Fox Gave House's Creator One Note About Hugh Laurie's Character
The eponymous Dr. Gregory House one of the most complex yet human protagonists in the world of medical shows, likely because House's character is based on a real person, adding more credence to his complexity. Fox originally gave the creators one major note about writing Hugh Laurie's now-legendary leading man.
"There was hesitation [by the network] about House being addicted to Vicodin, but that hesitation was a good hesitation," series creator David Shore told TV Guide. "It was one of the very few notes they had for us."
The network's main concern was how House's addiction would play for an audience, with their note being, "Do it if you want, but if you do it, do it honestly and don't do it as a joke." But according to Shore, the creative team felt House's vice was too important to be treated as anything other than serious. "We never intended to do that," Shore told the outlet. "We intended to go with this as a real issue, a real problem, a real dilemma for this character."
House's Vicodin addiction was always going to be serious
Dr. Gregory House's addiction never stops him from leading a team of smart medical pros at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in one of the best medical dramas of all time. House's well-known tendency to self-medicate comes from an actual medical issue — with major tissue death in one of his quad muscles, the eccentric doc's choice method of managing chronic leg pain becomes more understandable.
Another mandate from Fox led to the iconic walk-and-talk scenes in "House" — during which House usually doesn't wear a white coat and can often be seen walking with a cane to help placate the injury. But as fans know, he's also never too far from the pill bottle. Executive producer Katie Jacobs has highlighted the fact that specifically House's pain, not an ambition for a high, puts him at the mercy of his addiction.
"You call him a drug addict, and that's true, but he's popping all that Vicodin because he's in pain," Jacobs told TV Guide. "You know he's arrogant and he's the smartest kid in class. He's like a huge adolescent. But the abuse of Vicodin also allows you to know he's vulnerable and breakable."