Eliza Dushku is the star of a new Machinima Prime series called “The Gable V.” The pilot just hit their channel today and is a heavy blend of sci-fi and action focused on harvesting human emotion. Director Kevin Tancharoen puts us in a soon-to-be government sponsored facility focused on test subjects reliving traumatic moments in their lives to harvest a unique substance generated by the brain, that can potentially “end world war.” The cinematography is phenomenal, Eliza does her stunts beautifully, and some dudes even get meat-hooked. Here is what she had to say about the role.
BSR!: Thanks for taking some time out of your afternoon to talk with us.
Eliza: Happy to, I’m really excited to talk about this project. You know how fans are, you give them a glimpse and they want more, and I’m glad to be able to finally talk about it.
BSR!: How did you get involved in the project?
Eliza: Kevin, Kevin T. He is an extension of the Whedon family now, he’s Melissa’s brother and Melissa is married to Jed and Jed is Joss’s brother, little Whedon brother. We had worked together on Doll House and he called me about this and I’m a huge fan of Machinima and a huge fan of the content they’ve produced. It was sort of a no-brainer, no pun intended (laughs).
BSR!: Have you worked on other web series before?
Eliza: I’ve done guest appearances and it has had a great response. You know, the web gets eyeballs. As I said, I’m a fan of Machinima and I’m a social media chick myself. I like having that direct access from art to fan, taking out the middleman, which is exciting. I really enjoy being a part of this new kind of digital community.
BSR!: Tell us a little bit about your character.
Well, I think they do a nice job of setting it up. Of finding a woman who’s world has been dominated by this massive source of loss, this incident of losing her sister to a violent man in a violent way. Having that situation recreated, and when we look at the five emotions the mad scientist is looking to harvest and help end world war at the same time. That deconstruction of human psychology and our experiences that come to define us is really interesting and my character, you see from a different level of loss and revenge. I mean it’s revenge, but it’s also if you could go back and save the person you’ve lost that you love the most, what would that look like. And it raises the question, “Could you fight?”
BSR!: One of my favorite scenes is you running through the warehouse, guns blazing, and you run out of ammo and throw the gun at the guys face. Was that impromptu, or scripted?
Eliza: I wish that would have been impromptu (laughs), but it was scripted. (Laughs) Its sort of this combat scene when you’re out of ammo all you have is your fists and your feet. And I think we wanted to see it get to the next level of gnarly, you know, and then picking up the scraps the pipe and the grenade.
BSR!: What was your favorite part of filming this?
Eliza: It was an epic day, I mean we shot so much. I see myself as a stunt woman if I may be so bold, and I love working with stunt people that want to nail it. We did a bit of wirework after I meat-hook the guy on the second level. We had a few minutes to rehearse my wire work of jumping from the second floor and riding down the chain. That was fun, it took me to my beginning days of my initiation into the stunt world on “True Lies” spending a number of days on top of Miami Savings Bank.
BSR!: Where do you see the series going from here?
Eliza: That’s the question, I don’t have the answer right now, but we’ll see how the fans and the world respond to it, and hopefully go on from there.
BSR!: The final question is do you have any roles that are near and dear to you or any favorites?
Wow, there are so many, I’ve been at this 22 no 23 years and it’s hard to pick a favorite. You know, each character sort of portrays where I was at that time in my life. And it’s been colorful and varied and I can’t really pick a favorite.