Hugh Laurie issued an apology to a British journalist after responding to her criticism of his famed series House.
“I’m sorry if people have been having a go at you because of my tweet. Not at all the plan,” Laurie, 66, shared in an X post on Monday, June 8. “I was very slightly drunk and already upset about something that had nothing to do with you.”
He continued, “If it’s any comfort, I got it in the neck too. I’m a thin-skinned t***, apparently, even though it wasn’t my skin. I was sticking up for the writers who I adored.”
Laurie admitted that he made a mistake by naming several historical figures in his initial social media posts.
“Obviously I shouldn’t have cited Bach/Kahlo/Moore — asking for trouble — and would have done better to go for the 10,000 blues songs written around the same 12 bar chord structure,” he concluded. “I’ve listened to most of them and will keep doing so. Because we love what we love.”
The social media drama began on Saturday, June 6, when journalist Janet Murray told followers that she had started House, which initially ran for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012.
“Same narrative every episode: Patient has mysterious illness. Hugh Laurie (House) gets diagnosis wrong. Patient nearly dies,” her critique read. “Hugh Laurie gets diagnosis wrong again. Gets threatened with being fired. Patient nearly dies again.”
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She concluded, “Hugh Laurie has last minute leftfield idea. Gets diagnosis right. Doesn’t get fired. Eight seasons of this?”
Laurie responded on Sunday, June 7, thanking Murray for her “critique” of the show with a rather snarky retort.
“We actually tried a couple of episodes where House (Hugh Laurie) (please put the brackets in the right place) gets it right [the] first time, but they were only 6 minutes long. NBC weren’t happy,” he wrote. “Then we tried some where House never gets it right and the patient dies. The audience wasn’t happy.”
He added, “One could apply your trenchant analysis to other art forms: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 portraits of herself; Henry Moore, what??”
Laurie explained that the show was “variations on a theme” when concluding his message.
“If all you see is hospital, medical blah blah, then it wasn’t meant for you,” he said. “Nonetheless, I look forward to your first novel!”
Murray later tagged Laurie in a social media post sharing a recently published article titled, “What I Learnt From My Online Fight With Hugh Laurie,” which prompted his apology.
Murray joked that “it’s all been rather fun” to go back and forth with the actor and his fans, but she also hoped that he would read her article.
“Because while his witty riposte was genuinely amusing, one point I make in the piece is that it was shared with his 1.2 million followers on X. I have around 38,000,” she explained. “That creates something of an imbalance — particularly given that the responses to my original post were overwhelmingly warm-hearted and affectionate towards the show.”
Murray noted that she’s gotten “some fairly horrific trolling” from House fans, who are “even more abusive than trans activists,” she wrote.
“I have enough experience of the media to take it on the chin, as the saying goes,” Murray concluded. “But someone without my background might have found the experience far more distressing.”
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