Even though Fox TV said this week that “House” was being dropped after eight seasons, the truth was more like the star had decided to drop out.
“There are very few things in life that are so deliciously enjoyable that you want to do them for 16 hours a day, every day — including sex and fine dining,” Hugh Laurie told a London newspaper over the weekend.
“We are on such a conveyer belt, and it can get overwhelming.
“It’s not the playing the character over and over again” that he minded, Laurie said.
“It’s the coming to work over and over again. You know, we have done 170 episodes now, I think. That’s about 50-60 feature films-worth.
“You want a break, you really do.”
Laurie will end his years as Dr. House without regrets or — it seems — the Emmy award for Best Actor, for which he’d been nominated nearly every year since the show began in 2004 but never won.