Four days to Dollhouse. Wheee! As the February 13 premiere draws closer, so is our anticipation—I’ve been at it for the past months, and surely so are you. And while anticipation can be a bitch sometimes, and with speculation that the show is bound for a quick cancellation even before it could premiere, letting go can hurt pretty bad. But, hey, we’re here, so let’s make the most of it. And let’s just think that this show almost didn’t make it, because it wasn’t even part of Joss Whedon’s plans.
We all know that the concept for the show dropped over lunch with the series’ star, Eliza Dushku. But the discussion wasn’t exactly about the show—it was more serendipitous than one might expect. “She had made a deal to do a show at Fox, and we were sort of talking about the kind of show she ought to do and the kind of people she ought to play and what people expected of her,” he said. “And then, lo and behold, the show just sort of popped up and started barking at me.”
But Whedon insisted that he did not plan to create another television series, considering that during his downtime, he was busy writing movie scripts and that online musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. “I just sometimes spend time with Eliza and talk about her career and how she can work it and take control of it and, you know, make the kind of television she’s proud of and interested in and that will challenge her in different ways as often as possible,” he said. “And because we were covering all the things she wanted in a show, this show then came out of that.”
“I told my people, ‘I think I accidentally made up a show, and maybe we should try this,’” he added. “I did go to Fox. Within a week we sat down and gave them the concept, the episodes, the five-year arc, a one-sheet, and everything just sort of fell into place … [They later asked for] 13 episodes before we’d ever shot a foot, and so it was slightly, you know, kismet. Obviously it became more complicated, but it definitely was an organic process.”
Finally, some small spoilers: what identities will Dushku—or Echo, in Dollhouse parlance—exactly take on in the coming episodes? “She’s going to be a rich older woman who has died, she’s going to be a blind cult member, she’s going to be a dominatrix, she’s going to be a backup singer for a pop star, she’s going to be a safecracker, she’s going to be a somebody’s wife,” Whedon revealed. “She’s going to be, you know, whatever’s next.”
And whatever that next thing is, we all sure will be there. Well, provided the anticipation holds.
Four more days. It’s getting closer.
-Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: The New York Times
(Image courtesy of Fox)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
