“America is Too Big to Know Itself” | Hugh Laurie on Working in the US vs UK | Edinburgh TV Festival

so when you got um to america and were immersed in the process of making house i mean it's a relentless schedule isn't it and it's a completely different way of working in many ways to describe the difference actually well first of all they work americans work so hard it makes your nose bleed it's just extraordinary they are um i remember going to work i would go on a motorcycle every morning and i'd probably sort of five o'clock in the morning i was going to work all the lights were on shops were opening up offices lights were coming on people on treadmills through when you know there's a sort of furious desire to get on to work incredibly long hours and never to let go until until you've accomplished whatever it is um how did you feel about embracing that well that actually happened to suit my presbyterian uh so i quite like that actually um i also took some pride in being able to you know keep up and not uh and not start uh wilting uh before we got to the end of the day you know but it was it was relentless and it was um there was awful lot of it you know because they do every everything it's a big country everything they do is is bigger and if they have a show they like the idea of doing six of them that sort of or at least back then it's it's changed a lot now uh people are broadcasters are starting to do you know six of something or ten or something uh instead of 700 700 yeah yeah what tell me about your relationship with dr gregory house as a character what was it that you that you engaged with about him when you did the american accent so brilliantly americans must think you're american don't they oh i i don't i don't know about that i mean well first of all i think there may be some americans here maybe a lot of americans here i don't know americans first of all americans don't do a very good american accent and so i was constantly having to correct it um but they're also because they're much less interested they don't have the professor higgins ear for uh you know class and background and geography and the way that the british are much more attuned to wait a second where are you from and who what trick are you trying to pull on me by with that particular choice of words um i think partly because again because it's such a big country nobody really it doesn't bother people so much where you're from or or why you sound the way you sound america is a country that's too big to know itself someone living in florida has got no idea what how people behave or what they eat or how they dress in oregon it's it's just so far away whereas we know of course we know absolutely everything about every every british drama you watch you go wait a minute that's high wiccan yeah i know well that could never happen because it's a one-way system there whereas america is such it's so mythically grand that it can't know it's it's too big to know itself and and that actually has an effect with with things like things like accent i also thought that house occupying a sort of it's a sort of semi-academic world academia is its own country in a way that there's a certain amount of latitude you're allowed you can assume that academics they travel and they practice their their trade in in many different parts of the world so i thought i would i would probably i could probably get away with it but it also required a huge sort of lifestyle change at a certain point you decided you had to live there because yeah this schedule was so interesting a daily commute was not invisible yeah from high wickham yeah i i wondered how it felt you know because you're very self-deprecating as we've already discussed at the beginning of the program but you know you have lived in america now for a period of time as one of its highest paid if not the highest paid actor in the u.s um you know regarded as one of the most successful britons to make a transatlantic a transatlantic career move did you feel did you feel any of that no not really no because there was no there was no there was sort of no opportunity to to drink at that particular well it was a um you know a television or or a a sound stage is they're pretty much the same wherever you go in the world it's a big um barn of a building with no windows and it's got a fake set in it and you eat standing up with the plastic forks and um suddenly it's time to go home and then you do and then repeat so it's grim out west as well well it's not great i don't mean to say it's grim i mean it was a my god it was a gilded cage and i loved the people i was doing it with i loved the the character i really did love the character and still do love the character um and i was incredibly proud of some of the things we did i thought no that's a that's not just good i actually i actually think in a funny way that's important i think it's important somebody speaks up for um truth over sentiment truth over feeling um because even when house started it felt like we were about to be uh drowned in this this feeling that the world is is remakeable in my own head to be what i wanted to be and i can be like in my own head i can you know i can wish upon a star do you think he's a character that could survive in today's climate you know the sort of polarized climate that you that you you talked about earlier you would have been sued so many times over he would be imprisoned possibly dead uh you know possibly a gunshot to the back of the head at some point i i can't see i mean maybe the medical profession is maybe is the only place where your results that is to say your ability to solve a problem and bring people back from the dead which is sort of what he did every week um is the is the one thing that will allow people to forgive you certain um aberrations of of social etiquette yes well i think if you're gonna think of anything you're gonna make sure i sarcastic remarks yeah but what about why do you think it is that those those medical dramas are so successful i mean the house was phenomenal across the globe um obviously er before it very very successful um you've also starred in chance as dr chance which again you know audiences just seem to love the wine yes i thought of that as a very different thing chance was a um was a nero psychiatrist i was absolutely fascinated as i i've always long been fascinated by neuroscience and and i sort of hoover up any any pop versions of neuroscience i can get hold of and i thought there was an absolutely fascinating story to be to be told about the world of neuroscience of neuropsychiatry because for this reason there are as you know many many hundreds of television shows about murder and about apprehending the killer you know that's the sort of staple fare of of most television nowadays it seems to be the television drama this is a stark fact but and i feel almost nervous about saying this because it feels like i'm attempting fate but god forbid any of us should happen to die of violent death we are twice as likely to kill ourselves as be killed by another no matter what newspapers no matter how much they may want you to believe that you're going to be stabbed at the moment you step out of your door it's more likely you're going to stab yourself i'm not sure if there's a relief no well no there isn't but it's but it's there is it's just interesting to me that there's not one television show about something that represents literally twice the danger and that is mental illness and suicide and the aberrations that can occur inside the human brain you know we are about to we're going to have people on mars in 25 years and yet we know nothing about what's going on in between our ears sherlock's got issues yes absolutely i'm joking um absolutely yeah but is that something that you'd like to do i mean is that another it turns out one of the things that you are doing no i'm not i'm not doing it but one of the one of the obstacles to telling those kinds of stories is uh this phenomenon that i was only recently made aware of that you you basically cannot do drama about suicide you're not allowed to do it because uh it's an it's an imitateable behavior um and there it's demonstrably true that there are spikes of um self-harm and and suicide where you have introduced some notable example of it which is why it's such a problem online it's such a problem and and and but the fact that it's such a problem doesn't necessarily mean that i think we should just shy away from it i i was um i think it's a fascinating area to try and approach but my god it's it's one that needs to be approached with the utmost delicacy and skill and compassion obviously you

Channel: Edinburgh TV Festival

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Id: S26rESoxQ-M

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021