NEWS - Hugh Laurie, dopo House torna a fare il medico sul serial! Da oggi protagonista di "Chance" su Hulu
News tratta da
TvLine.com
This week,
Hugh Laurie
returns to television in an hour-long drama series that centers on a
tormented doctor whose one-syllable last name also happens to be the
title of the show.
And that’s pretty much where the
House parallels begin and end.
In the noir-ish thriller
Chance,
which debuts Wednesday on Hulu, the actor best known as Dr. Gregory
House plays Dr. Eldon Chance, a mild-mannered(!) and compassionate(!!)
neuropsychiatrist who gets sucked into a violent and dangerous world of
mistaken identity, police corruption and mental illness while grappling
with his own existential crisis.
In the following Q&A, Laurie praisaes
Chance‘s quiet, cerebral charms, explains why he believes Dr. House was more hero than heel, marvels at
George Clooney’s total
ER recall, and goes full-on fanboy over
Veep co-star
Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
TVLINE | Dr. Chance is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Dr. House. Was that diversion a conscious decision on your part?
No. It wasn’t. I wish I had the ability to plan as intelligently. I’m a
goldfish, honestly. I stumble from one thing to another. I read [Kem
Nunn’s book on which the series is based] and I thought, “I’m really
intrigued by this. There’s something so mournful and melancholy about
it. I find it sort of oddly moving.” I didn’t really have any clear idea
about how, you know, it would fit into my career. I don’t really know
what a career is. It’s just a bunch of [roles] strung together. There
are, I’m sure, clever actors or agents or managers who think, “What we
need to do is two months on Broadway, then we need to do something
Scandinavian, and then we need to do a big action blockbuster.” I just
don’t have that skill.
TVLINE | Let’s say Chance was about a doctor who was a dick. Would you have rejected it outright?
You see, I don’t think of House as a dick. I have to disagree
with you there. I found him rather heroic. That may say something about
my own dick-ishness. I realize that he appeared to have
behaved
in a dick-ish way, but he did so in the service of a noble [cause]. He
may not have been an angel, but he was on the side of the angels.
TVLINE | Did the medical jargon take you back to your House days?
It was a bit of a struggle getting my tongue around that kind
of stuff again. I’m reasonably quick at picking that stuff up, but I’m
also very quick to forget it. I did [
Tomorrowland] with George Clooney, and the
ER
experience meant a great deal to him; it stayed with him. He talked
about it a lot. And he was also able to remember great reams of dialogue
that he’d done, including incredibly technical medical terms.
TVLINE| He remembered actual dialogue from ER?
Yeah. This is how many years later?
TVLINE | Twenty?
I don’t know how he does it. I can’t remember a single word. The word aspirin is about as far as I can go.
TVLINE | Medical jargon aside, Chance and House — the shows — could not be more different.
I agree.
House was almost like chamber music. It was very heightened and very beautifully constructed.
Chance
is much more intimate, more vulnerable. The characters are actually
revealing parts of themselves in a much less self-conscious way. I think
House was aware of itself as a show — deliberately so. [Series
creator] David Shore, who’s a genius, deliberately constructed it that
way.
TVLINE | As I was watching the first few episodes, I found myself waiting for some kind of twist…
I know exactly what you mean. It’s all the things that it
doesn’t
have that makes me love it. It doesn’t have people quipping at each
other. It doesn’t have banter. It doesn’t have big dramatic action.
There’s no ticking bomb. There’s not a virus that threatens to consume
Manhattan. There are no super powers. There’s no, “Oh my god, it turns
out they’re actually brother and sister!” I found that so wonderful. I
don’t know how you feel about all of these other shows, with the time
travel and all that stuff. I just think [it’s interesting for characters
to] just
be. To just
be a person boiling an egg or
taking your kid to school. It doesn’t have to be like, “Oh my God,
they’re after us!” or “We’ve got company!” or “Call in a drone strike!”
We can all just calm down a little bit, you know? Of course, it’s a very
competitive world and [TV shows] are trying to draw attention. Maybe
we’ll pay a price. Maybe the audience will go, “I couldn’t get into it. I
wanted a ticking bomb!”
TVLINE | Hulu already ordered a second season, so…
I think we still have to
earn it. I’m pretty sure that on page 784 of the contract there’s a small [cancellation provision].
TVLINE | Is it anxiety-provoking committing to a show where the source material runs out after Season 1?
I’m in a similar position with
The Night Manager. In
both cases, [Season 1 follows a novel] and then people go, “All right,
now what do we do [in Season 2]?” I don’t know what the hell [a second
season of
Chance looks like]. And I can pretty confidently say [the producers] don’t either. Maybe they have a plan, and it’s all on a big board somewhere. We’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe we’ll have to put some time travel in it.
TVLINE | Will you be returning to Veep in Season 6?
If they’ll have me.
TVLINE | Is working on the show as much fun as it seems?
Completely. The only mistake I made is that I’m very bad at
watching myself. And now that I’m in it, it makes it harder to watch.
But in exchange for that, I get to see Julia Louis-Dreyfus [up close].
She is the best I’ve ever seen.
Ever.
TVLINE| What is it like working with her?
It’s awe inspiring. She [plays Selina] with such brilliance,
energy and invention. And she never settles. As soon as a take is done
she’s going, “Let’s try this.” She’s always pushing, until people almost
have to pull her away and go, “Julia, it’s all right. It’s all right.
We’ve got it.” And [she doesn’t work] in an obsessive way; she does it
with such good grace. She’s unbelievable.
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