Actor Hugh Laurie has apologized for criticizing a journalist for her reviews of the medical drama “House,” the hit series in which Laurie starred.
In a publish Monday XLaurie told British journalist Janet Murray that he was “very slightly drunk and already upset about something that had nothing to do with you” when he criticized her for telling him that every episode of “House” was the same.
The drama began this weekend when Murray posted on that she was watching “House” and said the show had “the same narrative every episode.” The show ran from 2004 to 2012.
“Patient suffers from a mysterious illness. Hugh Laurie (House) misdiagnoses. Patient almost dies,” Murray wrote.
“Hugh Laurie gets his diagnosis wrong again. He’s under threat of being fired,” she continued. “The patient almost dies again. Hugh Laurie has a last-minute idea. He gets a good diagnosis. He doesn’t get fired. Eight seasons of this?”
In response to Murray’s criticism, Laurie wrote that they tried a few episodes in which his character, Dr. Gregory House, got the patient’s diagnosis correct on the first try, “but they were only 6 minutes long”.
“NBC wasn’t happy,” he said. “Then we tried a few where House never succeeds and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.”
“One could apply your incisive analysis to other art forms: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 portraits of herself; Henry Moore, what?? The point is, or was, variations on a theme; if all you see is hospital, medical blah blah, then it wasn’t for you,” Laurie wrote. “Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to your first novel!” »
Murray wrote in a article for UnHerd that Laurie’s response was funny and in character for Dr. House, but fans of the show quickly attacked and insulted her.
Laurie apologized to fans “who came after you because of my tweet.”
“This is not at all planned… If it makes you feel any better, I got it in the neck too,” he wrote. “I’m a thin-skinned t—, apparently, even though it wasn’t my skin. I was defending writers I loved.”
“Obviously I shouldn’t have cited Bach/Kahlo/Moore – to start trouble – and would have been better off going with the 10,000 blues songs written around the same 12-bar chord structure,” Laurie wrote. “I’ve listened to most of them and will continue to do so. Because we like what we like.”
