Eliza Dushku: All Dolled Up

Most probably remember actress Eliza Dushku as the ass-kicking, vampire slaying Faith on the long-running Joss Whedon hit, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Though Dushku has retired her wooden stake, she has teamed up with Whedon once again for the new Fox series Dollhouse, a project she and Whedon created together. Dushku plays Echo, a member of a secret group nicknamed “actives” who have their identities programmed for specific assignments (fantasies, crimes etc.) and then have their memories wiped clean soon after.

The role is a welcome departure for Dushku who has typically been cast as a tough ball buster over the years. While the Boston native is still true to her roots, talking Sox and Celtics to our photographer during our shoot at the W Westwood, Dushku is happy to add a new dimension to her work as an actress and even to her career since she is also a producer of the series. Dushku took a moment to tell us more.

How did Dollhouse come about? I read that you and Joss Whedon came up with the idea over
lunch. Is that really what happened?

It is. Joss and I have been buddies since back in the Buffy days, and I was 17. He quickly became a big brother, mentor and ally and we’ve stayed friends over the years. When I was trying to figure out what to do next in my career and what projects I wanted to do I met with Fox and they expressed interest in developing a show together so we worked out a year-long film and television development deal. I called Joss about a week later and asked him to go to lunch and somewhere in the four-hour lunch we came up with the idea for the show.

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When actress Eliza Dushku treated her former boss to lunch, it turned out to be the best investment she’d ever made.

Dushku had co-starred on creator Joss Whedon’s hit fantasy “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” 10 years earlier. “Joss and I stayed friends, had a very tight connection when we made the show,” says Dushku, seated in a black vinyl armchair in the lobby bar of a hotel here.

There was a reason for her lunch largesse. Dushku had talked to the Fox network about returning to television. “And I had a plan in the back of my head. It was Joss, even though he didn’t know it yet,” she says. “About a week after I did some chatting with the Fox people, I called Joss and invited him to lunch. … I bought him a hot Buddha pizza from Ivy at the Shore. He picked the spot. And over a four-hour lunch, we had ‘Dollhouse.’ ”

“Dollhouse” (8 p.m. Friday, WFLD-Ch. 32) is Fox’s new sci-fi thriller in which Dushku plays an “Active” in a secret organization. The personalities of the “Actives” are wiped clean and reprogrammed so they can become anyone a client desires—from assassin to corporate tycoon.

Dushku, 28, loves the chance to metamorphose into different alter egos every week. Lately she’s undergone some transformations of her own.

“I don’t drink. … I’ve followed a 12-step program, and I’ve had the best few years of my life recently,” she says, her dark eyes dominating her face.

She doesn’t really define alcohol as her problem. “I just know that now I don’t drink, and I feel better physically and emotionally and spiritually,” she says.

And she doesn’t worry about failure. “I feel I’ve surpassed goals that I had and some I didn’t even know that I had,” she says.

“I’m pretty proud of my work and my resume—both business-wise and on a personal level. … So whatever comes of this—if someone wants to say I failed, I’ll never believe that.”

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