The Rx For Season Five of “House, MD”
By Scott Huver, Special to Hollywood.com
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Monday, September 15, 2008
Olivia Wilde (Dr. Rema “Thirteen” Hadley)
On Thirteen’s life-altering medical revelation:
Wilde: At the end of Season Four we learned that Thirteen indeed does have Huntington’s Disease, which she suspected because of her mother. It’s House that encouraged her to find out. That was a difficult decision for her, I think, partly because of Amber’s death, she decided to go ahead and find out. Not only does she find out that she has Huntington’s but it’s very bad, her diagnosis, in that she doesn’t have too long. Eight to ten years is the life expectancy. Many of those years will be miserable dealing with the side effects of the disease. In the beginning of Season Five we pick up with her dealing with that. She is a woman who really likes to be in control. She doesn’t like to have anyone pity her. She doesn’t like to bring her personal life into the office. She would rather have no one even call her by her real name then have anyone know anything know anything about her.
On House’s likely inability to keep her secret:
Wilde: This is really hard for her because House obviously won’t let it remain a secret. Soon it will spread to everyone in the teams. She has to deal with that, and deal with not being so much in control, and dealing with her diagnosis in her own way. Just seeing if she can keep her life together. Unfortunately that is a bit too difficult for her, as it would be for anyone. I feel like by learning about her diagnosis she has confronted her biggest fear. Now that she’s dealing with it in her own way it’s changing the way that she looks at life and the time people have left, or what people need to do to take advantage of the time they have left…She’s going through all these enormous life changes. It’s in her interactions with the patients that it really comes out I think for the most part, until House just brings it out in front of everybody, which he always does.
On Thirteen’s apparent bisexuality:
Wilde: I think what is great is that they haven’t made a huge deal out of it. It’s a part of her personality. You can put a label on it or just say she’s open with her sexuality. The show doesn’t go that far into the soapy sex lives of each of its characters. It wouldn’t be very “House-ian” of them to spend too much time making a huge deal out of that, but what it does do is add an element of tension between she and House. He doesn’t like things to be ambiguous. He doesn’t understand things like bisexuality. People are one way or the other way. They tell the truth or they lie. To him this is a very foreign concept, which creates a lot of interesting dialogue between them. For her it creates a lot of drama. It’s saucy and interesting for the audience as well. For me it’s just an amazing challenge and one that I welcome.