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Home / Interviews & Articles / Doctor in the House |
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This page was last updated on 5th July 2006. Page launched on 5th July 2006. Site launched on 8th February 2004.
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INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES
Doctor in the House by Katherine Tulich Sunday Magazine, Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, Australia, 11th June 2006
Scalpel at the ready, this former Neighbours heart-throb has proved he's cut out for the big time as House's favourite intern, Dr Robert Chase. Katherine Tulich samples Jesse Spencer's bedside manner. Photographed by Chapman Baehler.
A grubby warehouse in downtown LA is not the kind of place you'd expect to meet one of TV's hottest young stars. But as I wind my way across the gravel and into a back alley behind the building, I'm greeted by a smiling Jesse Spencer, who's leaning against a wall, having his photo taken. Wardrobe and make-up people fuss around and the camear flashes away as Spencer strikes a pose. While he remains natural and relaxed throughout, you get the sense he's not exactly comfortable. Too much attention does not sit well with the young actor, but as a cast member of the hit TV medical drama House he has had to adapt - fast.
Spencer has joined an elite group of Aussie actors - including Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under), Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck), Emilie de Ravin (Lost) and Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace) - finding success on prime-time US television. House's growing success has meant a continuing round of media attention, awards shows and live appearences on top of a hectic shooting schedule for its lead actors, including Spencer. In fact, the 27-year-old has wrapped the final episode of the show's second season the night before we meet, but he's agreed to spend the day doing photos for Sunday Magazine and chatting in between.
"It's been an exhausting year," he tells me. "Our show is known as one of the toughest to work on. It has complicated scenes and we often have 14-hour-days."
Playing Dr Robert Chase on House has shifted the former Neighbours heart-throb's career into high gear. With other bg-ticket shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost suffering from limp second seasons, House keeps gaining momentum, as more viewers discover the grumpy Dr Gregory House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie, whose bedside manner leaves much to be desired.
The appeal of House lies in the fact that it's also something of a detective story. Each week a list of complicated symptoms is diagnosed (always successfully, of course) by House and his team (played by Spencer, Omar Epps and Jennifer Morrison).
The show, which screens on the Fox Network in the USA immediately following the ratings juggernaut of American Idol, is now the number-one drama on that channel, averaging 18 million viewers each week. Since its debut, the show has seen an audience increase of 38 per cent. This year, Laurie piced up a Golden Globe; last year the writers won an Emmy Award.
Meeting Spencer for the first time, I'm struck by the similarities to his onscreen character. There's the same no-nonsense manner, the same turn of phrase than [sic] can be both cheeky and charming. But Spencer has never been a media darling, even when he was a Neighbours pin-up boy. So how is he dealing with all the attention?
"Why? Do I seem uncomfortable?" he responds defensively. "I just don't like attention focused on me. When you're acting, even though there's a camera in front of you, the focus is on what you're doing. These things are very different because you're talking about yourself - the focus is on you."
Still, for someone who may not be fond of the process, he's open and chatty, happy to stretch our interview time beyong the assigned limit as the photo session breaks for lunch and we find a couple of chairs on which to perch.
Spencer admits House has turned his life around, but it was an opportunity he nearly passed up. After a stint playing Billy Kennedy on Neighbours, he moved to the UK to pursue work. While he was later cast in a couple of movie roles, Swimming Upstream (back in Australia) and Uptown Girls (in the US), his career was essentially in a holding pattern. Then he was offered the opportunity to audition for House.
According to one of the show's executive producers, Katie Jacobs, Spencer's part was the most difficult to cast. After an exhaustive search in the US, they spread their net to the UK, asking agents to submit tapes. When Spencer's agent alerted him to the call, the actor was nonchalant.
"By this stage, I'd read so many bad scripts for US TV shows, I was convinced this was just going to be some lame copy of General Hospital, so I told my agent I'd rather just go down to the pub and not bother with it at all but, when he faxed through the script, I was amazed by how smart it was. Finally, I felt I'd found a role I could really relate to," he says.
Enthused, Spencer taped his audition and sent it to LA. Jacobs and the team were impressed. "It was just something about him. He really popped out of the screen at us," she says. "Jesse's character is complicated. He comes from a privileged background and everything has come a little too easily for him. The thing with Jesse is that he has a playful sense of humour, yet is quick and sharp at the same time. We thought that, of all the actors we auditioned, he really brought something to the role."
"I was really surprised they picked me," admits Spencer. "Out of all the American actors they'd already auditioned, I was surprised they didn't find someone to cast." He auditioned for the role as an American, but the producers decided to let him play the role with his home-grown accent.
"Jesse would have been happy to play it either way," says Jacobs. In fact, the producers first toyed with the idea of making him British, but Spencer jokes that Laurie couldn't bear to play opposite an actor murdering his native accent.
"The actors have enough to deal with in the complicated medical dialogue," says Jacobs, "so, in the end, we thought, why not let Jesse speak in his own accent? I think it brings another layer to his character."
Spencer says, "It's great to play an Australian on US television wbo isn't a crocodile hunter. Chase is a kid who's rich and smart and his whole family is in medicine. I think it gives US viewers a very different view of Australians."
With its CSI-like medical diagnosis each week, the show has also found many fans in the medical community. "I know doctors who watch it every week and take bets on what the outcome will be," says Spencer. "They also love the idea of someone just speaking his mind, who's not concerned about a polite bedside manner."
Spencer's not without experience in the field. His father is a GP in Melbourne, and his two brothers and sister have followed their dad into medicine. So does a career in acting mean the Melbourne-born actor is the black sheep of the family? "I'm doing medicine," he says cheekily. "Actually, Dr Chase is more qualified than anyone in my family. I must have graduated from medical school when I was 12. I guess that makes me a genius."
Spencer began acting professionally at 12 after scoring the part of Christopher Robin in a musical stage version of Winnie the Pooh. His big break came when he was cast in Neighbours while completing Year 10 at Scotch College in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. His parents agreed to his career move as long as he finished school and gained entry into university. (He was accepted into Monash, but never attended.)
Spencer spent five years on Ramsay Street and, while he loved working on the show (and says he would happily guest star if the opportunity ever arose), he hated the fame that came with it. "I was 15 and trying to catch the tram to school, so I was still just this kid that had been turned into some pin-up celebrity. I hated it - I never had any interest in that side of it."
Fortunately, his success in House has brought a different kind of attention. "When you're on a show like this, you don't seem so accessible. You're not in everyone's room every night. It's a classy show, so people tend to treat you with respect. We have this huge hit show, but it's not like I can't walk down the street. With Neighbours, there were certain places I could never go."
Even his romance with co-star Jennifer Morrison has stayed low-key. The two were spotted together at the G'day LA gala dinner held earlier in the year in Los Angeles - and on numerous occasions since - but he refuses to comment on the relationship. In fact, he says he is happily decking out his "bachelor pad". He recently bought a house in Sherman Oaks, the valley area on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It's not the Hollywood heartland, but rather a quiet, picturesque neighbourhood.
He's happy living in LA, which is something that took him by surprise. "I avoided coming here for a long time. I did the classic Australian thing - I'd fly in and thing everything seemed so fake and phony, but now that I've been forced to live here, I've seen such a different side to LA. You can never really judge a place when you just visit for a couple of weeks. I'm starting to enjoy life here, which I didn't think I would because I was so closed-minded about it. Of course, there is a dark side to LA, and you can go mix in that if you want, but I have to say that I've met some of the loveliest people I've ever met living here."
And those people are, by and large, Americans. He has little interest in hanging out with other Aussie expats. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," he insists. "I did the same thing when I was living in London. It would have been easy to hand at Earls Court and the Walkabout pub but I didn't go to England to be part of a little Australia. I like to get to know the country and the people."
So much so that he isn't running back to Oz any time soon. On his hiatus from House, he plans to take a road trip around California. "I can't wait to see more of this place. My parents have travelled a lot here, and they've told me about so many wonderful places," he says. "I feel I've worked hard for two years, so now it's time to relax."
He certainly has worked hard, and the critical and commercial success the show is enjoying must be enormously satisfying. But I wonder if playing what is, in effect, a supporting role will satisfy his ambitions for long. "People talk about planning and making good choices and you can do that, but only to a certain extent," says Spencer. "You can only choose from the choices you're given. I would never have thought that I'd move to America and be making a show, but I'm extremely happy and, by every indication, we'll be here awhile."
Plus, there are the perks. The wardrobe lady interrupts our conversation to hand Spencer one of the jackets he was wearing for the shoot. He smiles. "That's the thing over here," he says. "They give you all this free stuff."
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