They say when the diagnosis sounds serious you should always get a second opinion, and Hollywood.com knows fans of House MD couldn’t be more serious about their insatiable desire to know the prognosis for Season Five of Fox’s medical drama and its fractious physician. So we took office visits with no less than EIGHT members of Princeton-Plainsboro’s elite diagnosticians – Hugh Laurie, Lisa Edelstein, Jennifer Morrison, Kal Penn, Peter Jacobson, Jesse Spencer and Olivia Wilde – to get the prescription for what’s been ailing the audience: with no new episodes since May, take the season premiere on Sept. 16, stat!
Hugh Laurie (Dr. Gregory House)
On the dimensions of House he’s excited to explore:
Laurie: There are places to go, there are layers to be revealed, situations to put him in that will reveal anxieties and desires that he has. In fact, those are things that we have actually done so far this season. In the first half dozen shows, we see House in some pretty unusual situations. We see him in ways that we haven’t seen him before, dealing with his own loss, his loss of Wilson, potentially the loss of a parent and just dealing with his own grief, how grief shows itself in him. There are ways in which it surprises him as well as everyone else, but I feel just so lucky to be driving this beautifully constructed motor car. I’m just thankful that they remember to put gas in the tank, if that analogy makes any sense at all. But it is very much [the writers’] car. They designed it and I drive it where they tell me.
On the prospect that the House-Wilson “bro-mance” – now shattered – has been a surrogate for a real relationship for the doctor:
Laurie: There might be some truth to that, but: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, what is that? Is that really a marriage? Is that a love affair? It’s part of what the film is, I suppose, an exploration of the nature of that relationship. There is a kind of intimacy, I suppose, between those two characters. There is a knowledge of each other, a sharing that has a sort of marital aspect to it. At the same time we’re definitely not similar. We’re complimentary. House wears t-shirts and sneakers and Wilson has a pocket protector for his pens, to put it at its most basic level. We’re very different characters, but maybe there’s an aspect to that.
On the possibility that, despite his harsh streak, House truly only wants to see his colleagues succeed:
Laurie: For all his enormous cruelty that he’s shown in all sorts of situations, you’re absolutely right, he’s wanted to test people and wanted to put them in very difficult situations, but he’s never actually wanted people to fail. I think that’s true. Maybe he’s a big old softy and wants nothing but the best for his children.
On his recent decision to re-up for several more seasons of the show:
Laurie: I certainly feel very, very blessed to be doing what I’m doing, playing this character which is a character that I still am fascinated by and love, I would say. Actually, I think that’s part of an actor’s job, to love the character that you play, in a way. I love the show, the people I’m working with – I’d be foolish not to go as far as the show goes, to go the distance with the show. If that’s where it takes us then that’s where it takes us. Then it may not. It might all end in a week’s time, but that’s partly me. I’m always thinking that way. I mean, I think this occurs in a woman’s life. It’s an enormous thing to happen, you know, your husband is cheating on you and what do you do and who are your allies and who comes to your aid? And all these things are, I think, relevant and equally true now, so it’s just a different observation, different observations on an age-old trouble.
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Lisa Edelstein (Dr. Lisa Cuddy)
On Cuddy’s bid to become pregnant:
Edelstein: The storyline continues this year. There are some struggles this year so far. We’re on Episode Ten, but there’s a lot of good Cuddy stuff coming up. It’s been really interesting so far. I’m excited about it.
On the long-simmering prospect of a House-Cuddy romance:
Edelstein: I wouldn’t want to ruin anything, but they’re definitely exploring the House/Cuddy relationship further without actually losing the dynamic that exists between them. That kind of edgy dynamic does not go away. David Shore never writes in a straight line. So it’s been a lot of fun…I think that if you asked Cuddy, I think for her she deeply admires this human being as much as he’s a pain in the ass or a pain in the arse, depending on who you talk to. I think she sees the best in him on that level even though he makes her life very, very difficult at times.
On keeping the show fresh in its fifth season:
Edelstein: Every week that we sit down to do a script reading I’m energized. This is a show with fantastic writers and it’s amazing. Having been around for long enough to know the difference, it’s a really extraordinary experience when each week you have a great time reading the script and that you’re excited to see what happens to your character and to everyone else’s and you want to know the end of the medical story. That to me is exciting.
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Omar Epps (Dr. Eric Foreman)
On the mingling of House’s old and new team members:
Epps: Season Five is about that reconciliation and it all coming together. It’s how the new team, the old team, and those new relationships, so it’s how the new team works with House. It’s how the new team meets Cameron, Chase, and Foreman for advice. It’s that whole thing working itself out is what we’ll see in the fifth season.
On Foreman’s newfound assertiveness:
Epps: I think he puts his foot down in a sense. He’s not going to stand for it dagnabit. No, he sort of assets his power and it kind of happened twice. I think when they were still having the “Survivor” thing and Foreman had come back. There were more of the team and they tried to rebel. They ended up being wrong. House chastised them. I think once they narrowed the team down to the three guys, having had that experience – knowing that Foreman has been working with this guy for three years – you probably don’t want to piss him off that much. They need him as an ally possibly in the future. I think they know not to go but so far. At the same time that’s where House comes into play. House pushes them to forego that and get the best out of them. That’s why he pushes them to ignore Foreman, ignore everything you think is normal and go against that, because that’s how you are going to find the answer to the mystery of the medicine.
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Jennifer Morrison (Dr. Allsion Cameron)
On the hospital’s new pecking order:
Morrison: This season I think is going to be really fun. You definitely see the old team relating to the new team and when they call on us. Foreman starts to step up and want something of his own. He takes on cases separate from House and he calls on Chase and Cameron. Of course at first we pretty quickly jump on board to help him out. We try to resist for a second, but the intrigue of that world is too much for us to say no to.
On how the first team with deal with separating from House’s control:
Morrison: They all got to a place where they were willing to walk away…In a sense we were all ready to branch out. But once you have gone there with someone, once you have gone to that place of understanding how you may have to do something unethical to get the job done, you may have to do the outrageous thing to save the life, you kind of can’t go back. Now you have this internal struggle that the three of us have to deal with. We feel like we do want to assert our independence, we do feel like we want to move into these other places, but we keep getting drawn back. It’s so hard to be away from that because once you’ve been there its addictive. You want more, you want the challenge of saving a life every week, and you want the excitement of the outrageous.
On the emerging relationships between the established and new characters:
Morrison: We’re just getting into that now. What we are shooting now is the beginning of that puzzle working. This episode we’re shooting now, there are several scenes where I’m doing DDX’s with Kutner and Taub. It’s interesting now, when I’m used to doing it with Chase and Foreman, suddenly I’m in a completely different dynamic with those two. I think there will be a lot of different pairings of the old team and new team. There will be a mixing and matching of that based on the needs of a patient.
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Kal Penn (Dr. Lawrence Kutner)
On Kutner’s approach to life and death:
Penn: At the end of the last season, you find out what had happened to Kutner’s parents. When he was six he saw them get murdered, basically, so his view of life and death is maybe a little more grounded in something. He’s mourned something so severe, so something that would happen to Amber is just part of life and death. But he also asked her out after Wilson had already beaten him to it, so he probably had some sort of a private grieving process. When he said goodbye to her it certainly wasn’t this big dramatic, emotional thing for him. He just did what he had to do, kind of smiled at her, and that was it.
On the new team dealing with the stress of working even more closely with House:
Penn: The three fellowship folks, this is our second year in the fellowship. Now you’ll see a little more independence. Clearly House trusts us enough to have hired us, so maybe we don’t check in with him about every little thing. He is our boss, though, so we still have to at the end of the day. The DDX’s operate with maybe a little more sense of authority from our side, instead of just approval. Instead of just asking if this is a good idea we’re just declaring certain tests that we want to try. You’ll see that side, too.
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Peter Jacobson (Dr. Chris Taub)
On resolving Taub’s wandering ways:
Jacobson: Taub’s last moment at the end of the season was coming back to my wife. It was a moment of “Wow, life is hard, scary, and for whatever I have done in the past to hurt you – that you don’t know about, even – I’m here. I want to reinvest myself into this.’ Interestingly, two months later I talk to her like old habit and some of that stuff rears its ugly head again…I didn’t mean to imply that Taub is out philandering around any more than he was in the past, but it comes up again as an issue, with many thanks to House bringing it up. It forces me to face the challenge of really confronting this in my life, with my wife, and there is an episode or two coming up in the beginning of the season where I really have to confront that part.
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Jesse Spencer (Dr. Robert Chase)
On exploring the Cameron-Chase romance:
Spencer: It hasn’t been a huge, in-depth kind of thing. I think they are going to go for a little bit more. Cameron was always the one who was unsure about the relationship. It was a role-reversal: Chase was very sure about it and wanted to be with her, and she wasn’t. So, that hasn’t really gone away. Normally, if there are problems in a relationship at the beginning, unless they are really solved, they tend to come back. That sort of comes back. It ends up with Cameron having to decide what she really wants. Everyone protects themselves in some sort of way in this show. The relationship is basically the way that we bring out these different parts of the characters.
On getting out from under House’s thumb:
Spencer: The idea of the same three doctors working under House, why would they be there? It’s a very difficult job. Why wouldn’t they move on somewhere else and do something to be successful in other fields. That way they don’t have to deal directly with this guy who is just nuts. He’s a genius and they’ve learned all the good stuff they can, but they have taken that somewhere else. They wouldn’t be where they are without him, so they respect him absolutely. But the idea that they would stay there, I think, wouldn’t happen. They would move on. In terms of where Chase goes, I’d like to see him move up the ranks in surgery. I think it’s a really good position for me, and it’s given me a little bit of a position of power, to say yea or nay. He didn’t really have that when he was working for House. He had to do what House said, but now I’m working for Cuddy. I have the power to say no to something if I think it’s not right. But also, Chase has always been a bit of a brown-noser, so he doesn’t mind taking the path of least resistance and doing it to please House.
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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.
