Here's the promised deleted scenes from my conversation with House writer Doris Egan that I transcribed but didn't make it into the article (see Don't Mess With The Iconic Moment: An Interview With House Writer Doris Egan).
On what season four would have looked like without the strike, if "House's Head"/"Wilson's Heart" had been aired post-Superbowl as originally planned:
"I think from our point of view it didn't really make a difference. You knew story-wise you'd have to pick it up with the aftermath of her death. Whether we called it episode one (of season five) or we called it episode 17 (of season four), in a way it didn't really matter."
More about the actors, specifically Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard, but seeming to encompass the entire ensemble:
"Again, it is wonderful just to be able to trust utterly with the people who are taking your material away. You know at the end of the day there may be something different here than what was in my mind, but there's no way it's going to be worse."
On whether she has a bit of House in herself, and whether there's a little House in all of us:
"I think there may be. I think it's a good thing. That is what people respond to when they like him, that he's saying things they might want to say. When it comes to writing, I've never written a character that I didn't on some level understand and identify with even when they're wildly different characters. It's like there's some aspect of it where I can say OK, I understand that part of it. There may be people in the world who can write from the outside perspective, but I'm not one of them."
On spoilers:
"I actually want to do an essay at some point about spoilers, but I'm coming to believe in what I think of as normal spoilers and spoilers that really spoil. I mean, I am kind of a spoilerphile myself. When there's a show I like and someone has some information about what's going to happen on it, I'm like ooh, spill it, tell me. And yet there are a few things that I regret I knew, and I know I would have enjoyed them much more if I had not known."
"I was on a show once where we put out a fake part of a script. It was Dark Angel, and for the season finale there were two scenes they put out and that transcript went on the Internet. I was like, my god, that's diabolical. But even then, to me that was still a fun kind of spoiler. The world wouldn't have ended if that had gotten out."
(I mentioned that scenes from an early draft of the season one finale, "Honeymoon," were leaked and caused fan consternation over a bar fight that wasn't even in the final script:)
"That's another danger with spoilers. Again, I'm a spoilerphile so I'm not in any position to throw stones. But there is a danger when you hear a spoiler: in your mind you immediately put it in a certain context and then you react to that, whereas when it actually happens it could be in an entirely different context. But in a way it's too late, because that trip wire in your brain has already gone and you've already made a judgement about a character or a situation or a choice and it's too late now to take that back."
On whether with all the teasing over various pairings, we'll ever see House in a romantic relationship with any of them:
"The short answer to that would be you never know. I personally would like to believe that when the day comes, a long time from now when the show is over and we reach the end, I would like to believe that House is as ornery and alone as he has ever been. That's just me personally. As to anything that happens along the way, I do not know." (Me: "And if you did, you wouldn't tell me." Egan: "If I did, I wouldn't say.")
On her favourite of the episodes she's written:
"'House vs. God,' because the story structure of that one worked so well. Everything supported everything else, which rarely happens. I'm a big believer in doing what you have to do to get to the interesting scenes, but that particular structure seemed to all work out. I described it once as 'providential.'"
More on fanfic:
"It's also wonderful to see what people can do by taking different worlds and melding them. I don't just mean, let's take this movie and put it in this movie's world. For example, there was an X-Files fan fiction story that was in the form of a novel, and it was just so not what you would expect. It was internal and thoughtful and it was just very differently written. The take was just so different than the take on the TV show. And yet they were at core the same characters. It was as if you were using similar mythology."
On what television she watches:
"I don't have time to watch a lot of TV. It's so sad. My TiVo is so full, and I'm always trying to create room on it."
Me: "But not by actually watching the shows."
Egan: "Not by watching the shows. I did, over the last several weeks, make a huge effort and I'm almost up to date on Dr. Who. I haven't watched Mad Men. I haven't watched any of Heroes and it's exactly the kind of show you would think I would love. But I've got the DVDs."
Me: "So some day."
Egan: "Some day."
