laurie

HUGH LAURIE IS HIGHEST PAID ACTOR IN US DRAMA SERIES
(by Tony Ryanto)


Born on 11 June, 1959, Briton James Hugh Calum Laurie, stars as Dr. Gregory House, protagonist of the world’s most-watched Fox produced TV medical drama series House.

Starting August 2010, TV Guide magazine named Laurie the highest paid actor for US drama series with a USD 480,000 per episode pay, taking over from Kiefer Sutherland, son of actor Donald Sutherland, whose drama series 24 ended earlier this year.

House pilot director Bryan Singer was looking for an actor with a perfect American accent to play the lead character and Laurie was the man of his choice. But at the time, he didn’t have any idea that Laurie is English, not American.

House is entering its 7th season in Sept. 2010 after its first airing in 2004. Laurie has meanwhile garnered two Golden Globe awards and several Emmy nominations.


What makes the series the number one medical drama globally?

The magnet is Gregory House, who is not as handsome as George Clooney in the drama series ER (Emergency Room). Neither is he as good looking and amiable as Richard Chamberlain in the series Dr. Kildare.

House is bearded, mustachioed. He limps because one dead leg muscle had been surgically removed. As a result, he suffers sporadic fits of pain and is consequently addicted to Vicodin, a pain killer.


At all times, House is sullen, irritated, grumpy, lonely and cantankerous but all these qualities cannot compare with his genius as a master diagnostician and a communicable disease specialist.

A lot of patients considered not to be able to survive recovered miraculously and surprisingly because of House’s accurate diagnosis that normally baffled other physicians. Understandably, a lot of hospital employees have to tolerate a torrent of verbal abuse.

And this is the supreme power that has enabled House to survive and retained its top position throughout six seasons.

Dr James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) and Dr Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the director of the hospital House is employed, are the closest to the grumpy diagnostician.

There is a difference though. While pure friendship is the thing that binds House and Wilson, love-hate relationship is responsible for the proximity between House and Cuddy. AXN channel audiences could see that the bearded doctor is in love with his superior, while Cuddy herself is seen to be wavering, not being able to reciprocate his feelings.

The first episode of House’s seventh season in September 2010 is a surprisingly a real eye opener. At a time when House is desperate and was about to return to Vicodin, Cuddy unexpectedly enters his room.

Why desperate? Because he has just lost a patient, a woman whose amputation he recommended did not survive. Worse, because the woman he loves, Cuddy, told House in a season 6 episode she had just got engaged to Lucas.

The House-Cuddy footage, dubbed Huddy, is said to depict love between the two.

Some people claim the Huddy footage is extremely risky because if it fails to satisfy audiences, the hot series could crumble in no time.

But if fans are pleased, it means that House has obtained extra power and come-hither appeal, because like some commentators said, the magnet that draws viewers is becoming monotonous. Even the most interesting, if repeated time and again, might turn to be boring.

Admittedly, Dr House is a brilliant diagnostician. But his ability to cure patients and his being grumpy to all, are not without limits.

So the producers risk to expose the consummation of tender feelings between the protagonists to keep the series strong as ever.

In retrospect, audiences could easily trace the feelings of affection between the leads in the series The Nanny, Who’s The Boss and The X-Files.

Tony Danza as Tony Micelli and Judith Light as Angela Bower are always warm in Who’s The Boss, shown from 1984 to 1992.

Fran Drescher as Fran Fine and Charles Shaughnessy as Maxwell Sheffield love each other in The Nanny, televised from 1993 to 1999.

And so are the characters played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in Fox’s The X-Files (1993-2002).

But none of the couples have been shown with such force, and torridness as in the Huddy sequence.

In 2004, Laurie left his wife and three children in England. The time he spent alone in the US was admittedly not an easy and comfortable one.

“I wouldn’t say that doing the series has made my marriage easier. Better? I don’t know about that either,” Mail On Line dated Sat. Aug. 28, 2010 quoted him as saying to Parade magazine earlier this year.

Indonesians could see Laurie in the “Stuart Little” films. He plays a loving and adorable father.

Now who could have predicted that Laurie could gain fame and riches in the US?

In terms of rating, it’s amazing that House could beat powerful drama series, such as the CIS franchise series Crime Scene Investigation (Las Vegas, Nevada), CSI Miami, CSI NY and Law and Order.

But according to the same TV Guide magazine, Laurie has still a long way to catch up with Charlie Sheen, son of actor Martin Sheen, who earns USD 1.2 million per episode in the comedy series Two and a Half Men.

The series, aired on Sept. 22, 2003, might enter its 12th season in 2011, as contained in a multi-year broadcast agreement between CBS Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television.

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