Friday April 8, 2011 I had the opportunity to listen in on a conference call with David Shore, Executive Producer and Creator of House. Although he was speaking with us about the show, specifically the 150th episode and the return of Olivia Wilde, I really was not surprised that he didn’t give much away. Unfortunately a lot of things going on kept me from writing this up earlier, but nothing very spoilery came up anyway!
I really enjoyed listening in to the call. Before he became a writer for such shows as EZ Streets and NYPD Blue, and created, wrote and produced House, David Shore was an attorney. As it is a profession we both share, I assume that his ability to answer questions and give little away may actually be in part because of that attorney training! Essentially, the questions asked by other writers were about the probability of a Season Eight for House, and about why they went the route that Thirteen was in jail.
About Season Eight, David indicated that he “would be absolutely astounded if there wasn’t.” They are currently working under the assumption that there will be, and that even though there is not yet a deal in place and negotiations are ongoing, “FOX wants to have a Season Eight and NBC Universal wants them to have a Season Eight.”
About Thirteen, David indicated that the important thing was more about why she went to prison than that she was in prison. He felt it was important because it told the audience something about her. “It connected us deeper to her, and it was a lovely little mystery for the episode.”
David indicated that the show has exceeded his expectations in every way. He stated that he “wasn’t even imagining 150 episodes.” “At the beginning, I just didn’t think there were that many medical maladies we could deal with.”
David assured us that although there have been a couple things over the years he could have “done over”, he doesn’t lose sleep over them. “That’s not to say I’ve been thrilled with everything I’ve done, but I am pretty good at kind of accepting that that’s what we did, and learning in the sense of going forward hopefully a slightly different perspective.” He added that he would rather not mention these things because he didn’t want to “feed the fire”.
About the House and Cuddy relationship, David indicated that they “worked very hard to keep House as House and Cuddy as Cuddy, and have fun with them in a relationship rather than—and never to just—one of the directives was less smiling.” David states he “never wanted to see either of them just content and happy.”
When asked about keeping the show full of fresh material, David talked a bit about keeping the story interesting and new but didn’t want to shock of the sake of shocking. He states that they continue to ask the same questions they have since the beginning: “What is interesting about this story? What is new about this story? What does this story give us that enlightens us in some respect about House or the rest of the team?” Closely linked to those questions is another important question someone asked that he admits has been there since day one: “Beneath all that scar tissue, does House have a compassionate streak, a human streak within him?” David answered that House is a human being, but it was important to them that they make House multidimentional.
I had asked David about writing and producing and whether he finds that one needs to take the backseat to the other. David assured me that writing is everything. A certain amount of his job is producing and he “feel[s] like [he] is playing hooky when [he’s] doing that part of the job.” He sees his real job as writing and overseeing the writing. By the way, David commented our web site’s name…He did seem a little spoiler-phobic!
So here are a few last minute notes:
• A future episode will answer the question of whether Amber Tamblyn has worked her way into a permanent position or if she is gone at the end of the season.
• It has not yet been worked out whether Olivia Wilde will return next season, but David indicates he does hope they will have her.
• David is operating on the assumption that Robert Sean Leonard will be back next season, although negotiations are ongoing. He indicates that he does feel that relationship is “one of the cornerstones of the show.”
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