Interview with Hugh Laurie on House M.D. Season 4

While House's former team is waiting for the writers to work them back into the show, the star doctor of the title will be dealing with new candidates for his medical mystery van. After three years, Hugh Laurie welcomes new actors into the show.

"It feels fine," said Laurie. "I feel like I'm sort of doing the same thing every day. I think the smartest thing about it is that the writers and producers are making this change while it's still they're decision. The conventional thing would be to have a network or a studio saying, 'Don't change it because it's fine, it's fine. Don't change anything.' Then by the time you need to change it it's too late. But what they've decided to do is to control the direction it goes in now before it becomes a panic measure. I think it's so smart and it's such a good way to go."

Of course, House doesn't really want a new team, so he'll make it hell for anyone to fit in with him. "He has many devious means of inflicting psychological torture. Every candidate, every team of candidates gets their own specific torment that they have to go through."
Jennifer Morrison, Omar Epps and Jesse Spencer still make appearances, keeping them employed. "They're glimpsed rather like a sort of Hamlettian ghost. They sort of flit through and the question is are they in my head or are they real."

Executive producer Katie Jacobs confirmed that they will rejoin the show in full capacity. Perhaps House will finally have to swallow some pride to get them back. "I don't know about that. I honestly don't know how it's going to all pan out. That'll be around show six or seven. We're a long way off that yet but I don't know. I guess so."

With all the changes going on, there must be plenty of new things for Laurie to play as an actor. "Not especially. It's all just about keeping the bar high and trying to keep as sharp, as accurate, as precise as it could possibly be. That's really the goal. That's it. I'd be happy with that."

Aside from his own work, Laurie is very high on the creators' efforts this year. "I will say that the first three scripts that I read of this season are not only three of the best House scripts I've ever read, they're three of the best scripts I've ever read. It's that simple. I have never come across anything quite like this. It may be that in the execution of it, we'll make a dreadful hash of it and you'll go, 'Well, I don't see what the fuss was about. That was a terrible piece of television.' But purely as scripts, I find them absolutely phenomenal. I've never read anything that so ambitiously tries to mix broad comedy and gut wrenching tragedy and philosophical musing and bizarre literary references all in the space of five seconds. The speed with which it jumps from tone to tone is quite phenomenally ambitious. It may be too ambitious."

Source: canmag.com