Hugh Laurie issued an apology to a British journalist after responding to criticism of her popular series The house.
“I’m sorry if people have been trying on you because of my tweet. Absolutely not,” Laurie, 66, shared in X’s post on Monday, June 8. “I was a little drunk and already upset about something that had nothing to do with you.”
He went on to say, “If it’s a luxury, I put it on my neck, I’m a t*** with thin skin, which is obvious, although it wasn’t my skin, I stuck to the writers I admired.”
Laurie admitted that she made a mistake by naming several historical figures in her early social media posts.
“Obviously I shouldn’t have mentioned Bach/Kahlo/Moore – I’m asking for trouble – and I would have done better to find 10,000 blues songs written in the same 12 bar chord space,” he concluded. “I have listened to most of them and I will continue to do so, because we love what we love.”
This social media game started on Saturday, June 6, when the reporter Janet Murray he told the fans that he has started The housewhich originally ran for eight seasons from 2004 to 2012.
“Same narrative in every episode: A patient has a mysterious illness. Hugh Laurie (Lamb) finds out he’s wrong. The patient almost dies,” his critique read. “Hugh Laurie gets the wrong diagnosis again. He’s threatened with deportation. The patient almost dies again.”
He concluded, “Hugh Laurie has a last-minute left-field vision. He diagnoses well. He’s not fired. Eight seasons of this?”
Laurie responded on Sunday, June 7, thanking Murray for his “criticism” of the show with an offensive response.
“We actually tried a couple of episodes where House (Hugh Laurie) (please put the brackets in the correct place) was fixing [the] first, but they were only 6 minutes long. NBC was not happy,” he wrote, “Then we tried when House was not ready and the patient died. The audience was not happy.”
He added, “One can apply your trenchant analysis to other forms of art: JS Bach wrote 30 Goldberg variations on the same chord structure; Frida Kahlo painted 50 of her portraits; Henry Moore, what??”
Laurie explained that the show was “a variation on the theme” as she concluded her message.
“If you just see a hospital, medical blah blah blah, it wasn’t meant for you,” he said. “Anyway, I’m looking forward to your first novel!”
Murray later tagged Laurie on social media sharing a newly published article titled, “What I Learned From My Online Fight With Hugh Laurie,” prompting an apology.
Murray joked that it was “a lot of fun” to go back and forth with the actor and his fans, but he hoped he would read his story.
“Because while his intellectual speech was really funny, one point I made in the episode was that he shared his 1.2 million followers on X. I have about 38,000,” he explained. “That creates an imbalance – especially given that the responses to my original post were warm-hearted and loved the show.”
Murray noted that he received “horrendous backlash” from House supporters, “more abusive than trans activists,” he wrote.
“I have enough information in the media to take it on the chin, as the saying goes,” concluded Murray. But someone who doesn’t have my background might find the experience very stressful.”
