I know an astonishing number of people who were surprised that he has an English accent. They’d only ever known him as Dr. House, the American. He doesn’t use either accent in Stuart Little, but not all of them had seen Stuart Little. I definitely have friends for whom House is their first exposure to him. Which means we have very different mental pictures of him, because they think of him as a competent American. I very much do not.
Hugh Laurie is, in fact, so British that he went to Eton. He was not an excellent student, though he was an Olympic-class rower at Cambridge. Unfortunately, he suffered from mono and had to give it up. He joined the Cambridge Footlights. He met a nice young woman named Emma Thompson. They dated for a while, remaining friends after they broke up. She introduced him to a friend of hers, a man by the name of Stephen Fry. The pair would become one of the most iconic British comedy pairs, and their work is considerably less well known to American audiences than it should be.
In fact, Americans seem mostly unaware of his comedic chops full stop. Not A Bit of Fry and Laurie or Jeeves and Wooster or Blackadder. This is not to say that he isn’t a fine dramatic actor; he is. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with only being good at one or the other. I’ve long been a defender of the “stay in your lane” style of acting, while also being able to admire the people capable of multiple lanes. Hugh Laurie can do both, and good for him, but that doesn’t actually make him better or worse than a lot of other actors we’ve covered who only do the one.
Mostly I’m hyping the comedy for two reasons. One is that, as I said, a lot of Americans seem unfamiliar with it. The other is that I like it a lot. There are episodes of Blackadder in particular that can get me laughing so hard I’m crying. (And of course the finale just makes me cry. If you know, you know.) He’s done any number of characters on the show, but the two I was most torn on for here was the Prince Regent and George of Goes Forth. I did also, however, consider Prince Ludwig. But man, Hugh Laurie is so fun on that show, though it’s probably funnier if you know British history.
Also, don’t sleep on listening to him sing. He does some funny songs, and those are great, but I do kind of want to get one of his albums. Though I’d love to help decide a playlist. There are so many songs I think he’d sing so well. He also plays five instruments, and I’m wondering how many there are that he plays a bit but doesn’t have on his list because he doesn’t play them very well. If he put out an album of lullabies, I might not fall asleep to anything else in my life.