Archive for the 'Articles & Interviews' Category

There’s another interview with Amy online, this time with Total Sci Fi, which briefly covers Dollhouse as well as 21 and a Wake-Up — I’m sure we’ll be seeing some more interviews soon! Enjoy the read.

The people who made Angel really love Amy Acker. When Joss Whedon hired her for to play Fred Burkle in the show, co-creator/executive producer Joss Whedon declared: “She’s stolen all of our hearts – and now we’re afraid she won’t give them back!” Acker was a regular on Angel for four years, before being hired by erstwhile Angel showrunner Tim Minear to play Nathan Fillion’s wife on the short-lived Drive, and had a recurring gig as a badass spy on Alias in between. Now she’s a regular on Whedon’s new Fox series Dollhouse as “house” doctor Claire Saunders.

So you’re back with Joss Whedon…

Yes, I’m very excited. I roped him into hiring me!

In Dollhouse, the ‘dolls’ are imprinted with a variety of personalities, but your character has a stable identity…

As far as I know! I’m the doctor.

So she’s not a psychiatrist with a troubled past?

I’m more of the general practitioner. I actually help them with their injuries, but I deal with everything.

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Thanks to Ted Stokes at Stuff We Like! In this part, there are some wonderful titbits about Dollhouse; an idea of Amy’s character, and the fact that while Amy is currently a recurring character, she has filmed every episode but one so far!

Marking just under one month until Dollhouse’s premiere (Feb 13th) we are proud to present the concluding part of our exclusive interview with Amy Acker which began December 15th. This time we talk about her career after her breakout role as Fred in Angel all the way to Dollhouse.

You went and used a lot of technology in some of your work or played very technological people how are you good with technology really?

I’m not even good at checking email so not really.

Were there any plans to do tie-in videogames for Angel?

I haven’t heard about that so no.

Are you into videogames?

I don’t know. I have never really been into that, I mean my husband’s [James Carpinello who played Bobby Saint in 2004’s The Punisher] big into Guitar Hero and Rock Band. My sister has a Wii and I think my favourite thing about it was at Christmas last year my whole family were playing Wii bowling so I was like this is pretty awesome, that we can all play this together.

That seems to be the draw for the Wii really as it’s aimed at all ages with its unique control system.

Yes I like that it’s a little more active, I get stuck in a trance doing the other ones and also I’m just not very good at it and I like doing things that I’m good at.

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There’s a wonderful new interview online with Amy at Stuff We Like by Ted Stokes. I’ve posted the first part of the interview below & under the cut; the 2nd part shall be posted online on January 15th.

Back in October we had the chance to speak exclusively with Amy Acker, known best for playing the quirky yet lovable Fred in Angel about her past shows and her new role in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse premiering on Fox this coming February.

How did you come to be in Angel?

That was a long time ago, after college I went to New York for a little bit and then I moved out here and I had only been here about a month and then I was having regular auditions, and one of these auditions happened to be for this character on Angel and I think at that point the characters name was like Logan or something and she was a librarian. I went in and did that scene and I got a call-back from Joss [Whedon] and luckily he liked me and they were trying to decide about adding another girl into the show and they were tossing around a couple of different characters. Joss wrote a scene that I think is on the DVD that Alexis [Denisof], J [August Richards] and I did which was kind of a Midsummer Night’s Dream sort of Shakespearean little scene that Joss had written and that ended up being my screen-test for being a regular.

Sounds like fun!

It was a lot of fun. They kept saying they were going to do a whole episode like that which we were all excited about but I guess that would have been season 6.

What was your time on the show like?

I loved being on Angel. I mean it was such a great cast, and still some of my best friends are from there, Alexis and J . It was such a great show to work on, because at least with my character, and it seems like everybody got to go on such a big journey for each character so we were starting in Pylea and ending up as Illyria, he [Joss] keeps you interested as an actor.

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Amy Acker, co-star of Fox’s upcoming Joss Whedon series Dollhouse, told SCI FI Wire that all the publicity surrounding the show’s recent production break was much ado about nothing.

Last month, creator-producer-director Whedon halted production on the show in order to rework the fourth episode and get ahead on subsequent scripts. Production resumed on Sept. 25, after about two weeks off, and Fox will premiere the show as scheduled in January.

“You know, we did take a little break,” Acker said in an interview earlier this month. “And I feel like it’s coming back, and everyone is just excited to be there. The first show that came back was a Steve DeKnight show; he was directing it, and it’s just really, really great. I think we just kind of had that time, because it doesn’t air until January.”

The Fox series will explore the goings-on at a facility where specially modified humans, referred to as “dolls,” are programmed with temporary memories and personalities tailored to different assignments. Eliza Dushku, who played Faith in Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, stars as Echo, a “doll” who starts to retain her memories. Acker, who played Fred/Illyria on Whedon’s Angel, plays Dr. Claire Saunders, caretaker of the dolls and a woman with her own mysterious past.

“Instead of rushing to make episodes, they thought, ‘Well, we’ve already made four, and they’re all going to be done before the first one airs,’” Acker said. “So we have the luxury to take the time and make them the way they want them.”

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Amy Acker, who stars in SCI FI Channel’s upcoming original movie Fire and Ice, told SCI FI Wire that she got to realize a dream.

“I have always wanted to do any sort of period piece,” the Alias and Angel star said in an interview. “I love horseback riding. I got to be a tomboy princess and fight dragons.”

Helmed by visual-effects-supervisor-turned-director Pitof (Catwoman), Fire and Ice stars Acker as Luisa, a daddy’s-girl princess who must team up with a knight named Gabriel (300′s Tom Wisdom) to save their kingdom from a menacing fire-breathing dragon.

Joining Acker–who’s due next in Joss Whedon’s upcoming Fox SF series Dollhouse–are such familiar genre faces as Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) and John Rhys-Davies (the Lord of the Rings trilogy).

“I couldn’t really think of anything bad about it,” Acker said. “It was great, and there were good people involved and a lot of British accents. It was fun to be the only girl with this group of guys and fighting along with them and doing all of that. I hope I get to work with all of them again. Maybe they can make it into a series!”

Acker added that she welcomed the change from series television. “It was [also] a chance to do something totally different from your normal television show,” she said. “The only thing that wasn’t real was the dragon, but luckily they had already drawn up what he was going to look like. I haven’t seen it finished, but [from] the pictures and early CG stuff they were doing it was this really cool dragon that looked different from any other dragon I’d ever seen. But it was easy to imagine it huge.”

Source: Sci Fi Wire

Once you’re in the Jossverse, it’s hard to escape, Amy Acker has discovered. Not that you’d really want to. There are worse things than being associated with Joss Whedon, the writer-director-producer whose cultlike fanbase worships his creations: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and the upcoming Fox SF series Dollhouse.

When Acker, who played Winifred “Fred” Burkle on Angel for three years, heard that Whedon was developing Dollhouse, she naturally wanted in.

Co-created with Eliza Dushku, another Whedon veteran, Dollhouse centers around a secret organization that programs specially modified humans–known as “dolls”–with temporary memories and personalities suited to different assignments. Acker plays the role of Dr. Claire Saunders, the caretaker of the dolls, who has a mysterious past of her own. The role was originally written for a woman in her 40s or 50s, but Whedon ultimately decided to adapt it for Acker based on his experience working with her and their ongoing friendship.

Acker spoke with SCI FI Wire exclusively in a phone interview last week and talked about reuniting with Whedon, with a peek at what Jossverse fans can expect from the new series. Dollhouse is set for a January premiere on Fox and will air Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

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Another little snippet from Joss Whedon about Amy in the upcoming series Dollhouse.

Whedon once swore off doing another show on FOX after ?Firefly,” but come January, he’ll return to the network with ?Dollhouse,” which has several Buffyverse alumni in its cast and crew, most notably Eliza Dushku as the show’s star, Amy Acker (Fred on ?Angel”) as a recurring character, and Steven DeKnight (as a writer). ?I tried not to make ?Dollhouse” a family reunion,” Whedon said, ?but I reluctantly read Amy, I realized I was the biggest idiot alive. I mean, how can I not have them come back? Have you seen them act?”

Source: MTV.com