20Q: Hugh Laurie

Q1

[Q] Playboy: Much has been made in the press of you, an English actor, doing an American accent so well on the medical drama House. Turn the tables: What execrable and painfully comedic American attempts at English accents do you remember?

[A] Laurie: I suppose at the top of every Englishman's list would be Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. That would have to be construed as a virtual act of war. I think every Englishman assumed that the only justification for hiring someone that unsuitable to play a cockney chimney sweep was that he could dance like the wind. Sure enough, he did; the chimney-sweep sequence is magnificent. Years later I learned that Van Dyke had never danced before that movie. Of course, Audrey Hepburn is a peculiar case in My Fair Lady, given that the whole piece is about the nuances of language and dialect as well as being, to some extent, a satire on English snobbery. But I'm going to let it go. I think they're all noble efforts. My attitude has changed considerably now that I'm in that position myself.

Q2

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Gregory House, the character you play, is probably the most sarcastic, antisocial curmudgeon currently on TV. Is he a hero?

[A] Laurie: House is a rather heroic figure. He's a man in search of some kind of truth, whether it's scientific or psychological or whatever. And he is prepared to give up a lot, to make sacrifices to get there. Also he has no friends because of his dedication to discovering and telling the truth. I suppose that's sort of the definition of a hero.

Q3

[Q] Playboy: How would Dr. House be received in England?

[A] Laurie: House wouldn't work transplanted to England. I don't think English writers like heroes outside of children's writing. Harry Potter is a hero, but I can't think of a hero in popular English fiction since James Bond. My own theory is that English writers are primarily motivated by revenge. They're taking revenge on the school bully or the teacher who didn't understand them or the first girl who wouldn't dance with them. I don't think the same is true of American writers. They write about people they like and admire and possibly even want to be. They write about their perfect selves.

Q4

[Q] Playboy: House is described as the thinking woman's sex symbol. But really, why would anyone want to sleep with this guy or spend any time with him afterward? Can a damaged man be fixed?

[A] Laurie: That's an interesting question, but it's not the same as asking if a damaged man can be fixed by women having sex with him. Repeatedly. Why would they make that leap? I don't get it myself. I do think the character's funny. House gets some cracking one-liners, and I suppose that conveys the idea that he would be entertaining to spend time with--provided you weren't the butt of his attacks.

Q5

[Q] Playboy: House has a pronounced limp. On the set, do you ever limp with the other leg just to drive the continuity people crazy?

[A] Laurie: I do actually limp with the other leg every now and then, but it's not to throw the continuity people off. It's to preserve some kind of pelvic symmetry, which is number one on my list of life goals. If I spend 15 hours a day throwing it out one way, I feel I have to redress the balance. My colleague Stephen Fry, back in England, volunteered to come on the show. He said, "I have no character ideas, but what if I had two limps?" I thought that would be an entertaining addition.

Q6

[Q] Playboy: You came to America not knowing if House would be a hit or a flop. Had you made other plans? Do you feel trapped?

(continued on page 126)Hugh Laurie(continued from page 105)

[A] Laurie: In a way I feel like a hostage to fortune. Not that I'm complaining. I wanted to play the role. But in truth I didn't think the show would be such a success. Okay, I thought it would fail. Not because it was bad. I was confident it was good, but plenty of good things just sort of wither on the vine. I thought I would have an enjoyable and interesting three weeks of filming in Toronto and maybe I'd end up with a one-hour tape I could show my friends and be proud of. But I absolutely did not imagine we would now be making our 32nd show only 18 months later. Inconceivable. I've never in my life looked that far ahead. I work maybe 36 hours ahead, maximum. What happens after that, I haven't a clue. Anybody who says, "Maybe we'll see each other next week," well, I'll agree to anything if it's next week. Fly to Kathmandu? Yeah, absolutely. Put me down. I'll be there.

Q7

[Q] Playboy: Why is there a convulsion in every episode? What gives you convulsions?

[A] Laurie: Convulsions are cinematic, whereas strokes are silent, deadly assassins that simply result in, well, basically nothing. I'm going to stand up for the convulsion. Too much politeness gives me convulsions. I think of myself as a reasonably polite person. I say please and thank you; I try to be on time and dress appropriately for the occasion--you know, the basics. But too much politeness makes me jittery--oppressive politeness, people springing to their feet every time someone comes in, people overapologizing. I start to twitch.

Q8

[Q] Playboy: At home in England you enjoyed government-supported health care. Could Dr. House work for the National Health Service?

[A] Laurie: This is a problem. I believe not. The show would be too different. No show about the National Health Service can be confined to the treatment of a single patient's case; it has to be about the crisis of the health service itself. The National Health Service, I think, is the biggest employer in Britain. It may be one of the biggest employers in the world. Yet it's always thought of as a sinking ship or a building on fire. So anyone who treats the subject has to treat the crisis: There's not enough money and not enough beds, and how are we going to do this? This is long before you get to the patient, of course. In fact, instead of getting to the patient, the whole show is about how we can't get to the patient. In every show the patient dies in the corridor. Never even gets into the room. "We can't afford a room, damn it! We sold off the rooms."

Q9

[Q] Playboy: Do you wish you'd bought stock in companies that manufacture rubber gloves?

[A] Laurie: I get very upset by people just idly tossing off rubber gloves after every take. We have 20 people in a shot doing a surgical procedure, and by the time we finish shooting the scene we might have gone through 200 pairs of rubber gloves. I find that upsetting, so I try to recycle on the set. Getting them off is fine. Getting them on in less than 20 minutes is very tricky. The way to do it, since they tend to come off inside out, is to blow into them. Then you can invert them. I'm convinced that real patients have died on the operating table while the doctor was going, "Damn it! The fucking thing!" The patient's monitor goes beeeeeeeeep, and the doctor says, "Oh well, at least I was sterile."

Q10

[Q] Playboy: Jane Austen or Austin Powers?

[A] Laurie: That's close. There's no good answer, no winning here. There are invisible masses in Austen--domestic servants, farmworkers, just invisible people to her. I always felt that the maze of butlers and footmen gets a pretty raw deal from Austen. Not that Austin Powers is a valuable social document--or maybe it is in some ways, as a piece of reporting. I'm going to have to go with Austen, but I do it reluctantly.

Q11

[Q] Playboy: Let's play English-American dictionary. Define for us these terms: fop, twit and twat.

[A] Laurie: Don't you have fops over here? A fop is a man unhealthily obsessed with appearance. Decorative but ineffectual. Do you use the word panty-waist? A twit is a fool, an ass. It's not that derogatory. It refers to someone who is foolish but not necessarily malevolent. There are worse things to be than a twit. Twat is one of those odd words that actually mean vagina, but some people who are unconscious of that connection use it to mean fool, jerk, prick--they use it as a softer version of prick. They think twat is permissible in polite company, which it isn't, really. By the way, I'm constantly confused by the difference between the English and American quite. They're almost opposite. Americans seem to use quite to mean very, exceptionally, extremely. "Your tie is quite nice." If an Englishman said that, it would mean your tie is so-so. If someone says, "I saw the show last night. It was quite good," I think, Oh, what the hell did we do wrong? I have to remind myself.

Q12

[Q] Playboy: What's happening on the soap opera House watches?

[A] Laurie: Whoever makes General Hospital wouldn't give us the rights, so we had to create our own soap opera. I'm not a soap opera person, but my brother has never in his adult life missed an episode of the BBC Radio soap opera The Archers, which has run for more than 50 years. My brother was for many years a farmer. I could see the appeal of that life, but one problem is that it doesn't end. Christmas Day, New Year's Day, your birthday--whatever it is, animals have to be fed, the potatoes have to be dug. That doesn't suit me. I like endable things. I like paragraphs. I like chapters. I like periods.

Q13

[Q] Playboy: You climb in the boxing ring now and then. Describe the Zen of boxing for humility and fitness. And when in real life would you throw die first punch?

[A] Laurie: Never. I'm not even sure I could throw a punch in an actual boxing match. I sparred last week. One of the interesting things about sparring, about boxing, is discovering the barrier you have in your own mind to trying to hit someone. You've got all the problems of trying to stop him from hitting you and various technical things to deal with. But there comes a point when you miss a chance to hit someone because you hesitated, because it is in one's nature--or in one's culture--not to punch someone. Boxing is what it is, and you have to get over that. The most interesting aspect of boxing is the sheer science of it. To people who haven't had much experience, it looks like two guys just flailing around in a ring. It's far from that.

Q14

[Q] Playboy: Why is there so little hand washing on House? After all, it's a medical show. How often do you wash your hands?

[A] Laurie: Not often, although the smell of rubber gloves is a little invasive, so I wash my hands after using them. It is odd, this nonwashing. But in set-building terms, it's immensely tiresome to have people washing their hands because instead of using fake sinks or basins, builders have to actually plumb them. That takes a lot of man-hours. They'd much rather not do it if they can avoid it.

Q15

[Q] Playboy: How big is Dr. House's cane? Do you ever let anyone else hold it?

[A] Laurie: As big as it has to be and no bigger. The prop guy holds it. They've almost had to dedicate a guy to watching the cane because I have this habit of putting it down somewhere, and then we have this terrifying moment when someone goes, "Who's got the cane?" and I can't remember where I put it. If you delay shooting for even five seconds, you're wasting money. And if you delay for five minutes, that's a lot of wasted money.

Q16

[Q] Playboy: We've heard that the butler icon for the Ask Jeeves search engine may undergo an image overhaul. Where do you stand?

[A] Laurie: An American journalist asked me some question that implied he thought everybody in England had butlers. I said, "Of course. But in America that can't be true. Half the country has butlers; the other half are butlers." He was kind of baffled by this and asked, "Where did the butlers come from?" But I guess now no one has any kind of familiarity with that, so it would probably be the right decision to get rid of Jeeves.

Q17

[Q] Playboy: You're a Clint Eastwood fan. Does he influence your acting?

[A] Laurie: I grew up in the shadow of Dirty Harry. Yes, I can't deny it. House has elements of Dirty Harry in the medical world. There was that line "That's the one thing about Harry: He doesn't play any favorites. Harry hates everybody." That seems applicable. I can't say I modeled House on him, but it amuses me to think of the similarities.

Q18

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever asked why your character is named Dr. House?

[A] Laurie: I think there is some intent to make a sly allusion to Sherlock Holmes. If they were going to make it direct, they would have gone with Houses rather than House, but Houses is not really a believable surname.

Q19

[Q] Playboy: You were shooting the movie Flight of the Phoenix in the desert when you got the call to audition for House. How much fun can you have with sand? What did you discover about it that you didn't know?

[A] Laurie: We were making a movie about people abandoned in the middle of nowhere. One night about four of us were sitting on top of a 100-foot dune, looking at the moonlight, and we decided to somersault all the way down. I went first, got to the bottom and suddenly said, "My wedding ring is gone." The other guys were already tumbling down, and I yelled, "Stop! I've lost my wedding ring." It was dark, two o'clock in the morning. You immediately think if it's anywhere near you and you move, you're going to bury it. The four of us started searching, and within about 20 seconds one of the guys halfway down the dune yelled, "Is this it?" I said, "Of course it is. How many wedding rings are you going to find here?"

No surprises about sand for me. It should be kept in those little glass egg timers. It's good for cooking eggs; that's all.

Q20

[Q] Playboy: House's motto is, Everybody lies. What do you lie to yourself about?

[A] Laurie: That I'm doing this for a living. I keep thinking that I'm playing around, that I'm finding my feet and getting ready to pick and commit to a career. The truth is, I've been doing this for 25 years. I lie to myself that I don't take it seriously, when actually I do. I don't think I lie to other people. It's only to myself that I'm going, Oh well, I'll give it another six months; if it doesn't work out, I'll become a vet. But this is my job. I've got to face that one day.