{"id":373105,"date":"2026-01-16T10:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T10:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/373105\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T10:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T10:40:13","slug":"from-the-night-manager-to-tehran-how-hugh-laurie-became-tvs-most-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/373105\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Night Manager to Tehran \u2014 how Hugh Laurie became TV\u2019s most wanted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, who saw that coming? Not just Hugh Laurie\u2019s week, but his entire career. In the past seven days he has dominated the small screen with his shock return as Richard Roper in the BBC\u2019s The Night Manager and his role as the nuclear inspector Eric Peterson in Tehran on Apple TV. The latter is a remarkably timely Iran-set drama that vied with Netflix\u2019s His & Hers to be the most watched show on the planet, and not just because it keeps popping up when people check in on regime change via #tehran. The show strongly speaks to Laurie\u2019s second-act MO \u2014 he saw the first series of Tehran and said to his agent it was the only show he was hooked on. Some months later, he had a part.<\/p>\n

We are a long way from the start when, for over two decades, Laurie was a comedian, bursting on to the scene with his friend Stephen Fry<\/a> and friend and one-time lover Emma Thompson at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1981. The trio came from Cambridge University in a banner era for the Footlights comedy society, and during the 1980s and 1990s Laurie was a mainstay on British TV. He stole the last two series of Blackadder, created the sketch show A Bit of Fry & Laurie with Fry and, again with Fry, brilliantly took PG Wodehouse\u2019s Jeeves and Wooster to ITV. <\/p>\n

He\u2019s not the first funny man to go straight, of course. I remember the shock when I introduced a friend, bingeing on the serious films Robin Williams made, to the absurdity of Mork & Mindy. \u201cHe went from this to One Hour Photo?\u201d they wailed. That is the point of acting, to try out different minds and moods, but Laurie\u2019s journey from comedy to tragedy feels different \u2014 a 66-year-old entirely reborn. <\/p>\n

\u2022 Stephen Fry: What Jeeves and PG Wodehouse taught me about life<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Hugh<\/p>\n

Laurie as Bertie Wooster with Stephen Fry as Jeeves<\/p>\n

ITV\/SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n

In 2004 he began starring as the acerbic genius Dr Gregory House in the American TV show House \u2014 a role that was such a pivot its producers did not even know he was British, his eccentric aristocrats on terrestrial TV having not quite stormed America. Laurie, though, wanted a change and, stuck in Namibia in a support slot on a shoot for the deeply average remake of The Flight of the Phoenix, he went into a bathroom to record an audition. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had met a lot of people,\u201d said David Shore, the creator of House, \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t working. The funny stuff might, but then the dramatic stuff wouldn\u2019t, or vice versa. Then Hugh went into the bathroom, put himself on tape, sent it in and a light went on.\u201d Laurie was rumoured to be paid $50,000 per episode for season one, a number that leapt to $700,000, the highest salary for a TV drama, according to Guinness Book of World Records. It was a pay packet that eased the difficulty of shooting in the US while his theatre administrator wife, Jo Green, and their three kids, then teenagers, stayed in London, making him an \u201cabsentee father\u201d for the best part of a decade, Laurie mostly free to return home on Thanksgiving. \u201cThough we don\u2019t give thanks in England,\u201d he once joked to Ellen DeGeneres. \u201cWe mourn the loss of the colonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armando Iannucci has long benefited from Laurie\u2019s ability to be both serious and silly, American and British. He cast him as Senator Tom James in Veep, the US version of The Thick of It, and Mr Dick in The Personal History of David Copperfield, before creating the sci-fi comedy Avenue 5 with Laurie in the lead. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously Hugh has an extremely sophisticated sense of humour,\u201d Iannucci tells me. \u201cSo it\u2019s a massive treat if you get him to laugh. When he does he doubles over in an unstoppable chuckle that tells you how much he simply adores stupid, funny, infectious comedy. It\u2019s very rewarding.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBut as an actor, though, a lot of his power comes through stillness. He has the most expressive face, and can do things with his eyes that will say more than half a page of dialogue could. I felt this filming David Copperfield. Hugh was playing Mr Dick, perhaps the first honest, humane portrayal of mental illness in English fiction. Mr Dick can often be played as a \u2018mad eccentric\u2019 bobbling around, but Hugh was beautifully still and deeply kind. We could see sadness in Mr Dick\u2019s eyes, as well as love. I don\u2019t know how he does it, but I\u2019m glad he does.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sadness? Love? Eccentricity? It has been there all along for Laurie. Think back to the start. In 1987 the team behind Blackadder needed a new hero, a cartoonish, outlandish, flawed character for Rowan Atkinson\u2019s lead to bounce off, to scowl at. Miranda Richardson fulfilled that role in the second series as Queen Elizabeth I, aka Queenie, but her reign was over and the third series would shift to the Regency in all its pomp, with the focus on the future George IV, living his best, camp life among the vast wigs and blouses of late-18th-century England. <\/p>\n

\"Hugh<\/p>\n

Laurie as the The Prince Regent in Blackadder<\/p>\n

Tony Robinson, who played Blackadder\u2019s beaten and roasted turnip of a slave, Baldrick, was one of the returning characters. There were nerves. Richardson was a firecracker, a \u201chard act to follow\u201d, Robinson recalls. But the writers, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, had a trick up their sleeve: Laurie, who enjoyed cameos in Blackadder II, but still remained largely unknown \u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the first day of rehearsals Hugh came roaring out like a terrified tiger,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cWhat a fantastic performance. His Prince Regent George was silly, charming, needy, over-the-top but absolutely believable. Hugh was self-deprecating about his contribution to Blackadder, but he made that series work.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u2022 The ten best Blackadder episodes<\/a><\/p>\n

Robinson is spot-on. Laurie returned to the show\u2019s peak, Blackadder Goes Forth, in the First World War trenches, as the naive, tragic upper-class twerp Lieutenant The Hon George Colthurst St Barleigh, a character who embodies the shocked stillness Iannucci says he would later bring to Mr Dick. \u201cHe\u2019s a delightful man,\u201d Robinson adds of Laurie. \u201cModest, kind and serious \u2014 I haven\u2019t a single bad word to say about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

How funny then that this week, as Laurie returned to our screens in a shock mid-series twist for The Night Manager, it is as a man nobody has one good word to say about. Indeed, so ruthless is Roper that he is described as \u201cthe worst man in the world\u201d. The first series, broadcast in 2016 and adapted from the John le Carr\u00e9 novel, follows the former soldier Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) trying to bring down Roper, but at the start of this year\u2019s much hyped return Roper seemed very much dead, with Olivia Colman\u2019s intelligence officer, Angela Burr, identifying his battered body.<\/p>\n

\"Hugh<\/p>\n

With Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager in 2016<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Was it all a dream? Seems so. Last Sunday Roper returned, this time in Colombia as a man out in hiding, still in the arms game, working with Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who may well be his son. \u201cAbsolutely, Jos\u00e9, old boy!\u201d came the voice we know so well. This Sunday expect to see Laurie much more. He was only meant to produce this series, but could not stay away.<\/p>\n

\u201cRoper\u2019s a conqueror, a pirate, and will never stop dreaming of taking people, territory and control,\u201d Laurie said this week. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest, I love Richard Roper \u2014 I probably shouldn\u2019t. I\u2019m repulsed. But I do\u2026\u201d One spoiler-free line from the show this Sunday: \u201cI am going to feed you to my dogs, piece by screaming piece!\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurie explains Roper\u2019s return by saying his character has spent years as a prisoner to a cartel to whom he owed money, having crossed the wrong people in a business where that is inadvisable. \u201cInitially they were going to simply kill him,\u201d Laurie says, \u201cbut Roper\u2019s a good talker and he was able to bargain. He got himself back into the playing field \u2014 he has a weakness for power, for control and he was beaten by Pine once, and is not a man to forgive or forget easily\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Roper\u2019s return has invigorated The Night Manager, a watchable returning series in need of a headline. Yet the BBC show is not even the most-watched spy show with Laurie this week. What else can you call it other than a comeback? Tehran, about a Mossad agent heading to Iran, has been picking up plaudits since its launch in 2020, but the combination of Laurie\u2019s stardom and an actual war is turning it into the next essential binge, with a fourth series already commissioned. <\/p>\n

Laurie has not exactly abandoned comedy \u2014 Avenue 5 harked back to his start. But making us laugh is far from his focus. A decade ago he played another American doctor in Chance, and six years ago he led David Hare\u2019s political thriller Roadkill. Next he is in The Wanted Man, another Apple TV show, in which he will stretch himself to Roper levels as an ageing crime boss.<\/p>\n

It really is a far cry from A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Fry remembers when the two men, who helped each other to have long careers, first met. Thompson took Fry to see Laurie. \u201cAnd Hugh was sitting on the bed with a guitar writing a song, stuck on the lyric,\u201d Fry has said. \u201cHe sang the verse and chorus and I said, \u2018You can always swap that around?\u2019 We finished the song and picked up another piece of paper and wrote a sketch\u2026 We\u2019re still best friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friends are constantly asked if they will ever reunite as a duo. \u201cWe see each other a lot and talk about it often,\u201d Laurie once told the BBC. \u201cI think it might happen, yes, but somebody\u2019s got to take charge.\u201d That was half a decade ago, before Laurie carried on with a career that, perhaps, was always in train. <\/p>\n

The comedy writer Jon Canter met Laurie in north London in the 1980s and went on to script-edit A Bit of Fry & Laurie. \u201cHugh and Stephen were obsessed with espionage,\u201d he remembers. \u201cThey used to have marathon sessions watching the 1979 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.\u201d Canter says that le Carr\u00e9 adaptation inspired the sketch spy characters Control and Tony. \u201cBut I was always teasing Hugh that he could be an extremely effective dramatic actor in an espionage role, not unlike James Bond. He\u2019s an old Etonian, a gifted sportsman and very good-looking\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

What was Laurie\u2019s reaction? \u201cWell, Hugh\u2019s innately self-deprecating, so he thought I was just joshing. But deep down? I think that he had a fantastic sense of destiny about him.\u201d
The Night Manager continues on BBC1 on Sundays; Tehran is on Apple TV<\/p>\n

Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a> , the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to watch<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, who saw that coming? Not just Hugh Laurie\u2019s week, but his entire career. In the past seven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-373105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}