Dollhouse

Exclusive Interview: ACTRESS OLIVIA WILLIAMS IS THE QUEEN OF THE ’DOLLHOUSE’

The series airs its second to last episode tonight on Fox

As Adelle DeWitt on Fox’s DOLLHOUSE (created by Joss Whedon), Olivia Williams has had a chance to play the spectrum of good and bad as the matriarch of a facility that traffics in human playthings.

Every week, she sends her dolls (real people, implanted with false personalities) out on assignments ranging from the sexual, the dangerous and even the mundane.

Of course, as Season Two and the series comes to a close on Fox (tonight is the second to last episode), the world is crumbling around DeWitt and her team. They plan on taking down the Rossum Corporation that owns the Dollhouse before their technology destroys everything we know about the world.

iF caught up with Williams last fall, long before the series was cancelled (and before she could reveal too much about Season Two) to talk about the series. Here’s what she had to say, in this exclusive interview.

iF MAGAZINE: The first season of DOLLHOUSE had so many behind-the-scenes creative issues that were aired in public – how do you deal with that as an actor and focus on the work?

OLIVIA WILLIAMS: I completely loved that Joss doesn’t treat us like idiots. The way that actors are treated usually, everybody protects you from every piece of information. It’s rare to have an employer, who is telling you what’s going on, so when you go on hiatus for three weeks, you know why. You know that you may all may be going home and no one knows the answers, but now you’re prepared to put your trust in that person. It becomes a problem when everybody goes, “it’s fine, it’s fine, we all have to go on a three week holiday.” So I’m completely behind him with his tact and honesty.

iF: This is one of your first TV show gigs. How different was this for you than working on film and stage?

WILLIAMS: You’re investing in a second by second vision of your character. When you do a play or movie, you read to the end of script and you know what’s happening to your character. What I hadn’t appreciated at all about episodic TV, anything you do, at any moment, has to be able to be interpreted a million different ways in light of subsequent episodes. So when people look back, they go “oh, I see.” I’ve never been in that position in a play or film.

iF: Did you have a lot of discussion with Joss, in trying to find your character initially?

WILLIAMS: He gives incredibly salient and brilliant notes in how to play each scene and an overall breakdown of characters. It allows for whatever crazy stuff is going down in his head. It’s a completely different skill and a completely different set of conventions from theater or film. It was one of my reasons for taking this, was to tackle a whole new set of dimensions. He really is a master of episodic TV of how to reveal a plot gradually and how to keep an audience guessing as to what the hell is going on as well as the cast. I’m still trying to work out the implications of “Epitaph One.” I couldn’t believe the flashback where Victor became Mr. Ambrose. That was so clever and was so happy to be in that scene.

iF: It’s great too, since “Epitaph One” really informs Season Two in major ways.

WILLIAMS: What’s wonderful, is we have to drag what you’ve seen so far up to “Epitaph,” but “Epitaph” is running parallel at the same time to our current story.

iF: It wasn’t until “Man on the Street” did the show really hit its stride last season – can you talk about what it was like getting that initial script?

WILLIAMS: I loved all the little Joss touches. The inserts of the public and what they felt the Dollhouse was.

iF: The show really does force you to think about how advancement in technology can be a double-edged sword.

WILLIAMS: When people invented the pill, they didn’t know where it was going to go. They saw women taking control of their lives, and a family would be able to plan when they would have children. This isn’t how the world has turned out. You have this extraordinary demographic of women in their late ’30s, who didn’t plan at all on having kids that are now having them. You have all the implications of fertilty clinics. And this is what this series is about. You have a good idea. This is great. “If you could wipe out personalities and get rid of yourself for a while and you might come back as a better person.” But what are the practical implications of this twenty years down the line. That’s what “Epitaph” is. It’s going, “this is the f*cking implications, think about it, before you head off down these roads.”

iF: So, does Adelle have a thing for Topher [Fran Kranz]?

WILLIAMS: Ahhhh. It’s more a mother/child, blurred line. She is his patron and his enabler in many ways, and we don’t know what that means yet.