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Home / Interviews & Articles / Jesse Spencer's House Call |
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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
Jesse Spencer's House Call by Sarrah Le Marquand Seven Days, The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Australia, 22nd February 2006
He works in a profession that relies upon suspension of disbelief, but Jesse Spencer knew it would be stretching the bounds of credibility for him to play a 36-year-old radiologist.
Yet, as an unemployed Australian actor living in the UK, the then 24-year-old was in no position to quibble when asked to audition for a new US medical drama.
"My agent rang up and said they had a pilot and I said, 'What's the point of me going in for that? I'm sick of going in for these roles that I'm never right for'," Spencer recalls. "I'll go in for stuff that pushes the boundaries, but 36?
"And they said, 'Well what else are you going to do?' and I said, 'I don't know ... go to the pub'," he laughs. "And then they explained that with pilots it's very broad and they change stuff.
"Being an American pilot, I just expected some General Hospital kind of script, but it was very smart and funny and I saw Bryan Singer (X-Men director) was attached and I thought, 'Man, this is serious'."
Serious it was – the pilot would eventually become the weekly series House, which has since proved a hit both overseas and in Australia.
Fortunately for Spencer, a string of casting calls across the US had failed to find a suitable actor to fill the role of Dr Robert Chase. Having expanded the search internationally, the producers responded positively to Spencer's screen test but asked him to fly – at his own expense – to Los Angeles for a face-to-face audition.
"So I bought a £500 ($1179) airfare and they brought me in and I got the job," he says. "Best £500 I've ever spent."
It was then the role was tailored to fit the former Neighbours star. Having already changed the character from an American to an Englishman, Spencer managed to persuade the producers to complete one final rewrite. "I said, 'Can't we just make him Australian? It would be very different – you haven't really had that many Aussies on episodic TV' and they went for it," he says.
Ironically, after living in England for almost five years, Spencer's character initially sounded more London than Melbourne. Although his English twang has noticeably faded in more recent episodes, Spencer liked that Chase couldn't be readily identified as coming from one particular country.
"I like messy accents," he says. "The character is well travelled and has spent time abroad. I might start to pick up a slight American accent which would be good because I know so many people whose accents are a mixture of places and are messy."
Spencer wasn't quite so happy to compromise when required to use the US abbreviation for mathematics during one scene. "We were doing a read-through and I kept saying 'maths' instead of 'math'," he says. During a break in rehearsal, he was confronted by a bewildered script supervisor who instructed him to drop the 's'. When his protests fell on deaf ears, Spencer complied reluctantly.
Yet he is envied by English leading man Hugh Laurie, who had to drop every trace of his own nationality to play the bad-tempered Dr Gregory House. "He works really hard, he's got such a tough gig," Spencer says of his Golden Globe-winning colleague. "Not just the medical stuff – which he has to deliver rapid-fire – but the accent on top of that is such a tall order. And a very difficult character. If I tried to play this character he'd probably just end up looking like an a..hole but Hugh somehow brings a comedic edge into it. "You almost feel sorry for the guy (House) sometimes because you see into his soul. He pulls it all together so well."
Nonetheless, Laurie's on-screen dominance on House can sometimes leave the ensemble cast in his shadow. Happily for Spencer, the other characters in the show are becoming more fully-fledged as the second series progresses. "It has happened this season – not as much as I had hoped – but they are being fleshed out a bit more," he says. "It's so good when you get to play an emotional story rather than just do the medical stuff."
While Spencer doesn't get the opportunity to come home as often as he'd like, his Melbourne-based family make sure they catch up with his fictional counterpart every week. For his part, Spencer – who is dating House co-star Jennifer Morrison – has happily adjusted to life in LA and is making sure he doesn't take starring in a prime-time hit for granted.
"When the figures come out the morning after the show has been on the air everyone says, 'What are the figures, what are the figures? Are we up, are we down?'" he laughs. "At the start I thought, 'What's everyone so anxious about', but it's such a big thing because if you start getting bad figures your head really can be on the chopping block. So now I'm the guy on Wednesday mornings (after House is shown on Tuesday nights in the US) saying, 'Oh my God ... what are the figures? How are we?' I'm just like them now."
House, Wednesday, Ten, 8.30pm
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