Hugh Laurie Will Be in the Next Playboy!

[Photo: © 2009 FOX Broadcasting Co.]

No, he won’t be the centerfold, although there are some of us who wouldn’t mind if he was….

There will be an interview with Hugh Laurie in the February issue of Playboy Magazine that will hit newsstands and the web site this Friday, January 16. You may be like me and have no interest in the magazine, but let’s just hope that someone posts the article somewhere that we can read. If anyone finds it somewhere, please let me know and I’ll pass the info along.

I’m going to make a huge exception here to my rule of not just quoting an article outright. This excerpt was sent to me by the publisher and I know that those of us who won’t buy the magazine or pay to see the article online may not get to read it otherwise. So please forgive this direct quote from the release that I recieved:

“Pharmaceuticals do raise the question of who we are as human beings,” says Hugh Laurie in Playboy’s February issue. “What are moods and feelings if we can change or do away with them? Does that reduce the essence of who we are? Then again, I tend to overthink these things. I overthink everything. I think. But if your eyesight fails, it’s okay to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses, is it not? If you feel cold, you put on a sweater. Is that changing the nature of who you are? No. I worry sometimes that I’ve said too much on this subject. It gives the idea that I’m some sort of near basket case who has to be coaxed out of his cave on weekends. I’m okay. Really, I am.”

The British star sat down with Playboy Contributing Editor David Hochman just as House’s fifth season got underway. “For all House’s crankiness and sarcasm, you would expect him to be played by an actor with at least a trace of mean-spiritedness. But Laurie is as gentle and self-effacing as House is a grouch,” said Hochman. The full interview will appear in the February issue of Playboy (available on newsstands and online at www.playboydigital.com on Friday, January 16). The following are selected quotes:

On the similarities he shares with his character: “We both look at the world with one eyebrow arched. We’re both quite serious but also have childishness. He and I are eternal adolescents but with this morbid gravity. The other thing is, we both have issues with joy, insomuch as we think it’s beyond us. I often picture that scene in the Woody Allen movie when he’s on the train and looks into another car that’s full of people laughing. They’re drinking champagne; somebody has a trombone. And Woody is very much on the outside of that, looking in. I’d say that sums up my view of the world, as well as House’s.”

On the House’s appeal: “…He’s free from the social gravity that holds us all down and prevents us from saying what we think and doing what we want. That gravity keeps us down. But because he doesn’t care if people like him or approve of him, he’s a character who flies. Dreams of flight or weightlessness are very common to us. We all dream of being able to float above the world, and I think that’s what House is doing socially.”

On his American accent and why House doesn’t do well in England: “Well that’s certainly difficult to get my head around. I’m still an Englishman to my core. And being British, I’m quite dubious anytime I hear any of my countrymen playing American. I think that’s why House doesn’t do so well in England. The show has done stupendously well in other European countries. It may even be the number one program in Spain and Germany. But the British are wise to me. Any sort of linguistic affectation drives the English absolutely mad. I mean, we are a nation of Professor Higginses, and we’re all out to detect falsehood and artifice in the way English speakers speak.”

On the weird diseases treated on House and the American healthcare system: “That’s something I do think about, by the way. Coming from England, where we have a very different health care system, I do think about America’s in the context of this show. Insurance in many ways is the elephant in the room on House. It’s something we rarely address, but the question remains: Who’s paying for all this treatment? Do all these people really have the insurance to cover these procedures?”

On being a rebellious teenager: “I think I suffered from the arrogance of youth. When I was 15, I and a group of school friends took a sort of pledge that we wouldn’t live beyond 40. We decided we’d kill ourselves. In fact there were some hard-core members of the group—I wasn’t one of them—who wanted to make it 30. ‘I hope I die before I get old’ sort of thing. Talk about arrogance. The arrogance of youth, it trumps all.”

On answering the phone at home for his physician father: “Being my father’s son, I sounded like him, and before I could say ‘this isn’t the doctor,’ they would jump in and say, ‘Doctor, thank God! It’s all exploded. I can’t stop it.’ And with no obvious juncture for me to step out of the way, I would, you know…Let’s just say I’d reassure them. You’re an adolescent. You’re craving attention. ‘Well, it sounds like you’re doing the right thing there,’ I’d say.” Or ‘Oh yes, it will probably be all right. Call back if the swelling worsens.’ As far as I remember, I never lost any patients.”

On non-American actors playing American roles and the End of Days: “One of the reasons why I got the role of House is, coming from England, I was largely unknown to Americans. There were no preconceived notions or expectations about how I was supposed to look or sound. I was new, and that was attractive. It’s also a sign of the End of Days, I believe. Once you start having foreigners do your TV shows, it’s pretty much over. The Romans found that to be the case. They had a lot of Australians coming into the Colosseum right before the whole thing started to implode.”

On English versus American humor: “There’s an old chestnut English people use to comfort themselves: the notion that, first of all, Americans have no sense of irony. Absolute nonsense. I don’t know who came up with that. Demonstrably, manifestly untrue. British comedy is simply more idiosyncratic and a bit less polished, but that’s because it’s usually done by one or two people rather than a committee of dozens of sitcom writers… By and large, British people align themselves with the underdog more than Americans do. Americans rather like the idea of being able to top the joke. I remember someone pointing that out in Animal House, in the scene when John Belushi is walking up the stairs at a frat party and someone is playing “Kumbaya” or something on the guitar and he smashes the guitar. If that had been an English film, the guitarist would have been the hero. That would have been Norman Wisdom. Belushi would have come across as a brutish, thuggish lout.”

I hope you all enjoyed this excerpt as much as I did, and I promise not to do a total quote again, unless it’s really necessary.