Posted in: Current News, CW, TV | Tagged: buffy, buffy the vampire slayer

Eliza Dushku on Buffy Impact; "Sort of Lost Contact" with Joss Whedon

In an interview, Eliza Dushku discussed the impact and influence Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Faith had on viewers over the years and more.

Ever since the news hit that EP Sarah Michelle Gellar, Showrunners Nora Zuckerman and Lila Zuckerman, director and executive producer Chloé Zhao, and EP Gail Berman were working on a pilot for what would become the Gellar and Ryan K. Armstrong-starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale pilot for Hulu, there's been a ton of attention being paid to the "Buffyverse." This time around, we're getting a chance to hear from someone who walked away from acting nearly ten years ago to pursue a new calling. An icon within the "Buffyverse" for her run as big-bad-turned-hero Faith in the Joss Whedon-created series, Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse, Bring It On) would make the decision to walk away from the Hollywood grind in 2017, putting to rest a 25-year acting career.

From there, Dushku would go on to graduate from Lesley University with a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling with a focus on addiction, recovery, and trauma (as well as receiving a certification in psychedelic-assisted therapy through a California university, a certification not yet legal in Massachusetts). Interestingly enough, it would be Dushku's personal and professional passion that would lead her back to Hollywood, serving as an executive producer on the Netflix documentary, In Waves and War.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in support of the documentary, Dushku discussed the therapeutic impact that both Faith and "Buffy" had on generations of viewers. "It has become such a salve for so many and a reminder of what it can be like to survive high school and adolescence. It helps people find themselves. Again, that's one of those roles that I'm so grateful for. I'm so grateful that I could play a part in something so much bigger than me. It's so iconic and still reaches people in a way that touches humanity," Dushku shared. She added, "I'm really attuned to the fact that a piece of my former career and a series like that was therapeutic for so many, and in some way, I was already doing kind of therapeutic work." Asked if she was still friendly with Whedon, Dushku noted, "It's been a few years. We've sort of lost contact."

In terms of the initial pushback that her character received from fans, Dushku believes it speaks to what Faith represented and how that brought up strong and varied reactions from viewers. "If I tie in my work that I'm doing now and look back at it, Faith represented some really dark shadow parts of being human. In some ways, people were drawn to her, while others had strong reactions, like, 'No, you can't come in here and shake things up in beautiful Sunnydale.' Not that there weren't issues happening there already," she explained. "But what my character represented very much correlates to the shadow and how scary that can be for most of us because we are conditioned in society to sort of push that down and exile those parts of us."

With the series achieving pop culture heights during a pre-social media era, Dushku offered how she approached the fame and spotlight that was on the cast during the show's run. "For me, I was 17 and 18 years old. I've said this before about the character, but there were elements that were art imitating life and life imitating art. There was deep trauma in Faith's backstory. There was something deeper going on. As we talk about with the veterans featured in [In Waves and War], you create a persona for yourself that allows you to feel safe and fight the demons, thinking that you can kill them and move on. But we know that's never really the case. You can't outrun the demons. You've got to feel it to heal it.

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