The cast and crew tease Dollhouse season 2.

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Below the jump catch an interview with Joss Whedon as he looks back at season 1 and ahead to the new season of Dollhouse (may contain spoilers):

Q: How does it feel to be back for a Season 2?

Joss: This process has been like skiing in a cartoon, where you go up the mountain and down the mountain, and up and down. Right now, we are pretty high up on it because we realized that we were actually going to have to work for a living, this summer. The first thing I did was get together with my writers and start talking about what possibilities there were, particularly after we had made an incredibly strange book-end to the show, with “Epitaph One.” And, what we discovered was that the possibilities were entirely limitless, and that we had more excitement and enthusiasm about the show than we did by a country mile, last year. We are in it now.

Q: Are you more confident in what the show is now?

Joss: Before, it was an idea that we had a lot of trouble defining, and America got to watch that. Now, we feel like it is defined. The network understands what it is, and we understand what it is. We know what our cast is capable of, which is wonders. We came in with the most excitement, and have been having a great deal of fun, ever since. The mandate has been, “How far can we take this? How much can we twist the knife? Where can we find alliances that we did not have? Where can we pull people apart, who seem to be together? And, most importantly, how can we build Echo up from nothing?”

That’s basically where she started last year, and we want to really give her a sense of momentum and purpose that will ground the show, in a way that it couldn’t be last year. It has been our mission statement to make things harder for everybody, find ways to bring back all the extraordinary re-occurring actors we had and, most importantly, let things begin to cohere. And, the good news about that is, once Echo starts really realizing that, as a person, she not only exists, but she has a mission and something she wants.

Q: Will what happened to Echo in the Season 1 finale affect her in Season 2?

Joss: This year, we are going to see the results of everything she went through last year, particularly the event with Alpha, where Echo was downloaded with all of her personalities. We are going to see what affect that’s had on her, and we are going to find her to be a great deal less passive and a great deal more directed in what she wants. That is, of course, going to make her life a lot harder. The more she finds out about what is going on around her, and the more we find out, the creepier it is going to get because creepy is what it makes it fun.

Q: How will “Epitaph One” change things within the series itself?

Joss: “Epitaph One” did present the particular problem of serving two masters — people who had seen it and people who hadn’t. I am used to that. I made an entire movie (Serenity) that had that problem, and only that problem. So, we talked about, “Do we want to just forget about it?” And, the answer was that we were fascinated by that world, in its connection to this world. We will see the future again. In fact, we will see it, first thing. We will go back in time, as a book-end structure for this first episode. So, if you haven’t seen that, it will explain itself. It will say what that episode said, which is that all of this will result in disaster.

The actual bulk of the show takes place three months after the events of “Omega,” but we will be visiting that future, every now and then. It will not be something where we can change it, or where we send people back in time, or that anybody has metal under their flesh. I love that stuff, but apparently that gets you canceled.

Q: What did you think when they told you that “Epitaph One” wouldn’t air on television? Were you disappointed?

Joss: When they told me it wasn’t going to air, I thought, “Oh, well, we’ve been canceled.” I was disappointed because I thought, “What a great way to go out.” And, I was so proud of what we had accomplished. I loved that episode and the performances in it, from the people we had in the future and from our regular cast, in the bits they did where they all got to play a little something that they hadn’t played before. I really, really wanted it to be on, so when all of that didn’t happen, after a lot of begging and whining on my part, I figured, “Well, okay, that is the death nail. It is just not worth it to them.” So, there was a little bit of re-calibration.

It wasn’t a question of panic, so much as, “Okay, well, it is going to be on the DVD. It will exist, and the true fans will go to it.” Now, it does create the problem of the new viewers versus the old, but any season does. We have so many regulars and relationships, and so much mythology already, around the central premise that this woman can be anyone, that this first episode has a lot of catching up for any viewer, whether or not “Epitaph One” was a part of it.

Q: You’ve said that viewers shouldn’t necessarily rely on what we saw in those memories in “Epitaph One.” Will there be a way that we can trust you, as storytellers, or will you be a wiggling out of some of the things that you showed us in the future?

Joss: Yes, I did say that the flash forwards of our own characters, and what they’re going through, was based on an imprint memory that could be somewhat faulty. And, I said that for the exact reason that we may want to fudge that. There is no way you can map out a television show completely, in the first year, because in the fourth year, you find out that, “My God, that works so much better,” and to be wed to the other thing would be a disservice, so we did allow ourselves some wiggle room. I also do not think of it as cheating because they are my rules. It is my show and, if you do not like my show, I’m going home.

But, no, it isn’t because this whole thing is about perceived reality. It is about the difference in how I think of you, and how you think of you, and the events. So, to me, it made sense to have that in our pocket. What we are doing is basically moving towards those memories, but we are also being very cagey about the context. The great thing about all of those scenes is that they asked as many questions as they provided answers for, and some of the answers to some of those questions will not be what people expect.

Q: In regard to the character of Echo, one of the common criticisms among viewers was that it was hard to connect to her, as a character, because she was wiped clean, at the end of every episode. Going forward, how do you envision people being able to connect to Echo if, in the end, she is just going to be blank again? Or, is she going to be that well impacted by all of those downloads in the Season 1 finale?

Joss: She has gone to a new level this season, and we will see that she has a cohesiveness and a mission that makes every engagement mean a great deal more to her. And, Echo has her own agenda, which is something she didn’t quite have before. We built to that in “Omega,” when she had been dumped with all the personalities and we heard her say her name. At the end of the first episode back, we are going to see how far she’s come, and it’s a little further than the people around her know. So, we are addressing that exact thing.

Q: So, even after her wipes, she is going to have a personality that viewers will see?

Joss: We are going to see her as we know her, and then we are going to see something very different. That is pretty much all I can say.

Q: Whether it’s really true or not, how does it feel to know that Kevin Reilly says he is motivated by fear from your fans?

Joss: He should fear them. God knows, we do. I think he was probably motivated by what we are all motivated by. It is definitely true that the fans made themselves heard, but that was by loving the thing and DVR-ing it.

There was no angry campaign. There was no bottles of anything being sent. There wasn’t any of that. It was just the studio’s understanding that the math of television is different than in used to be. We may not go out as broad as something like Lost, but the fans will come, forever. That revenue stream does not dry up. That is the thing that ultimately motivated them.

Q: You’ve talked about having trouble defining the show, in the first season, which seemed to have a lot to do with having very attractive people doing shower scenes. Can you talk more about the pressures that you had from the network, and what you are doing to deal with that?

Joss: The network did not pressure us to have shower scenes, in every episode. That just happened, naturally. But, we actually haven’t broken a story with a shower scene yet, in Season 2. We are a little disappointed in ourselves, and we know that we have let America down, too.

They were not pressuring us to make the show sexier or edgier. They were basically pressuring us to make the show safer and easier to take, which is completely understandable, on a perfectly reasonable agenda. I’m just not very good at that. So, if there is something in the show that seems a little bit off, or maybe a little bit racy, know that that was totally me and Andrew Chambliss. The other writers are all Mormons.

Q: What was important to you, in defining the show for Season 2?

Joss: Defining the show meant getting out of the idea that it was only an engagement-of-the-week adventure show. Ultimately, the reason that people were coming back to the show, and the reason the show became fascinating, was the cast. That’s what people tuned in to see. It wasn’t necessarily the engagement-of-the-week, though we work very hard to make those as interesting and as useful as possible, to reflect back on everybody.

But, ultimately, it was the ensemble. It was the people and the characters that we wanted to talk about. As soon as we had license to do that, and as soon as the inner workings of the Dollhouse became as important as the engagements, then we felt that the show started to work, and the network felt the same thing.

Q: You said that last season, you didn’t necessarily have the show defined. In retrospect, do you think you might have just been a little too candid about the difficulties you were having, finding the show?

Joss: The thing is, I can’t help it. The struggle we were going through was monumental. The struggle the cast was going through was reflective of the fact that we never shot one single episode in order. We literally had to give them memos about what they knew or didn’t know yet, for every show, because we were scrambling so much.

I may, in fact, be too candid, but we were under a microscope. Every time we got shut down, people wanted answers and some explanation. And, if an episode was nothing more than diverting, and we hadn’t quite gotten in the experience as much, I wanted people to know that I knew that, and that we were trying to get something out. The struggle we had was causing it to stumble a little bit. I can’t put something out there that is less than what it could be, without some sort of explanation. If I didn’t say anything, the fans tended to panic. But, I also can’t help myself. I wanted people to know the truth.

Q: Can the post-apocalyptic stuff in “Epitaph One” be avoided?

Joss: I tend to think not. “Epitaph One” makes our job more interesting. It basically did give us a sense of direction, and a sense of exactly where we wanted to go with the season. The stuff that happens in “Epitaph One” is 10 years down the road. The show could run for a long time, before any of that stuff starts to manifest. But, it did give us a sense of what we wanted to talk about, in terms of the external world, the abuse of power, the internal workings of the Dollhouse, the alliances that are going to form and the feuds that are going to happen.

Q: Can you still make a show for however many million per episode, if you are only on TV for a few million people, but you are number one with these other new measures? Does the business model change, depending on where and how the show is watched?

Joss: The business model does change. It breaks down, between the studio and the network. The network has the revenue of airing it. The studio has the revenue of owning it. And, ownership is now part of television. DVD is really the market, although that market will, of course, be sucked up by the Internet, once that technology progresses, in a few years. It’s not so much about being streamed for huge amounts of money, but all of those revenue streams are taken into account.

It used to be who was tuned in that night, but our DVR numbers were about the highest, while our Friday night numbers were hilarious. So, they are taking all of that into account. Also, DVDs and feeds are being bought now, 10 years after the fact, so they are thinking long-term, which is not something you expect from these people, so we are really grateful for that.

Q: If you got the same exact numbers, at the end of Season 2, given your experience this past year, would you still be worried or would you be more confident?

Joss: I do not think I have a worry left in me. I think I have reached a zen place. And, the fact is that I got to tell stories with this cast. Had they taken all of that away from me, I felt like “Epitaph One” was a hell of a way to go out, even though it was made for very strange reasons. But, I am so grateful to be back here now, taking it one day at a time.

I’m always preparing for the storm. That is how I used to live with Buffy. We ended every season knowing that, if that was the last episode, we’d feel some sense of closure. We are trying to do that same thing, without ever closing the door. So, as long as I am getting to play with these people, I’m happy. The numbers have never been my concern. I have never done huge numbers. I am not a big hit guy. What I do is find the best ensembles on television, and then I make them work their asses off. And, as long as I get to do that, I am happy.

Q: How much can you use Amy Acker this season, given her new series?

Joss: Not nearly as much as we would like, but we are going to make the most of her in those few episodes.

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Felicia Day talks to Entertainment Weekly about The Guild, Doctor Horrible and Dollhouse. After appearing in the unaired-now-Comic Con-aired episode, Epitaph One, she confirms that she’ll be back for more house action in season 2.

[credit: EW]

Here is a interview with Fran Kranz and Diechen Lachmen at Comic Con 2009.

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Dollhouse actress Miracle Laurie, who plays crazed-lasagna-lover/sleeper active “November”, tells the Baltimore Sun that she tried thousands of times to join Joss Whedon‘s inner circle before landing the part on Dollhouse. She also talks about the Shore Leave Sci-fi Convention (where she’ll be appearing this weekend) and gives her take on fan theories about November and Dollhouse (remind me to read that once I’ve finished the season ).

Read on below the jump:

Miracle Laurie didn’t want to get a role on just any TV show. She wanted to be on a Joss Whedon TV show. And now she is, and Fox has renewed Dollhouse for a second season, and life just couldn’t be a whole lot better.

“I auditioned for Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) at least a thousand times, I tried out to be a series regular on Firefly — I auditioned for years for his stuff,” says Laurie, who will be in Baltimore this weekend, signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans at the annual Shore Leave sci-fi convention at the Hunt Valley Marriott. “It was really a miracle, no pun intended.”

Meeting her fans, she insists, is the icing on the cake. She and her boyfriend, actor Christopher May, attended their first fan convention in April, “and it was a blast. We had tons of fun. There were all kinds of crazy, cool people.”

And many of them, she says with a laugh, had theories about her character’s up-in-the-air future on Dollhouse. The series, starring Eliza Dushku, centers on a group of “dolls,” men and women who assume whatever identities their employer wishes, then have their memories erased when the job is over and wait to be re-programmed. When last seen, Laurie’s character, Mellie, had been released from life in the dollhouse, with the promise of leading a normal life with her FBI-agent boyfriend, Paul Ballard. But this being TV and all, here’s betting that doesn’t happen.

“All I know for sure is that I’m coming back next season,” Orange County native Laurie says over the phone from Los Angeles, where she’s enjoying a break until Dollhouse begins filming again in late summer. “I don’t actually know in what form I’ll be back. The writers are kind of teasing me?everybody knows but me.”

She’s prepared, Laurie says, to hear all kinds of fan speculation this weekend. “All the fans are giving me their theories and stuff. One is that I wasn’t actually released, that the dollhouse is just using me to get at Paul. Another is that I’ll be involved in bringing the dollhouse down from the outside. I think their love story will continue in some manner. We’ll see who’s right.”

You can read the rest of the article here..

Thanks to Thomas for the heads-up!

finding his way?

In an exclusive interview with EW, Joss Whedon says that he and his writers “understand the show” a lot better now and that they are all raring to go for season 2. The proof will be in the pudding, of course, but hopefully they will be able to get under the skin of their own show. Continue reading below, may contain some mild spoilers:

Joss Whedon is two weeks into breaking stories for Dollhouse’s second season, and we’re happy to report that he sounds like a happy man even without that season 1 budget. Whedon wrapped his top-secret horror film The Cabin in the Woods on May 29 and hit the Dollhouse writers’ room on June 1. “I just wanted to die of tiredness,” he tells EW.com exclusively. “About two hours after starting to talk to the writers about story, I was back with such a vengeance, and so energized and so pumped because we really understand the show now. We understand what works, and what didn’t work so well or what we weren’t so thrilled about. We don’t have the onus of trying to be a big hit sitting on our shoulders. We can just be ourselves. And so the stories we’re breaking are pure, and exciting, and everybody’s on-board in the room, and it’s never flowed better.”

What does that mean for Season 2? “I’m really proud of the second half of season 1, and we’re just expanding on that in a huge way: Finding out the different things that Eliza [Dushku] can be, at the same time as extending our mythology,” Whedon says. “Really, just every meeting is like, ‘What’s the most fun we can have with this actor?’ about the whole cast. All I can say — ’cause I’m gonna be Mr. Un-Spoiler — is that we’re having a crazy amount of fun, and usually, that tends to translate onto the screen.”

Speaking slightly spoilery, Whedon tells us that season 2 won’t pick up right with “We’ve got to find Alpha!” but a little bit later. Alan Tudyk has a role on ABC’s midseason series V, but Whedon hopes he’ll be able to use the character sparingly: “Alpha will always be a part of the equation.” Whedon’s also hoping to work out a similar loan with the producers of ABC’s Happy Town, who nabbed Amy Acker, aka Dr. Saunders/Whiskey. For more insider scoops, keep reading after the jump.

More scoop: Whedon says that Echo’s last word in the finale, “Caroline,” was the beginning of her season 2 quest. “Echo wants to find not just Caroline, but what’s going on behind everything. She doesn’t have all of the skills. [Laughs] But she does have this weird super power of becoming a different person all the time, so she might start using that more specifically to find out who Caroline was and what happened to her and why this place exists.” So she still has all those past imprints in her? “Well, they’re supposed to have wiped them out of there. But we’ll see how well that went…”

Other burning questions: Summer Glau hasn’t signed on for any episodes of Dollhouse yet. “We’re still breaking the episodes,” Whedon says, “but we didn’t honestly go into the season going, ‘Now how can we figure out how to service Summer?’ when we already have a huge ensemble. I adore Summer and she’s phenomenal, but I have to service the cast I have first. If something comes up that’s good enough, my God, I’d hound her. But the rumors of her becoming a big part of the show are greatly exaggerated.”

Source: EW

Blast Magazine recently got the chance to talk with Alan Tudyk about “Dollhouse”, “Firefly”, his upcoming role on “V” and a bunch of other random stuff. There may be a minor DH spoiler towards the end:

BLAST: Tell me what it was like working with Joss again on “Dollhouse.”

ALAN TUDYK: It was really great, you know, I didn’t work with him in a directing capacity. He was around doing the extras for the DVD so I definitely ran into him. It was really great.

BLAST: What is it about Joss Whedon that makes these group of actors follow him around?

AT: Um, he has dirt on all of us. Really embarrassing stuff. It’s blackmail, really, I mean I’ll call it what is. That, I guess, and you know in his shows — the two I’ve been on — there’s a way that you can have really high-stakes, dramatic situations taking place right next to very funny, and wry, sarcastic commentary. Which is hard to pull off and nobody does it better than him. So you get the opportunity to do something that’s rare.

BLAST: I caught that sneak mention of “Firefly.” You know there are always rumors of “Serenity 2? flying around, and Joss does have a history of bringing back characters from the beyond. Would you do another one?

AT: Oh yeah, I’ve been telling Joss to do a whole TV series on Wash. Forget about it, that’s what I want!

BLAST: I don’t think you know what you just did. I think the fans will explode.

AT: Well, I’ve said that to fans before and they go, (unenthusiastically) “Yeah! But actually the great thing about “Firefly” was everyone working together…”, and I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll start with one and go from there!” But yeah, of course I would do it.

BLAST: About Alpha…

AT: Great.

BLAST: What personality of Alpha’s — I think, what, 38 of them? — which was most fun to play?

AT: Well… I think it’s forty — well, I’ve been saying 42 but I think it’s 48. It’s tough to know. (laughs) The only one, you know… It’s interesting doing episodic television, because you can’t peer around the corner. When I was doing the episode of “Briar Rose,” I didn’t know where Alpha was going in “Omega.” I knew that I was taking her… but I didn’t even know what I was taking her to do. (laughs) I didn’t know why I was taking her until the day after we ran “Briar Rose” and I read the script for “Omega.”

BLAST: You kind of had to play it by ear then.

AT: There are a couple of things that happened with the performance. It was like, wow, this guy talks a great deal. He always speaks quickly and he doesn’t ever want to stop talking! There are a lot of lines to learn. But also, I knew that he had 48 people in him, but I didn’t realize that it was just a riot of people, of difficult, zany folks. If I had to do it over again I would have brought more personalities out in the first one. (hesitates) Eh, I don’t want to say I have regrets, but I — I don’t know who all the personalities are. And there’s Kepler, you know whoever that is, whatever personality he’s using there. But that was kind of, you know, Alpha was doing a little acting, also.

BLAST: The acting part was one of the things fans have kind of been wondering about. To what extent was Alpha in fact Kepler, or was he acting the whole time?

AT: I think with Alpha, if I, personally, was able to know intimately 48 perspectives, and backgrounds, and upbringings — perspectives, I got it right the first time — 48 different perspectives, If I had the benefit of that, myself, I would be an amazing actor. That’s what acting is, you’re putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes and really trying to get as close to them as possible. So Alpha has the capacity to be the greatest actor. I feel like his Kepler was an amalgam of who he is, he can borrow a great deal from himself. And you know, we get to see Eliza Dushku’s character put on all these different roles. So you have to think about all these different pieces of her that she could borrow from. And there are a lot of differences between them.

BLAST: You mentioned one thing I was going to ask you about. If you could have one skill or ability downloaded into your head, what would it be?

AT: Uh… Inner peace.

BLAST: Is that a skill?

AT: It’s not a skill… but you know, you get these perspectives so you could download anything, like enlightment. Some kind of thought process, not so much a religion. Like the Dalai Lama! I could download a piece of the Dalai Lama and just chill. (laughs)

BLAST: Are there other characters in the “Jossverse” besides Wash and Alpha that you would like to play?

AT: Buffy. I would love to play Buffy. I’ve always felt that Sarah Michelle Gellar did a great job, but there was stuff she missed. (laughs)

BLAST: Hey, you know they are supposedly doing a Buffy movie without any of the actual Buffy characters. So will you throw your hat in the ring?

AT: (laughs) If I can find time outside of my new TV show “Wash,” sure.

BLAST: Well you do have a new TV show, “V.” Can you tell me about it?

AT: Sure. It’s kind of an “Independence Day” scenario. You know it’s based on the original miniseries that came out in the 80s. And, it’s aliens, and it’s about this alien race…

BLAST: Are you an alien?

AT: I am not at liberty to say.

BLAST: Oooh. Really?

AT: Yeah, I can’t say one way or the other. It’s just about an alien race coming in, and the reaction to having another race of people with alien technology and all that would mean if we actually had spaceships parked over our cities and what that would mean.

BLAST: Is it the sci-fi of it that drew you to it?

AT: No, it was the script. There was one part in the script, right in the beginning when the Vs first show up and this F-16 falls out of the sky over the streets of New York City and explodes, and it’s like, oh man, what’s going on? This is great!

BLAST: I asked some Twitter people if they had any questions for you and one question was: why did you leave Juilliard before graduating?

AT: (laughs) Wow, how to do I answer that?

BLAST: From aliens to Juilliard, right?

AT: Yeah, right. Well, (laughs) I was following in a long line of actors who left Juilliard in their third year. Val Kilmer, Robin Williams… Juilliard’s fourth year at that time and I think it’s still the case, was where you study for three years. You do plays, but it’s in conjunction with classes. And then your fourth year becomes solely a performance year. There’s a couple of classes that are like, “How to Audition!” and “How to Get an Agent!” And I had worked really hard to get an agent before I left Juilliard, I had an agent before my third year. So I didn’t feel those classes were necessary and I didn’t need a year full of, you know, “18th century Spanish plays that have never before been translated until now!” That’s awful. That sounds awful! I like the people at Juilliard.

BLAST: What fictional character would you most like to play? Have you ever thought about it?

AT: Wow. Gosh. You know, I don’t know.

BLAST: Maybe another round as Steve the Pirate?

AT: (laughs) Sure.

BLAST: So we’ve got Alan the Vampire Slayer, we have Wash the TV show, and a Steve the Pirate movie. I hope you know I’ll be holding you to your word.

AT: (laughs) You know I don’t know that a Steve the Pirate movie would be very interesting without the rest of the cast. He doesn’t say very much… His humor is best in small doses of “Garr!” and “Arrgh!” in the right moment. I would only want to undertake that with Justin Long, and Christine Taylor, Vince Vaughn, Joel, Ben Stiller. We’d need the whole group.

BLAST: (laughs) Fair enough. What is on your iPod?

AT: What’s on my iPod? I’ve got a lot on my iPod. I can tell you what I’m listening to right now… My current favorite song is by a band called Band of Skulls, it’s called “I Know What I Am.” Great song. And I’ve got a little throwback to when I was in high school, Anthrax’s “I’m the Man,” hysterical song. A hard band but the song is really funny. And the Black Keys’ new album is fantastic. There’s a song on it called “I Got Mine,” which is kind of that bluesy, ballsy music. The whole album is great. I could go on, and on, and on…

BLAST: You are a regular at fan conventions, so I was wondering: are you a sci-fi fan yourself and will you be at this year’s San Diego Comic Con?

AT: I don’t know about San Diego. Am I sci-fi fan, that was the other question? I liked “Star Trek: The Next Generation” when I was growing up, a lot, and the original “Star Trek” when I was a kid, watching re-runs. But “The Next Generation” is the first show that really grabbed me. I loved the characters, I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Then I kind of took a break, well you know, “Star Wars” and all that stuff is great. But I wasn’t the biggest sci-fi fan until “Firefly “sort of brought me back in. Yeah, I am a sci-fi fan. The new “Star Trek” movie, best movie I’ve seen… you know, a lot of people say it’s the best movie they’ve seen since “Iron Man,” but I think it’s better than “Iron Man.”

BLAST: “Star Trek” was really good. It was a movie that had so much weighing on it, and managed to appeal both to the masses and the fans. Great movie.

AT: Yeah. I’ve seen it twice.

BLAST: Me too!

AT: Yeah. It was done, and I was like, let’s roll it again! I’m ready to see it again. Let’s go. Like, now. So entertaining, so entertaining. You know, they have something in the “Star Trek” franchise… I definitely haven’t seen all of it, but they have something in this one that I’ve only seen in “Firefly” before. You’ve got your hero, your Captain Kirk, getting his ass kicked. That first scene when you’re meeting him as an adult, he gets his butt whipped in a bar, and it’s hysterical. Very Malcolm Reynolds-y. And then also, when he lands in the ice planet before he meets Spock, and he’s complaining and trying to cite the rules that have been broken, and he’s looking off in the distance, and the the giant behemoth is coming at him. He’s running from it, screaming like a girl, (high voice) “No-o! No-o!” The hero can be very uncool, the hero can be afraid, the hero can be chicken. That was really refreshing. He can make mistakes and be goofy. That whole scene with him and the doc, and the shots. It’s just fun.

BLAST: There’s a certain fearlessness with the way Joss treats his characters and I think with the way they handled the characters in “Star Trek.” I think you’re quite right about that.

AT: Yeah. Absolutely, definitely.

BLAST: Oh — will we see you [on Dollhouse] next season?

AT: (pause) Yes you will.

You can read the entire interview here..

TV Guide grabbed a few words with Eliza Dushku on the renewal of Dollhouse and the show going forward:

TVGuide.com: How did you find out about the renewal? Who told you?
Eliza Dushku: I was in Uganda the past two weeks. I landed Friday night about midnight, and when I touched down the first message was a text from Joss saying, “We’re back on, kid! Get ready to raise hell!” [Laughs] It was a nice homecoming.

TVGuide.com: Kevin Reilly has been out there saying that Dollhouse‘s renewal is testament to Joss’ loyal fanbase.
Dushku: The fans, the fans, the fans, absolutely. We are so grateful and just bowled over by the support and the love and the loyalty. We are so excited to do the second season because it took us until the last six or so episodes to hit our stride; now we get to really have some fun.

TVGuide.com: Will the “missing” 13th episode, “Epitaph One,” now serve as the Season 2 premiere? Or is it still DVD-only?
Dushku: You know, I dont know. I just got off the plane, so I dont know.

TVGuide.com: “Epitaph One,” which was produced on the studio’s own dime, was used to convince Fox that Dollhouse can be delivered on a smaller budget. Are there any differences the viewer might pick up on?
Dushku: No, our set is pretty solid and top dollar. I think the show will continue to be visually stunning.

TVGuide.com: So, as you filmed it, you didn’t pick up on anything different?
Dushku: Well, it was faster — and that’s always nice!

TVGuide.com: How will Echo be different going forward, considering the events of the season finale?
Dushku: Being downloaded with all the personalities, the build-up was about Echo becoming self-aware. It will give the audience a chance to connect with Echo more, because she’s not just that blank slate. There’s something behind her eyes creeping out. That’s the center of the show — can you really erase someone’s identity? The answer seems to be no.

TVGuide.com: That was nice what Paul Ballard did for Mellie, getting her released from her contract early.
Dushku: I know, right? He’s a love. We have such an amazing cast… It’s just such an honor to be a part of it. When Joss sent out that email, everyone one was just flipping out. We were really, really happy.

Source: TV Guide

To be honest I’m not sure that the show was ever was “visually stunning”. She’s mainly referring to the set of course, which is nice, but it gets a bit stale after a while. I guess we can infer that most of the story-lines for next season will be shot indoors, what with the “shoe-string” budget and all? Not exactly the increasing scope that I was hoping for. Still, she talks positively about viewers having the chance to connect with Echo.

FEAR.net have an interview with “Dollhouse” creator, Joss Whedon. The interview contains some major spoilers so continue at your own discretion.

Dollhouse doesn’t have the same wit and snappy dialogue that your other shows are known for.  Is that something we can look forward to in coming episodes?

There is humor in the show.  But the fact of the matter is that this is not a comedy.  If there is a typical Whedon show, this is not it.  It’s not the lighthearted romp that the other shows were.  There’s definitely funny stuff coming up.  There’s always moments of funny, but it doesn’t build like a comedy.  It wasn’t designed to be a comedy.  If people are feeling like it’s too serious, then either their expectation has to be changed, or we need to lighten up a little.  But, yes, I don’t think they’re ever going to see the same sort of long, six-page runs of just pure humor.  This is not that show.

Am I interpreting this correctly, that in an upcoming episode we find out that Sierra was basically sold into slavery with the Dollhouse?

More or less.  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.

One of the things I hear from people who may have been a little bit reluctant to get into the show is what they call “the ick factor” of the premise.  And Adele [head of the Dollhouse, played by Olivia Williams] tries to argue that most of the Dolls are there voluntarily and that she’s doing a good service for them by wiping out these other memories.  But knowing that it is possible for at least one of the Dolls to have been brought in against her will, does that continue to make the show uncomfortable?

I don’t know, maybe.  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 have power and are trying to regain it.  The “ick factor” 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.
Could you talk about the process of building up and hyping this particular episode and whether you think there might have been some negative side effect to all the interviews you did where you emphasized that episode 6 was the one where you wanted people to really get hooked?

You know, there may have been a negative side to it, because we may have said, “The first five episodes are crap,” which I don’t believe.  There’s also the negativity of somebody saying, “Well, now he’s blaming the network for the other episodes.”  No, no, no, no.  We did our best to try and figure out how to put the show over while under the gun, while we were in production or occasionally out of production.  And then what happened with “Man on the Street,” was it came to me as a concept really quickly.  I pitched it to the network and for the first time, there was a real simpatico.  They went, “Oh, yes, we get that,” and it was a very simple thing.  And I wrote it faster than anything I’d every written.  It just poured out of me.  It was like all of that brewing that we’ve been doing became the soup of that episode and so it really was a game changer for us on set and in production.  The staff and the cast read it and a lot of tumblers fell into place.  That’s how we felt about the episode.

There may be a negativity associated with hyping it, but for all of us, a lot of the following episodes really work on the model of “Man on the Street” more than anything else.  So it was a big moment for us.  It was a moment that we felt like we found a level and we were really proud of it.  I figure that other people may feel differently, but we walked away from shooting that episode going, “Okay, we just added a layer and we feel pretty excited about it.”

Could you talk about what the tumbler was that clicked, what the other layer was that you feel like you found?

I think it was doing an episode that somebody who had never seen the show could walk in on because it explains very clearly the premise. In fact, it’s kind of about explaining the premise and at the same time really getting under the skin of the Dollhouse and of Agent Paul Ballard [played by Tahmoh Penikett] and of what’s going on with everybody, the workings of the place and coming at it sideways rather than just showing an engagement and flipping in some information around that engagement.  This was one where we really got to look at the cogs of the clock and that’s what gave it such momentum for us.

Will we learn why Ballard is so obsessed with Caroline and the Dollhouse this season?

We don’t really go back into his story in the first season, the first of so many seasons that there will inevitably be.  [Laughs.]  We feel like there’s a thorn in his side and we feel that we can push it further and twist it and possibly hit a vital organ.

It seems like the show is getting better by going at things sideways rather than head on. How much of that was you finding the show and how much of that was the network relenting and letting you get it to the place that you wanted?

I think it was both.  The show definitely contains elements that were pitched or developed by people at the network in terms of the motivations of the Dollhouse and the feel of the politics and the thriller aspect. The show is very much full of the stuff that they were pitching.  But, storytelling-wise, it was much closer to how I had envisioned coming at it in a sense that is clearer, than my original pilot.  My original pilot was deliberately obtuse and you had to come along and stay with it and figure it out.

Here’s the situation.  [The Dollhouse] is a myth.  This guy [Ballard] is looking for it.  We lay it out as simply as we did in the first five, but because we get to go inside the Dollhouse more, the events there take on much more resonance.  It has what I had hoped to bring to the other episodes that I didn’t really have the opportunity to.  So I felt like it was really finding the code to a show that I can do my best work in that the network still really can get behind.  So it was a meeting of the minds.

Thanks: FEAR.net –Read entire article here..

More clips of Joss Whedon and Tahmoh Penikett from the Dollhouse NY Comic Con Panel, which took place earlier this year. The video contains spoiler footage from an upcoming episode. Hit to jump to view the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGUMwKHkBnI[/youtube]

Vid Cred: Fox Broadcasting

In this video, Joss Whedon talks about his role, conflicts and duality as a story-teller. This is actually more interesting than the show itself. For real. I guess it gives me a brief reminder that the powers that be do have something worth saying, but perhaps it hasn’t been channeled effectively so far.

AP