By Christina Radish
|
|
|
Hugh Laurie at the FOX Summer All-Star party held at the Ritz Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, Calif. on July 25, 2006. |
Dr. Gregory House, the brilliant physician with the cranky bedside manner, is responsible for turning Fox television’s medical drama House, airing Tuesday nights, into one of the highest rated shows on the network. Last season, the series drew close to 19 million viewers each week, making Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie’s misanthropic M.D. a hit among viewers.
Having been shot by one of his former patients at the end of last season, the Vicodin-addicted doctor was left with his life hanging in the balance. Now back to work, House is just as much of a bastard as ever, while he continues to use his superior powers of deduction to diagnose only the most unusual medical cases. The 47-year-old Brit took time out to talk to MediaBlvd Magazine about what he thinks fans find so appealing about an oftentimes unlikable character.
“I think Houses’ suffering last season was logical,” says Laurie. “I thought it flowed from the first season, and from the pilot. I don’t think there was anything that didn’t ever feel, to me, as if it was not part of the same man. Some episodes are more broadly comic than others, some are more touching, some are more savage, but that’s how it should be. It’s good to mix the tones of it.”
{quote_top}Laurie says that, although House was suffering a lot the first time around, he doesn’t ever want to see him become the “nice guy” of the show. “The conventional thing to happen now -- the natural atrophy that would take place here -- would be for House to gradually become the nice guy with the heart of gold. 'Yes, he’s a bit of a curmudgeon, but underneath it, he rescues puppies and gives to the orphanage. ' But, that would be glib and easy, and I suppose the writers made a decision that we are going to guard against that.”
“We will be true to who we think this character is, and the truth about him is that he is not necessarily a nice man. He may be a good man, in the long run, but that doesn’t make him nice and it doesn’t make him good all the time, any more than any of us are good all the time. He is devil and angel in one. The more common thing on television and in movies is to paint in single colors and say that the handsome person is morally good and the ugly person is morally evil, and that’s how it goes. But, human beings are not constructed that way. We have both things in us, at war, all the time, and I suppose that’s what the writers want to examine.”
|
|
|
Hugh Laurie at the Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Calif. on August 27, 2006. |
House has physically recovered from the bullet wound he received at the end of last season, but that doesn’t mean the doctor has a cheerier bedside manner. Even so, Laurie believes that you can’t have an experience like that without being changed, in some way.
“His life has certainly been changed, physically and emotionally, by that near-death experience. However, the changes that you see in him are not necessarily permanent, as is the case with the medical procedure that he’s gone through. Beyond that, I don’t know what will happen because they tell me nothing, and I know nothing.”
Even though he can’t guarantee it, Laurie is pretty sure that one thing House won’t be doing is getting back together with ex-love Stacy, played by Sela Ward. “As far as I know, there are no plans for Sela Ward to return, but I could be wrong. I’m sure someone, somewhere, stroking a white cat on their lap, has got the definitive answer to that question, but I’m not that person.”
It is the moral ambiguity of House that sets him apart from just about any other lead on television. But, it is that greyness of character that makes him more realistic. “I think of the House audience as being very smart and very humane. The impression I have -- and I haven’t met all 20 million people who watch the show -- is that they don’t condemn someone out of hand, on the evidence of the one thing he did, or the one thing he said, or that one moment. The House viewers are sophisticated people and they know that those things are at war in all of us. To put it in a very clear way, we all have our good days and bad days. House just seems to have a lot of bad days strung together. But, he does have some wonderful qualities too. He is, in many ways, a heroic character.”
{quote_middle}In some ways, art does imitate life, particularly in one very specific way for Laurie. After the writers discovered that his preferred method of transportation to work was a motorcycle, House suddenly became a motorcycle rider.
“I ride a motorcycle to work, so that must have put it in somebody’s head. And, the writer who wrote the first script, in which House owns a motorcycle, is a motorcyclist, so we’re sort of brothers, in that sense. I suppose that various characteristics of mine start to suggest themselves. But, I don’t have any other characteristics in common with House, luckily.”
|
|
|
Lisa Edelstein, Hugh Laurie & Jennifer Morrison at the Television Academy in North Hollywood, Calif. on April 17, 2006. |
Laurie and House are even different in their preferred brand of motorcycle. House rides the more sporty Honda, while Laurie rides the more practical Triumph. “There’s a huge difference between the two types. The Honda is a flat out, as fast as you can go, rider at the gates of dawn, kind of bike. The Triumph is more sedate. I don’t actually use the Triumph for entertainment. I use it to get to work. That’s how I commute. I can get through traffic and I can park it easily and it’s cheap to run. Everyone should ride a Triumph.”
Riding motorcycles for 30 years now without an accident, Laurie says that he likes bikes because cars simply make him feel boxed in. “The greatest thing about riding in Los Angeles is the smell. I go to work at about 6 o’clock in the morning. At most of the public parks and lawns, they turn the sprinklers on at about 3 or 4 o’clock, before it gets hot, so when you go to work at 6 o’clock in the morning, the smell of trees and the plants is just exquisite. It’s my favorite time of the day. Riding through Los Angeles at dawn is just beautiful.”
{quote_bottom}Instead of parlaying his success into a film career, Laurie has decided to keep things more low-key for the time being. “I really just don’t have any spare time. I’d love to be able to say I’m writing a slim volume of poetry on the weekends, but I’m not. I’m just sleeping on the weekends. On hiatus, I did nothing. I walked the dog, played the piano, cut the grass, then walked the dog again.”
He hasn’t even been able to make the trek back to England recently, due to the long hours that House requires of him. “If only you Americans would have more holidays. I don’t think you have enough holidays. I think you need a National Tequila Day, or something. We’re pretty good at it in England. We have quite a lot of holidays. But, Americans work far too hard. Take it from me.”
