Actor Hugh Laurie has left the sanitized American hospital of his TV series “House MD” and burrowed deep into shadowy British mystery. He has not only adapted one of Agatha Christie’s classic murder stories, but is directing “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” arriving on BritBox April 12.
He says he was talking with the Christie estate about playing a role in another of her works when something weird happened. “I probably shouldn’t say which one it is because ... they've probably gone to Colin Firth now, let’s be honest,” he says.
“But in the course of that conversation, I just happened to mention ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ I think I was just referencing some line or some moment, and they responded and said, ‘Oh, we are hoping to make that one day.’
“And I said, ‘Well, there’s no role for me in it so I would love to be involved, but I wouldn’t be as an actor because I don’t see a role, but I’d love to try and write it.”
They agreed, and soon Laurie was determined to both write and direct the piece because he finds this particular Christie puzzler unique.
“The real mystery is not who the killer is,” he says. “I mean that is a mystery and we have to track that down and he or she must be apprehended and brought before the law. But the REAL mystery is what does the question of the title mean? It’s like a 100-dimension Wordle where you’re trying to solve this puzzle, and until you solve it, it’s not really satisfying,” he says.
“You might catch the killer, but until you understand, decipher the question and answer the question, it doesn’t really satisfy. And I think that is her genius. Agatha Christie, who was the most astounding mystery plotter of all time — I mean, I can’t think of anyone else who really comes close — I think she knew that. I think ... she said, ‘I’m going to do something here where the real mystery is not a who-done-it; it’s kind of a why-done-it or how-done-it.’ And I find that absolutely fascinating,” he says.
“And I can still sort of make myself shiver remembering the first time I realized what the twist of the story was and I still, to this day — and you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen it on screen — I still get the same feeling when I watch it happen on screen.”
Wrestling it to screen was a singular task for Laurie, who’s best known here for acting roles in “The Night Manager,” “Veep,” “Catch-22,” and, of course, “House” (which earned him an Emmy nomination and two Screen Actors Awards).
“You probably need seven people to do the job of a director in the way that it really ought to be done,” he sighs.
“The calls upon your judgment and time and energy and stamina are almost infinite and the opportunity for making mistakes, likewise, is almost infinite,” he says.
But the source of both a director’s and an actor’s power lies in an underlying sense of truth, he says. “I think both actors and directors, they need to be people who watch people. They need to watch people and know instantly what is true and what isn’t. And it might be true in the way someone drinks a cup of tea. Or it might be true in the way someone conducts themselves in, I don’t know, a sword fight or rides a horse, or it may be in a 10-page dialogue scene at a graveside. It could be almost anything, but I think the audience generally has this instantaneous response: ‘I believe that, or I don’t. I respond to that, or I don’t.’ And I think both directors and actors need to be not just practiced at it, I think it needs to be an instinct in them both to watch people and to know when something isn’t right,” he says.
Something proved right for Laurie with “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” because of its sly wit, he says. “I always thought the novel had a kind of comic spirit to it. My theory is — and I've got no evidence for this ... but Agatha Christie published this novel a year after Dashiell Hammett published ‘The Thin Man.’ And I have it in my mind that she either read ‘The Thin Man,’ or she saw the film which came out the same year. And I think she was animated by that,” he says.
“It’s got a sort of ‘American’ bounce to it and a comic spirit, which I absolutely adored in ‘The Thin Man’ too. And I've got a feeling that she did. And she wanted to imbue these characters with that kind of playfulness and spirit. And ultimately, it’s a kind of realism because people are funny,” he says.
“When I watch a film that has not a whisper of wit to it or humor ... it’s not that I'm disappointed by that absence, I just don't believe it as much because I think the way people respond to all kinds of things — fear, love, anger, all sorts of things — they very often resort to jokes as a way of processing those strong emotions. And I think that Agatha Christie deliberately set out to do something that had more of a comic spirit to it than perhaps some of her previous novels.”
Merchant sells comedy
Funnyman Stephen Merchant (co-creator of the original — and funnier — British version of “The Office”) is starring in his latest comedy-thriller on Prime Video. Titled “The Outlaws,” it’s about a group of miscreants who are forced to labor together on a public works project. One of those lawbreakers is the fabled Christopher Walken, described on the show as that “shifty old-timer.”
Walken tells me he thinks that a lot of acting is instinctive. “If it feels right, it is right. I generally have the feeling if it's going well, and it's a pretty accurate feeling,” he says. “The characters I play don’t have much to do with me. I’m always surprised when I meet actors whom I only know from their work; they’re always unexpected,” he says.
“To be a successful actor you have to stay somewhere around 8 years old. “You need confidence. You have to have half a brain too. All good actors are smart,” he says.
As for Merchant, he was the class-clown in school. "I’ve never been as funny as when I was in school. I did school plays and things, and I could be funny and joke around. I suppose that was when it started. My dad was always funny.”
But Merchant insists his comedy wasn’t an attempt to gain attention. “I always got attention because I'm very tall. I am 6-foot-7. And I was very tall from a young age. I was talking the other day to Harry Shearer – an amazing guy – and he said, ‘Do you think you used comedy to control when people laughed at you?’ And I think that’s true. I think that’s really perceptive. If you feel a little bit of an outsider, then maybe you use humor; you feel more in control.”
Crime fighters fill the dance card
They’re inveterate crime busters on CBS’ “NCIS: Los Angeles,” but LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell harbor other ideas. One of them has sluiced into a new TV show called “Come Dance with Me,” premiering on the network April 15.
The show features kids in dance numbers with some untrained member of their family — in a hoofers’ competition for a nifty prize.
“The genesis of the thing was Chris kind of came to me and showed me this teaser, this sizzle (reel) with this germ of an idea about these kids that could really dance and them getting with family members, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe just dads, maybe just moms,” recalls Cool J.
“And we kind of bounced the idea around, and I immediately gravitated toward it. I thought it was an incredible idea. I thought it was just really fun. I thought the energy was right.
And this was prepandemic when we first got into it. But even at that time, I felt like, ‘You know what? The world could use a nice family show that's a lot of fun, that people could dance to and enjoy,’ and so ...”
O’Donnell remembers it this way: “I believe what you said is, ‘That s--- looks hot.’”
“Yeah, I did,” agrees Cool J. “I probably did say that. I probably did say, ‘That s--- looks hot.’ And it did. But it was a good time. I thought it was a great idea. And I thought it was something we could work with and here we are, ‘Come Dance with Me.’”
Anderson takes on a first lady
Gillian Anderson was so good as Margaret Thatcher, she’s following the course of diplomacy with her latest role as Eleanor Roosevelt in Showtime’s anthology series “The First Ladies,” due April 17.
With Michelle Pfeiffer as Betty Ford and Viola Davis as Michelle Obama, the series chronicles what may have happened behind the scenes of the White House. Anderson, who first snagged the spotlight with her role as the pragmatic FBI investigator of “The X-Files,” has gone on to play a kaleidoscope of characters from writers Allan Cubitt to Leo Tolstoy.
But Anderson says she approaches this part differently. “You don't treat it like any other role,” she says. ”You take it a lot more seriously, and it does feel like there's a lot more pressure. I mean, I don't think that the amount of time that's put into it necessarily is more, but I think the focus of the time ends up being spent in different ways. And, for me, that has been as much research as possible.
“Fortunately, with the small handful of people that I've played, historical women, there's been quite a lot of footage out there. So that's incredibly helpful. And then, at the end of the day, you show up and do your best. And then you have to let go because people are either going to love it or hate it, and that is — at the end of the day — none of my business. I just cross my fingers and hope for the best.”
