Reunited & It Feels So Good: Miracle Laurie (Joss Whedon’s DOLLHOUSE) Reunites with Screen-Used Imprint Chair! Miracle & Christopher May (Uke Box Heroes) Interview

Miracle Laurie (Dollhouse) arranged to stop by for an interview and see an old friend … the original screen-used imprint chair from Topher’s office!

A few years ago, Joss Whedon broke his usual mold and created the short-lived series Dollhouse. It traded the witty surreal formula of vampires and spaceships for a more serious, and more believable, story of a hidden society in the business of programming people. Several Dollhouse alumni attended Dragon Con this year, and one of them (Miracle Laurie, along with her husband and Uke Box Heroes bandmate Christopher May) arranged to stop by for an interview, as well as to see an old friend… In addition to the three human Dollhouse guests, there was a fourth guest present: the original screen-used imprint chair from Topher’s office, who we so fondly refer to as “Mr. Printy”. When we informed Miracle that the chair was on location, she was thrilled and couldn’t wait to sit in it again.

We knew that Miracle had arrived for her interview when we heard her excited voice gushing over the chair. Skipping across the room, she spoke to the chair in sing-song (“Reunited and it feels so good!”) before turning to us and asking, “So can I sit in it?!” After spending a few minutes getting comfortable and reacquainting herself with Mr. Printy, we had a mini-photoshoot and a short interview with the couple.

Miracle first talked about her experiences with Mr. Printy. She told us that she had always been excited to shoot a scene with the chair; however, because she played Paul Ballard’s neighbor first, she was always on another set. When she was eventually told that her character would be visiting the Dollhouse, she was excited to finally get to be in the infamous chair.

Almost as exciting as the chair, though, was the Dollhouse set itself. Christopher told us that being on the set was wonderful and that “you wanted to live there”… “And you could!” Miracle chimed in. She went on to tell us that all of the gym equipment was real working gym equipment, that people received actual massages on the massage tables, and that the pods in which the dolls slept were so comfortable that she wanted to (and did) take naps in them. The set was also so new that “you could still see sap leaking from the wood on the stairs going up to Topher’s office.”

As much as they both seemed to enjoy talking about Dollhouse, their faces lit up when we moved to the topic of their band, Uke Box Heroes. Miracle told us about her childhood as a Polynesian dancer with her siblings and mother who played ukulele. She told us that the ukulele didn’t come as naturally to her as it did to her her husband; “He was a natural,” she told us, and he could play practically from the moment that he picked it up. Together they began to learn various songs, initially only playing Hawaiian tunes; the breakthrough came when they realized that any song could be adapted to the ukulele.

“We just went on guitar tab sites and… [strums ukulele],” Christopher told us. It was evident that Miracle and Christopher were crazy in love with each other. Any time one was talking, the other looked on with a wide smile. At one point, someone in the next room dropped something heavy, and the couple laughed, looking at each other, sharing a series of “I’ll get it, I’ll get it”s before turning back to us almost as if nothing had happened.

For the “finale” of our interview, the couple sang (with Chris on ukulele) the 1920s song “Tonight You Belong to Me”. Miracle warned us ahead of time that because she had to “do Dragon Con” she was losing her voice, but the couple proceeded to serenade us (and each other) with a wonderful rendition of the classic, grinning at each other the entire time.

Afterward at the Whedon Guest Panel, Miracle excitedly told the crowd about her reunion with the chair. “It’s blue, it lights up… It’s like exactly the same!” Needless to say, Chris and Miracle were the highlight of our convention, and I’m certain we’re not alone on that. Check out their band, Uke Box Heroes, on Facebook; and tell them Nerdlyweds (and Nerdy Minds) sent you!

See below for the full interview/performance and more pictures below that!

Miracle, being the doll that she is (Haha?), tweeted a thank you to Nerdlyweds, along with this picture in which she refers to her husband (Chris May, above) as her “handler for life.” How cute is that, right???

Miracle and Chris, we cannot thank you enough for your time and for being just plain awesome!

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