Eliza Dushku: “Echo Will Be The Sum Of All Her Parts”

Last week’s season premiere of Dollhouse kicked the show into high gear immediately, revealing layers upon layers for every character and situation within the Dollhouse. Echo as Roma weds Jamie Bamber’s hot British billionaire, who turns out to be an arms dealer that Roma is working a long undercover job on for former-Agent Paul Ballard, who has hired Echo to be imprinted as his partner for last three years. That was unexpected. We also had Whiskey/Claire dealing with the knowledge that she’s an Active, going after Topher in a surreal seduction scene after Boyd challenged her to stop making excuses for not interacting outside of the Dollhouse. Adelle DeWitt showed a small chink in her armor with regards to Victor, who in turn seemed to remember his feelings for Sierra. And finally, after the long engagement that resulted in the arms dealer’s capture, Ballard accepted a new job as Echo’s handler who revealed to him that she remembers every person they’ve imprinted on her. “We’re lost, but we’re not gone,” she tells Ballard.

Eliza Dushku as the glitching Echo in Dollhouse / FOX

Echo’s quest to sort out all of the people she’s been and to find their real selves, in addition to her own, looks to be the overarching theme of Dollhouse‘s sophomore season. In a conference call with star Eliza Dushku today, we got a few glimpses into what Echo is dealing with this season and why her ultimate goal may have changed.

Being Echo

“So much is being cracked open and explored [this season]”, says Eliza, both with Echo and the other Actives and the Dollhouse organization as a whole. For Echo, Alpha downloading all of those personalities into Caroline in the season finale continues to have reprecussions moving forward.

“They’re not going away. She’s still tapping into these personalities. Sometimes it’s not in her control, other times it is, but overall she’s absorbing things from her engagements and from the Dollhouse, not necessarily as Caroline but as Echo.” So while season 1 was about Ballard trying to find the Dollhouse and free Caroline, season 2 becomes Echo trying to find her real self amidst all the personalities in her head, and decide if Caroline is that reality or if she’s evolved beyond her.

“She starts to realize that there are things about Caroline that are unsavory or that are not Echo. The development of the character of Echo now has been so fascinating and so exciting. The way that Joss and the writers can pick pieces from each of her experiences and weave them into this new character is just fascinating. You’ll absolutely see a whole new Echo this season, who is the sum of all all the parts, all the pieces she’s been.”

Allies

The journey to find herself won’t be easy. “She is looking for allies,” says Eliza. “If the wrong person catches on to what she’s experiences and remembering, she could very well be sent up to the attic and cancel Christmas!”

Who can she trust? Who can she manipulate to find out what she wants to know? Even as Echo tries to work her way through the maze of personalities, new ones are being imprinted. Complicating matters even more, the introduction of other players and the other Dollhouse means that one misstep could be the end of not just Echo but all of the people she’s been. It’s a unique scenario, the heroine trying to save a group of people by saving herself.

Guest Stars

This season we will get some backstory for Adelle and her superiors, and by extension Dollhouses around the world including one in Washington, D.C. Summer Glau, who starred in Dollhouse‘s lead-in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles last season, will appear in at least two episodes of Dollhouse as this bigger picture unfolds. So how was it working with Summer?

“Summer is a sweet, positive, fun actress. Our characters have some backstory that we have to fight out,” Eliza laughs. “Anyone that’s from Joss’s past and that he’s bringing back, I assume he had a good working relationship with them. I can pretty much always safely know that we’re going to have the cream of the crop coming in.”

Echo is imprinted as the mother of a newborn on Dollhouse / FOX

Other guest stars this season include Alexis Denisof, who we saw for the first time in the season premiere as the Senator out to expose the Dollhouse’s parent corporation; Miracle Laurie, who will reprise her role as November/Mellie beginning with episode 2.02; and Michael Hogan, who plays a Dollhouse shareholder whose engagement of Victor clashes with Echo’s engagement in episode 2.03.

Instincts

In this week’s episode, “Instincts”, Echo is imprinted as a young mother whose child is threatened. The episode has the distinction of featuring one of the most challenging acting moments for its star. Is it a complicated stunt? A scene fraught with emotion? No, it’s something much more difficult, says Eliza: “Pretending to breastfeed a child who isn’t yours is harder than it looks!”

Dollhouse airs Fridays at 9/8c on Fox.