hugh is lovely....

After watching Hugh Laurie filming "Inside the Actor's Studio" last night, I like him even more than before. He is truly a fascinating guy who has had an interesting career, and is absolutely hilarious. I find it so interesting that great comedians tend to have incredible depression, and Mr. Laurie does indeed suffer from that. The session was quite illuminating, and he spoke at some length about the relationship he had with his parents and his depression. His parents were quite religious, and were people who lived without frills, and indeed had much guilt and suspicion about happiness and good things happening. He still carries that with him, and said that he has a hard time accepting pleasure....basically he lives by the code that good things must be earned. He spoke about his time at Oxford and Cambridge, and about how he used to date Emma Thompson in school. (Yeah!) He also talked about "Blackadder", "Jeeves and Wooster", "Stuart Little", "Flight of the Phoenix", and of course he spoke at great length about "House, M.D." currently playing on the Fox network. I think that I have waxed poetic about this show before, but it is worth talking about again. It is brilliant, and he is brilliant in it. One thing that was covered (which I of course had never noticed) was the similarities between the character of House and Sherlock Holmes. They have the same street address, the drug addiction, their sidekicks Watson/Wilson, and the list goes on. They showed several clips from the show (none of which Mr. Laurie watched)and he spoke about the "high-wire" act that is this character. How do you make an un-likeable sometimes cruel character the hero of a show? The evening closed with Mr. Laurie playing the piano and singing a song that he wrote several years ago called "Mystery". He is in fact a brilliant pianist. It was a real treat. This is definitely going on the short list as one of my favorite NYC memories. I hope that you will check out this brilliant show (first season is out on DVD) and maybe watch the airing of Inside the Actor's Studio" which I think is on June 4th.

photo credit: www.tv.com