Watch Hugh Laurie audition for ‘House’ from his bathroom
By the time he landed the title role in House, Hugh Laurie was already a household name in the UK, having performed alongside fellow Cambridge Footlights member Steven Fry in shows like Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster, and the comedy sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Familiar with the task of portraying bumbling members of the British aristocracy, a role like Dr Gregory House must have come as something of a surprise. However, in this audition tape footage, it’s clear he was the only person capable of bringing the character to life.
On bagging a place at Cambridge, Hugh Laurie was convinced to join the university’s renowned comedy society. During an end-of-year tour with the Footlights, Laurie was introduced to Stephen Fry, with whom he put together The Cellar Tapes. The sketch show won the inaugural Perrier award (“the fizzy water people”, as Rowan Atkinson put it) at the 1981 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The troupe, which included Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane and Ben Elton, was subsequently offered a slot on television. By the end of the 1990s, Laurie was one of Britain’s most celebrated comedic actors.
In the early years of the new millennium, Laurie was looking for fresh pastures. The gloriously acerbic Dr Gregory House offered him the chance to demonstrate his dexterity as a dramatic performer, although, according to writer David Shore there was some stiff competition. “We read a lot of people,” he told the Television Academy Foundation, “We met with a lot of people, and we even offered it to a lot of people, but it wasn’t really working. People would come and audition,” he continued, “And the funny stuff would work, but the dramatic stuff wouldn’t or vice versa. I don’t even know what it was, but it just wasn’t working. And it was very strange – it’s a good Hollywood story: Hugh Laurie was in Namibia shooting a movie, and his agent sent him the sites for the scenes he was auditioning with.”
“Hugh tells the story that he thought he was auditioning for the side-kick,” Shore went on. “He read the scene. It wasn’t called House then; it was an untitled pilot.” Laurie had gotten into his head that he would be auditioning for the “ass” to the show’s charismatic American lead. “But he wasn’t,” Shore recalled. “He went into the bathroom of his hotel room and put himself on tape and sent it in, and we watched it and a light went on.”
You can watch that bathroom audition tape below.