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****This post contains SPOILERS for this season and past seasons of House.
Well, this is depressing news for the handful of people who are still invested in House. Deadline confirms that Lisa Edelstein – who plays Lisa Cuddy on House – will not be returning next season. The next season – the eighth – has already been mired in chaotic contract re-negotiations, and Hugh Laurie has already made some noises about how he didn’t want to do it past eight seasons. Robert Sean Leonard was also rumored to be looking for a way off the show, but I think that might have ended up being a re-negotiation tool, because he signed on for the next season, as did Omar Epps. But Lisa/Cuddy is out:
There will be Huddy no more on House — co-star Lisa Edelstein will not return to the veteran Fox medical drama next season. Edelstein was one of three main cast members of House, along with Robert Sean Leonard and Omar Epps, whose original contracts expired at the end of this season. Leonard and Epps re-upped earlier this month, when Edelstein’s deal also looked on track to make. But word is that she ultimately decided not to return to the series for the next eighth (and likely final) season, putting an abrupt end to the on-again-off-again romance between her character Dr. Cuddy and Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House — aka Huddy. Along with Epps, Edelstein had been asked to take a cut from her most recent salary of $175,000 an episode, but the offer was still pretty good, so she is walking away from more than $2 million. Her departure will leave Olivia Wilde as the only regular female cast member, but with Wilde’s hot movie career, she is rarely on full-time.
Lisa Edelstein just released the following statement: “After much consideration, I am moving onward with a combination of disappointment at leaving behind a character I have loved playing for seven years and excitement of the new opportunities in acting and producing that lie ahead.”
[From Deadline]
I’ve heard Hugh Laurie speak about how much he adores Lisa, so I don’t think this is a case of a disliked cast member being pushed out. I think it’s more likely that Lisa asked for a bucket of money, and Fox was all “How about half a bucket?” And Lisa was all “NO. I QUIT THIS BITCH.” I hate to say this, but does Lisa Edelstein really think she’s going to find a better character? Why not take “the pay cut” (ooooh, $100K a week, how would she ever manage?!?) and finish your character’s story until the bitter end?
That being said, I saw the previews for next week’s season finale, and I’m pretty sure I know how they’re going to write her out. And it should be half-decent. Meh. I know I am one of the handful of people who still watches House every week – I don’t think I’ve missed an episode of the past two seasons. While some of you think that House jumped the shark long ago… yeah, you’re probably right. But I still loved the season where House slowly went insane from Vicodin-related psychosis, and I loved last season, where his sobriety made him a more interesting and more complicated man. This current season has had some HUGE problems. Many of us thought that when Cuddy and House finally got together, that it would end up working. That they would both have the will to make it work. We were wrong. They are two self-destructive narcissists who can talk themselves out of happiness, and they both chose the devils they knew rather than actually putting in the work for their relationship. I still think that the episode where Cuddy dumps House is maybe the worst, most disastrous episode EVER. If anything, THAT is when the show jumped the shark.
By the way, who watched this week’s episode? My favorite part was House and Rachel speaking “pirate” to each other. Sigh… he loves Rachel so much. He would never admit it, though.
I wonder is Cuddy will be written off with lupus?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
