Enver Gjokaj

March 22, 2010 - On Dollhouse, Enver Gjokaj was a standout as Victor, one of the many dolls working (or enslaved?) alongside Echo (Eliza Dushku). Gjokaj quickly proved to be amazingly versatile, and deftly handled any accent, mannerism or dramatically different character the show threw at him – including a couple of very notable times when he was called on to play other characters on the series.

With Dollhouse over, Gjokaj has a new project – an original comedy webseries called Previously on Point Dume (check out the first episode below).

On the heels of having just filmed a guest appearance on Lie to Me, Gjokaj spoke to me about Previously on Point Dume, how the webseries came together, his thoughts on the end of Dollhouse and more.

IGN TV: When did Previously on Point Dume come together?

Enver Gjokaj: We just made this in the last couple months. We actually shot it in a weekend. This being one of the first things I’d produced, I didn’t really quite plan on the post process. It took us a little while to find an editor. And we also had to find somebody who was willing to work for very, very cheap, as in close to free. So that took a little while too. So we did sit on it for a little bit.

IGN: You mentioned to me that you were one of the producers on it. How did it come about in the first place?

Gjokaj: A couple things happened. One is that during Dollhouse, I started becoming interesting in directing, and started shadowing a lot of the directors there and saying to myself, "Huh, I could do this." Cameras are getting cheaper and all that kind of stuff, so as I was learning about that. I obviously had close proximity to Joss [Whedon] and then talking to Felicia [Day] and seeing what she’s done, the amazing stuff she’s done with her show [The Guild], things started to tick in my mind, and I started to think, "Well, hey, that’s pretty cool that they aren’t in front of the ball, so to speak, in terms of creating their own material."

The way this industry works is that you sit around and wait for somebody to tell you that you can work, and that’s really frustrating. So, also, on the other hand, I have for years had a group of friends from New York – writers, actors, whatnot – and in the in-between stages, we’ve always just kind of developed our own kind of routines and all kinds of just mostly live performance theatre kind of stuff, just to stay busy and stay active. This time around, all those things came together, and I thought, "You know, why don’t we just do that, but we’ll actually film it this time? And we’ll create something and put it online." So that’s what happened.

IGN: Did you direct any of it?

Gjokaj: We did have a director, John Lange, but yeah, I would definitely say I put a lot of it together – I’m gonna be directing future ones as well. I had a hand in directing it, I had a hand in editing it, producing it, finding actors – I basically had a hand from beginning to end, which was what I wanted: to get a taste of what it takes to get something done, essentially. To start with an idea and do it from beginning to end. That was really my goal, and it worked. I got a very good taste of the nightmare of small-time production.

IGN: How did the soap opera conceit come about? Is that just something you guys had been joking about?

Gjokaj: I had had the idea for years — of a green screen soap opera. Mostly because I loved soap operas, and also because soap operas look so fake anyway. I thought, "Actually, green screen would probably look better than their sets." But I wanted to do it mostly because I thought it would be something that would be easy to do and fun, and I like the world of melodrama. Melodrama is a really, really fun world. And if you look at real melodrama — not a spoof of a soap opera — real melodrama is people saying absolutely insane things and living in insane situations but having to play it straight, and that’s really funny on a soap opera, where if you watch it, is that people are saying the most insane things, but they have to stay in it; they have to stay real, and not play the comedy. So that’s what we set out to do. We didn’t want to play the comedy too hard. We wanted just the world to be crazy, so to speak, and not necessarily us. That was the idea. That was the tone that we were going for.

IGN: Did you have a great time just coming up with all the different scenarios you’d like to see doing this?

Gjokaj: It was a little different, because the conceit of having the structure proved a little bit more difficult than we thought, because our structure is an episode recap of a show that doesn’t exist. We like that because it lets us just play and have fun and do the best parts without having to worry about writing the actual show. But there were some difficulties in terms of people actually just understanding it. We wanted people not to just get lost, because we had to introduce character and try to keep people on board just a little bit. But yeah, it was a ton of fun and we learned an immense amount. This is the first thing that any of use involved have done, except for John Lange, who helped us to direct. There was a steep learning curve, and we’re really excited to do the next, because we definitely made a lot of mistakes on this one.

IGN: How many have you made so far?

Gjokaj: This is the first one; we’re working on the next four right now. And we’re trying to lock down some pretty interesting guest actors. But yeah, the next four are in process, and hopefully, if all goes well and we can get some kind of funding, it’ll make everything a lot quicker.

IGN: You’re debuting on Funny or Die, which I imagine is pretty exciting.

Gjokaj: We were a little nervous, actually, not because Funny or Die is not good – it’s great, and they do great content – but I thought their humor tends to be very "young male," before I really sat down and watched a lot of their content. So we just thought it might not be the right fit. But then I sat down and watched stuff that they’re doing with their exclusives, and they’re really trying to create a lot of content that is awesome. So we’re basically over the moon that they wanted to do us as an exclusive.

And I was nervous also about doing this, to be quite frank, with the Joss fanbase or sites where I feel like his fans might be - because we are no Joss. We’re not making claims or that claim, for sure, and I think his fans, the people that watch his stuff, are a very discerning audience and very tuned in, in terms of writing and acting and everything. I put this out with a great amount of trepidation hoping that people will find it funny at least. But we had fun doing it, and I eventually ended up thinking that, well, this is what I’m doing between projects to stay busy and to have fun and stay creative, and in the end I just thought, "Why not share that with people and let them see what I’m doing in my spare time?"

IGN: Have you had a chance to show it to Joss or Felicia?

Gjokaj: I showed it to Felicia, and she was really helpful and very encouraging, and I think that’s what, in the end, gave me the bravery to want to share it with the world. She gave us some really good heads up, too, in terms of producing it, getting it out there in front of people. But Joss, no, I haven’t really had the stones to show it to Joss yet. I’m maybe a little scared to hear what his honest opinion is. But I hope he’d like it, and we will eventually be sending it out to everybody, so we’ll see.

IGN: I have to ask you a couple of Dollhouse questions while I’ve got you here. You were such a great mimic on the show - Was that a talent you went into the show knowing you had or was that something that they started to realize and began writing to?

Gjokaj: Ah, that word: mimic. Oh man, I just have such problems with that word. Essentially, it is what I was doing, I guess. But I think the characters that I inhabited — which is my choice of words — that were already on the show and that people already knew, those obviously turned out to be crowd-pleasers. When they did it with Laurence Dominic, people really responded to it, and then I think after that they were definitely looking for a place [to do it again]. Actually, Andrew Chambliss pitched the idea of Victor-Topher when he came onboard, but they didn’t really get a chance to do it then, so they kind of hip-pocketed it. But the only problem I have with it is I worked so hard on that stuff, and I can tell you that when I did Laurence Dominic, and when I did Topher, it was not mimicry and voice mannerism; it was a lot of… How do I describe it without sounding utterly pretentious? At the risk of sounding insanely pretentious, I thought that mimicry would turn out to be awful. I thought if it were a Topher impersonation, that it would become immediately apparent. It would just die and become awful. I tried my best, whether or not I actually did it, to just become Fran [Kranz].

IGN: I would say that’s what you did do. It didn’t sound like someone who’s doing a funny impression; it sounded like Fran was speaking, which was what was so impressive.

Gjokaj: My mom was like, "That was a great impersonation," and I get a little bristley with her, because it’s just the verbiage used, but for me it represents a lot more than that, and it gives me a flash of Frank Caliendo in my mind. I don’t understand why, but it comes up. [Laugh]

IGN: It was remarkable, because if you turned your head away from the TV, you would think you were hearing two of Fran.

Gjokaj: Thank you. And it obviously was the one, Topher, was the thing that has really resonated with people who watched the show. It really stuck with people, and I think it’s due in part to the fact that Fran created such a great character. And that there was just something there – I mean, if you didn’t really love Topher already, then Vic-Topher couldn’t be that cool, so I think it’s a real testament, as well, to Fran that he created something that was iconic enough and distinct enough to be done.

IGN: Joss is not known for often giving a happy ending to couples on his shows, so I thought it was nice to see that Victor and Sierra’s storyline did have a happy ending. Were you happy to see how that turned out?

Gjokaj: I was. Even we were waiting to figure out what was gonna happen, and things got really crazy toward the end there. We were trying to squeeze several seasons of show into this time frame we had left, and we knew we only had a short amount of time left. So when Dichen [Lachman] and I found out – we’re at that last episode and saw that we got to have a resolution, and honestly, I was really relieved, just on this totally selfish level. Not just myself – everybody involved, we all really… It was just an amazing set. Everybody really, really, to the last day, was giving it and showing up – the crew the writers, everybody. If you can say one thing about Dollhouse, it’s that we really tried. [Laughs] Whether we succeeded or not, we’ll leave that to history. But everybody really was showing up and giving it every single time, so for me, personally and selfishly, I was so glad to see that there was a resolution to two years of what we’d been doing.

IGN: When did you guys know it was ending? It seemed even before we officially heard it was over, episodes being shot were heading there. I was surprised to see Victor was finished with his time in the Dollhouse and assume that occurred when it did because Joss at least was pretty certain the end was coming.

Gjokaj: You know, I’m not really sure what was going on in the writers’ room, but from what I gather, Joss had a lot of ideas for where the show would go in the future, and then once we were given a deadline, it’s just about how can we get some of this cool stuff in, in the time left over. I mean, let’s be honest...we knew that FOX wasn’t crazy about us. [Laughs] I officially understood what was going on after we had been on hiatus for two weeks or something like that, and I think there was one advertisement about us coming back, with the wrong dates on it. So we knew something was in the making, and we kind of hoped that things would turn around, but as we saw the season progressing, we slowly started to just make it about what it always should have been about in the first place: making an awesome show just for the fans. And funny enough, once we knew that the axe was over our heads, it seemed like it freed everybody up to just actually make the show that we wanted to make in the first place, because we knew we were dead, so to speak.

IGN: What are you playing on Lie To Me?

Gjokaj: I am playing a soldier with PTSD, and… [Laughs] I’m so bad about giving stuff away, and I don’t want to give this away. But yeah, I play a soldier, a veteran, with PTSD. Dr. Lightman, played by Tim Roth on Lie To Me, is helping him through his traumatic experience, and as they’re helping him through it, they find out that something is afoot, so to speak.

IGN: How is it working with Tim Roth?

Gjokaj: Oh, it’s been great. He’s very loose and a very intuitive actor, so it’s really amazing to watch. And at this point I’m getting used to the whole ex-military thing. I thought it was kind of funny that I would play again, so quickly, another soldier with PTSD. Must be something about the way I look! [Laughs]