Talking Dollhouse

A little over a month ago, I had the chance to talk to some of the actors involved with Dollhouse, specifically Tahmoh Penikett and Harry Lennix. Sadly, I’ve been holding out on the transcripts until now, but with the show about to premiere, hopefully everyone can forgive me.

Without further or do, there are the questions I asked each of them as I wandered around a party. Excluded are the questions asked by other bloggers, though they are no less interesting or relevant.

Do you see that storyline coming to a conclusion? If you influate the Dollhouse what do you do next? What does it do for you when you’re playing it each time?

T. Penikett: I try not to think about it too much. I mean, I can want to go episode to episode. If it comes to that and the storyline is done, then it’s done, but I doubt it. I could speculate on where it could go. Maybe the technology is used on him. Maybe he’s unsuccessful in infiltrating. Maybe he kinda infiltrates it and has his memory whipped and he’s back at square one.

Given that sort of nature and that you liked working with that, how do you approach Dollhouse knowing that Joss likes to torture his characters in numerous ways over the course of his series’?

T. Penikett: Can Joss [Whedon] really torture a character more than me on Battlestar [Galactica]? Comparatively, let’s look at Grace Pak’s character, Katee Sackhoff’s character? You can’t torturn your characters more than Battlestar.

If you were your character, would you hire out a Doll, what situation would you want to create?

T. Penikett: The only way I would sign up is if I knew that the person volunteered 100% for this. Maybe a friend.

And what would you do?

T. Penikett: I don’t know. What would you do?

I don’t know, and I haven’t thought enough about it. But I can ask you because you’ve seen all of the different situations the Dolls have been in.

T. Penikett: You know what I might do if they have the imprint of lost loved one. And I was able to ask some of those questions I never got to ask.

Next, a much shorter conversation with Harry Lennix:

If there’s anything that you would want to do with an Active if you were renting one? Who would you want to rent?

H. Lennix: That’s an excellent question. I have a very quick answer of no, I wouldn’t. There’s nothing in the dollhouse that Boyd approves of. He’s a pretty straight-laced guy.

Do you like working with that morally grey that you find yourself in? Is that something that attracted you to the role?

H. Lennix: Absolutely. There is no drama without morally grey. There isn’t. No character, no play is worth doing where the person is okay with everything they do all the time. There also has to be a crisis that comes up, usually not vis- a-vi another character, but vis- a- vi their conscious. I love it.