Actor Hugh Laurie apologized for roasting a journalist for her criticism of the medical drama “House,” the hit series he starred in.
Laurie told British journalist Janet Murray on X on Monday that he was “very slightly drunk and already upset about something that had nothing to do with you” when he lashed out at her for saying every episode of “House” was the same.
The drama started over the weekend when Murray said on X that she was watching “House” and that the series has the “same narrative every episode.” The show ran from 2004 to 2012.
“Patient has mysterious illness. Hugh Laurie (House) gets diagnosis wrong. Patient nearly dies,” Murray wrote.
“Hugh Laurie gets diagnosis wrong again. Gets threatened with being fired,” she continued. “Patient nearly dies again. Hugh Laurie has last minute leftfield idea. Gets diagnosis right. Doesn’t get fired. Eight seasons of this?”
In response to Murray’s criticism, Laurie wrote that the production tried a couple of episodes in which his character, Dr. Gregory House, got the patient’s diagnosis correct the first time, “but they were only 6 minutes long.”
“NBC weren’t happy,” he said. “Then we tried some where House never gets it right and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.”
“One could apply your trenchant 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 meant for you,” Laurie wrote. “Nonetheless, I look forward to your first novel!”
Murray wrote in an article for UnHerd that Laurie’s response was funny and in character as Dr. House, but fans of the show quickly attacked her and called her names.
Laurie apologized for fans’ “having a go at you because of my tweet.”
“Not at all the plan. ... If it’s any comfort, 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 sticking up for the writers who I adored.”
“Obviously I shouldn’t have cited Bach/Kahlo/Moore — asking for trouble — and would have done better to go for the 10,000 blues songs written around the same 12 bar chord structure,” Laurie wrote. “I’ve listened to most of them and will keep doing so. Because we love what we love.”
