Seriously, Dollhouse ended a few years ago — but we still haven’t wrapped our heads around what happened to Boyd, Harry Lennix’s character. We caught up with Lennix at Comic-Con and asked him about it. And it turns out he has a whole theory.
Here’s how our conversation went:
I feel like Boyd turning out to be the bad guy kind of came out of nowhere.
I agree. It did come out of nowhere. But I think if you look at what the premise of Dollhouse is, then what you understand is, those are [personality] implants. So Boyd may have really been great for a long time, and then he got implanted. I mean, who knows? I think the Boyd that people love, who was protecting Echo, himself got swept up in the Dollhouse.
So you don’t think that was his original personality?
No.
You think that was a personality that was put into him.
I think so. Otherwise, that makes Boyd the smartest, most deceptive character in the Dollhouse lore. But I think that Boyd was legitimate, and then they got him. They body-snatched him.
So when did you find out that was going to happen to your character?
As soon as we found out that the show wasn’t going to be picked up [for a third season]. Joss came up to me and told me that that’s where he was going with the thinking of it. And I was fascinated with it. I was looking forward to it. It’s always fun to play a sort of deliciously evil type of person. That’s assuming — at least, I hope I was deliciously evil.
You were entertainingly evil. So you didn’t know months in advance, or anything?
No, I found out the last month or so that we were filming.
We also asked him about standing up to Superman as General Swanwick in Man of Steel, and he said, “It’s like, for example, if I was going to go up against The Rock, you know, just to have a conversation with him. I’m sure I would square my shoulders and plant my feet. Because you know never know. I mean, here’s an alien from outer space, and my job is to keep cool and calm and maintain the peace. And that was my job going into it as an actor.” He pointed out that he’s actually bigger than Henry Cavill, “in terms of stature.”
Man of Steel ended up with General Swanwick on pretty friendly terms with Superman, and deciding to trust him, but we’ll have to see how it develops in the next movie. We suggested that maybe General Swanwick could turn into the Commissioner Gordon to Superman’s Batman, and he said he’d be into that.
