Hugh Laurie strikes back at media over ‘House’ finale claims
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‘House,’ the long-running Fox medical drama starring Hugh Laurie as the cantankerous but brilliant diagnostician Dr. Gregory House, is ending in May. No one disputes that.
But Laurie is disputing a report in the British newspaper the Telegraph, which quoted Laurie as saying, ‘There are very few things in life that are so deliciously enjoyable that you want to do them for 16 hours a day, every day -- including sex and fine dining. ... It’s not the playing the character over and over again [that can get a bit much], it’s the coming to work over and over again. You know, we have done 170 episodes now, I think. That’s about 50 to 60 feature films’ worth. You want a break. You really do.’
In his response, sounding a bit like the grumpy doctor he plays on TV, Laurie says:
‘Some newspapers, obviously dissatisfied by the statement we released last week, have suggested that ‘the truth’ -- a modern journalistic shorthand for ‘not even remotely the truth but it’s creepy enough so let’s go with it’ -- behind our joint decision was that I was sick of going to work. The evidence for this was a remark I made five years ago about a different subject.
‘Let me say unequivocally that I love my job, and work harder at it than most journalists work at theirs. As we explained in our press release, we were trying to preserve some of the character’s mystique; we never wanted to over-stay our welcome. Very possibly, we could have continued with a re-worked formula -- House gets a job in a shoe shop and high jinks ensue -- but none of us could face that. We wanted to keep the band together and go out with as much dignity as we could muster.
‘I realize that plan is looking a little scruffy now, thanks to this petty rebuttal, but what the heck. I had to put the record straight.
‘As House himself has repeatedly said, ‘everybody lies.’ ‘
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-- Patrick Kevin Day
