s Tegan, she worked on “Avatar” and she worked on the game as well, so that was really fun. Nobody places sexy dots like Tegan. If one dot tries to slip off, she is quick on the draw. She will reattach it.

Q. And you wouldn’t want a dot to go astray.

A. No, that would mean, like, a droopy eyelid. It could send your whole expression off and turn you into another person. It would be a travesty.

Q. You grew up just outside of Boston. Were you legally required to appreciate boxing?

A. Yeah, pretty much. My dad was from the South End and grew up loving sports and boxing himself. I remember having a Mike Tyson T-shirt back in the day that I used to sleep in. And there some things that Tyson did along the way that I wasn’t too psyched to associate myself with. But back in the day, just as a fighter, what a dream that was to watch and root for him.

Q. Tell me about your Fight Night character, Megan McQueen. She seems to associate with a lot of unsavory figures.

A. It’s a gnarly, cutthroat world. She’s the only daughter of D. L. McQueen, the shady promoter, and her whole life she’s had a loyalty to him, but everything changes when she really gets to see his behavior and what he does to Andre. She’s always wanted to be a fighter, but she gets into the managing world when she meets Andre. She sees in him the resilience and the passion, and the redemption that he’s seeking, and it’s something that appeals to her. And for the first time, she goes against her dad and stands for good.

Q. Is there a cheat code that makes her a playable character?

A. Oh my gosh, I should totally lie and say there is. Yeah, there’s a secret password, so everyone buy the game and try to crack the code because there’ll be a payoff on the other side. Ooh, child.

Q. How was the experience of working on Fight Night Champion different from other games you’ve been involved in?

A. I hadn’t done anything like it. I’ve done other video-game voices: I started with the Buffy video game, and then I did Saints Row, Yakuza and Wet. I grew up with three older brothers and today my two nephews and my boyfriend’s son are video-game-freak teenagers, so it’s cool to be able to have them play me. You’ve got to connect any way you can with teenagers today.

But usually when you do video games, you don’t interact with the other actors. You each record your audio on different days and you never really meet the other characters. And this was almost shot more like a movie or a show, where we all showed up and we all interacted in the scenes, and we actually shot scenes. It was as trippy as I could ever imagine to watch myself and all my mannerisms in this character.

Q. Were you able to see your in-game character as you were filming your scenes?

A. I cannot watch my own dailies, ever. I’m my worst critic. It distracts me. I can watch it when it’s done, but I’m not the girl that wants to run back and look at the performance.

Q. O.K., so after the fact, then: Is it strange to be watching a character that you played, but who isn’t exactly you?

A. It’s so weird. I’ve done voiceovers for “Family Guy” or “King of the Hill,” and that’s one thing because it’s a cartoon. But this is so realistic-looking. With LaMonica, who I spent all the time shooting with, seeing him as himself – and then I come in as this totally other chick with gigantic [breasts]. [laughs] It was like, whoa, O.K. These artists got into it.

Q. Don’t you ever want to kick back and play a pampered, powder-puff girly-girl, maybe just once every fifth or tenth role?

A. I do, especially as I’m getting a little older. I’m far from old, but I turned 30 this year. I broke out of the box with “Buffy” and I was 17 years old. I had just come out of high school and I think was literally wearing leather pants and a bustier and bright red lipstick, so it was not that far from who I was at the time. Every year that goes by, that I’m recovering a little more and shedding my armor from getting through high school, I am actually much more playful and, yes, girly. I have nieces and nephews that I love hanging out with, and they think I’m the biggest goof on the planet. My little niece is always like, “You’re so sew-ious on your movies. Aunt Eliza, that’s not how you are in real life.” I’m like, I know, honey.

Q. There were those of us who were holding out hope that you might be cast in the remake of “Wonder Woman.” Now that they’ve announced it’s going to star someone else, are you at peace with that?

A. I didn’t even read on it. I’m sure it’s going to be cool. Don’t get me wrong; of course there is an allure to putting on the Wonder Woman get-up and rocking that would be fresh, but it’s really never been anything beyond an Internet rumor. Back in the day, when Joss was already off the project and we were working on “Dollhouse,” he was like, “You know, Eliza, you’re a Wonder Woman in your own way, but I don’t quite see an Amazon woman when I look at you.” I’m like, I appreciate it. But who knows? I’m sure there will be many more incarnations of Wonder Woman as the years go by and the entertainment industry keeps recycling material. I’ll never say never.