by Julie Zied
Fancast editor
Superbowl Sunday is not exclusively about football, commercials, and drinking brews. Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino guests on a special episode of “House,” playing a psychiatrist who falls ill while trapped at a South Pole research station and relies on House and his team to treat her via remote communication. The Harvard grad spoke about everything from working with co-star Hugh Laurie to whether she’d ever appear on “Dancing With The Stars.”
On what she thinks of the show:
I’m a crazy House fan. It’s my favorite show on T.V. and it’s funny because once I got pregnant with my first child, I ended up watching a lot more T.V. than I had for years and I just became absolutely addicted to House and just thought it was so intelligent and thought Hugh is so fantastic and the writing and the other characters. Everything about it just drew me in every week and continues to do so.
On first meeting co-star Hugh Laurie:
I met Hugh at the Golden Globe three years ago, and I was five months pregnant and nominated for Human Trafficking and he was nominated for House and we were all seated at the same table, I just started gushing about how much I loved the show. And I think I might have frightened him.
On fandom:
I think the funny thing is, when you’re a film actor, you kind of reserve T.V. as the last bastion of suspension of disbelief. You get used to the characters and you don’t really think about the way that it’s made. When I watch movies, I’m a lot more critical about the stunts, the edits, the performances. But on T.V. that’s my little place where, ‘Okay, I’m just watching.’ I’m like everybody else; I’m just a spectator enjoying this.
On the challenges of working in TV vs. Film:
I think that the pace is faster; you shoot more pages per day. You have less time to get it right in and I think that was a lot of pressure to feel like the performance had to be dead on within a couple of takes and then move on, although that’s not that different from independent film. But they still just shot more pages then you shoot in a film, so you just felt this crazy pace and the work still had to maintain the same high quality.
On Cate (her character) and House’s relationship:
At first I think it’s more founded on a little bit of skepticism on both sides. He doesn’t
really believe in psychiatry at all and sort of mocks her for that, doesn’t think of her as a real doctor. She is the only medical professional on site to help the whole Antarctic
exploring team down there, so she doesn’t want to use up any of the medical supplies on theoretical diagnoses.So it starts out that way, and then as they start communicating for some reason, I think he feels sympathy for her when she’s really all alone and has to diagnosis herself constantly and things go from bad to worse. In this episode there’s actually a little bit of chemistry between the two of us,
so it’s not just a patient-doctor relationship.
On Hugh:
I think he has amazing timing; his delivery is just so spot on and… In person he’s funny too, but he’s also very smart, just like the character… I felt like I already knew Hugh from the T.V. show. It’s very bizarre.
On her favorite TV shows:
I love So You Think You Can Dance. I love that show. It’s so silly, but I love dancing,
and it’s one of the only shows on T.V. that I feel like I can watch with my three year old
and my one-and-a-half year old because there’s nothing violent about it, nothing scary, even the criticism is not really mean. Sometimes I feel like American Idol, they’re so vicious, that it almost sets up a bad message for kids that they have to be perfect
otherwise people are going to mock them painfully. And I think Dance has such a spirit
fun to it and my daughter calls them princesses, because of the sparkling dresses they
wear, and she gets very excited when one of them is wearing pink. So that’s a totally
different kind of show then House, but that’s something that I can watch while they’re
awake. And I also really like Without A Trace and Special Victims Unit. Those
procedural shows I like a lot.
On whether she’d appear on Dancing With The Stars:
Yes, I would, but my management would not let me do it. I think the problem is that the way that they have sort of categorized the contestants, you know the way that people can sometimes be sort of mean about them. I did Jimmy Kimmel when I was promoting Reservation Road and they always do the kick off that night and Mark Cuban came on and I met him and he was very nice. I was talking about how I was a fan of the show and Jimmy Kimmel was like, ‘Oh you mean, dancing with the D list celebrities?” and that was so mean and not fair. But at the same time, unfortunately, that’s the way people look at the actors who do it, which isn’t right or fair, but it’s just sort of the way that it is. You can be like the biggest sports figure in the world, the best boxer and do it and no harm, no foul. But something about doing it as an actor right now seems to send out a message that there are problems in your career, which shouldn’t be the case, but that’s just the way people regard it. As soon as that goes away, I’m there. As soon as other people do it and there’s like a kind of a “Hey it’s for everybody now”, I’m on it that second. I love that show that much.
On prioritizing family and career:
I recently turned down some really nice opportunities, just because I want to spend all my time with my family as much as possible. And films allow me that project-oriented lifestyle [ed. vs. television] where I can work or a month or three months on something and then not work for five months and spend all my time with my kids. So my kids are the most important thing to me now and I have put them ahead of my career. Maybe when they’re older, I could see taking on a more full time responsibility. But at this moment I’m just trying to minimize my commitment, so that I am available for them because they amaze me and delight me and I want to raise them; I don’t want nannies to raise them.
Finally, on whether or not her character will return:
There’s talk of it, but because of the writer’s strike, no one knows what’s going to happen. No one knows the plot lines because the writers have been unable to work since then, and they’re obviously the ones who will decide what happens to this character and to House. But I would love it. I would love to come back for an extended story arc, it was fun.
The “Frozen” episode of House with guest star Mira Sorvino airs on Fox following the Superbowl (Feb 3) at 10:15 pm.
