...Joss Whedon, Part 2!Happy Dollhouse Friday! In a second chance to talk with the creator of such icons of pop culture as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, we focused on the characters of Dollhouse… where they have been, where they are going, and how the heck they got involved in The Dollhouse in the first place.
TheTwoCents: Fans have been speculating about the possibility that staff members of The Dollhouse are possibly dolls themselves. Obviously, you can’t tell us yes or no, but is that something you’ve thought about yourself… about if the employees of a place like this would all be purely there?
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[photo: FOX]
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Joss Whedon: Yes, we talked about that and the different possibilities that we could tweak and the pasts that people have. How many layers of unreality can you have in somebody’s identity and to an extent, we get very excited. We have to pull ourselves back and say if we make this a lie within a lie within a lie within a lie, people are just going to start slapping us. We’re like now we’re not invested in anybody. So we’ve talked about, but we’ve been very restrained with the concept because you have to have some touchstone of reality, even in this world.
ReplyDeleteWe’re not handcuffed. It’s just that at this point, we’re still interested in how they relate to our actives and particularly Eliza. So we don’t spend a lot of time with people in their outside lives, although we do spend some. We will learn a little something about the private lives of some of our employees, but something we’re threading in lightly. That’s really something you would come to later in a season.
Our first 13 are basically, just take the baseball bat and keep on hitting and then later on if you have people hooked, those threads are easier to weave in because people, they’re more invested. But at this point, we’re just swinging for the bleacher emotionally in the second half and so some things we will get to show because it will give us insights into the characters, but not everybody has an apartment set there.
TTC: Boyd definitely seems more sympathetic and moralistic of the characters who work for The Dollhouse. Will we learn a little more about why is he working for The Dollhouse? It’s hard to understand why he does the job in the first place.
JW: It is hard and we keep asking the question. I will tell you without reservation that in this season, we don’t answer it. Way before we had it cast or even written, I had a feeling, I knew what had happened with Boyd. There was a line from an episode that was—it ultimately even filmed, but was tossed, where he talks to Saunders, “None of us in here were next in line for pope. Everybody has a reason,” and rolling out how people came to this place is part of something we wanted to do. A little bit later on when we had people invested in the characters enough to be asking just as you have, but we still have to wait on that. We’ll see.
TTC: Are we going to learn more about Amy Aker’s very intriguing character Dr. Saunders?
JW: Yes, we sure are. I love that character, not just because it’s Amy Aker, but because she wears misery and torture on her face literally. We will definitely learn how she came to this fabulous career. In the last few episodes, we get to turn the Aker up pretty hot and it’s very exciting.
TTC: When Sierra goes to the see the man she says is responsible for putting her in The Dollhouse, am I correct in thinking that he sold her into slavery basically?
JW: I wouldn’t even say sold, so much as kidnapped. Her situation is by far the worst of anyone’s. How complicit The Dollhouse was in that, how much they actually knew about her past, we don’t go to in the episode, but what actually happened to her is just as appalling as anybody’s story.
It makes me uncomfortable. I’m not going to lie. But for me, it’s part of what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with people who have power and are abusing it and people who don’t and are trying to regain it. And in some instances, we want to show The Dollhouse and in the instance of November, I think he is providing a service or in the instance of as we’ll find out, Victor might be providing a service that somebody is looking for. And then in other instances, that is going to be abused and the ick factor gets very high. It seems to get high with Sierra quite a bit, I’m sorry to say, poor girl. She really gets put through it. But it’s not something we feel that we can shy away from without being a little hypocritical. Yes, I better stop.
TTC: We now know there are actually about 20 Dollhouses our in the world. Are you going to cut away to any of them?
JW: We do get to see one of the higher ups and we talk about the other Dollhouses. We didn’t want to do a Italian Wolfram and Hart gag, where we just use the same set and fill it with Italians. No, it’s one of my favorite things he ever did, but that’s because Angel was a lot sillier. So as the economy started to take a toll on our budget, that and the fact that we’ve thrown out our pilot, we hunkered down. So, no, you will not see Dollhouse Tokyo in this season, but, boy, I’d like to. Dollhouse Miami: It looks like we, glasses off, have got a doll.
Don’t forget to tune into tonight’s episode A Spy in the House of Love at 9:00 on Fox!