Page 1 of 2
It's called Dollhouse because there is a whole house full of dolls, actives who receive personality implants for each mission. Dichen Lachman plays one such operative, taking on different characters each weak before getting wiped clean each time. With such an exotic appearance, she should blend in well as any type of special agent.
Crave Online: You have such a unique look. What is your family background?
Dichen Lachman: My father's from Australia and my mother was born in India but she's actually Tibetan. I was born in Katmandu, lived there until I was eight and then moved to Australia with my mother and father. So yeah, I'm very mixed up, been to many different schools.
Crave Online: Do you expect to deal with a personality your character might want to keep?
Dichen Lachman: I think so. If you could imagine wanting to be able to do something like play the piano beautifully for example and then you can, and then you have to give all that knowledge away, it'd be hard to let go. So likewise in the dollhouse, if we do start becoming aware and we're imprinted with these amazing skills, being able to play the violin or run a marathon or build a computer from scratch with a pocket knife, and we're aware that we have these abilities, it would be hard to let that go. As a person, when I was seven or eight, my dad would try very hard to tutor me through school because I had learning difficulties or whatever. I would wish that they could just plant a chip in my brain so that I would know everything and not have to study. That's exactly what this is like. I don't know you personally, we just met, but if there's something that you've always wanted to do and in a minute you could have that, it would be very hard to give up. So I think that's an episode in itself.
Crave Online: That's what I thought on episode one.
Dichen Lachman: I guess there's a long way the show can go. There are so many places it can go and for that to occur at the moment you would need to become more aware of what was happening to us. So touch wood, when it goes to second season, I think those issues will come up so that's why we have to explore it and watch it.
Crave Online: What sort of questions has the show raised so far?
Dichen Lachman: It does raise a lot of issues. I think everyone I know has had an identity crisis at one point in their life. I don't know anyone who hasn't woken up one morning, one day in their life and wish they were someone else, or wish they could do something or wish they were capable of something. In this show, the dolls or the actives have that. Not all the time by choice, but they're capable of absolutely anything: skills, just knowledge. It's limitless but at the same time, because of the moral and ethical issues it raises, it might make us question the fact that we should actually really value who we are and value every single thing that's happened in our lives whether it be good or bad because all of those things make us who we are and make us unique. It separates us from each other. It makes us individuals. In the dollhouse, they're taking that away from people and putting different, very specific personalities and skills onto these people. As wonderful and fancy and exciting as that sounds, it's really not okay. So hopefully it will help some people accept who they are more because they can see it happening and it doesn't sit right with them.
