Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
HBO’s new comedy Avenue 5 follows a space cruise that has been knocked off course and right into the line of danger. Amplifying the rampant anxiety onboard is the speedy realization that the ship’s captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie) is not a strapping American space hero, but a neurotic British actor masquerading as an expert. It’s a conceit that, as Avenue 5 creator Armando Iannucci told Decider at Winter 2020 TCA, is intended “to twist the anxiety a little bit further each week so at some point, it’s going to pop.”
However, Ryan’s shifting accents is something of an inside joke in and of itself. For over 15 years, American audiences have known Hugh Laurie as eponymous House M.D., a crotchety American doctor whose arrogance only assists him in solving the most dire cases thrown his way. Laurie sunk so completely into the role that many viewers were flabbergasted to learn that Hugh Laurie himself is not a heroic American leader, but a British actor, best known in his country for his zany comedy chops.
“Really when we were talking about this, we thought why not amalgamate the two: kind of the ‘Come to me, I know everything expert’ to the ‘Help me, I have no idea what I’m doing, I need help [persona].’ And that gives him the ability to flip between the two,” Iannucci said.
“Because I think if you were booking a cruise in Miami, I think you’d want a kind of United Airlines pilot type in charge,” Iannucci said, before gleefully adding, “and also who knows where Britain might be in international self-esteem in forty years’ time.”
When Decider spoke with Laurie, he was ironically less confident about Iannucci’s take on American confidence.
“Well I was curious about it. [Armando] obviously had a very clear idea about the projected security and confidence that comes along with an American accent and how an American — someone like Herman Judd (Josh Gad) — might be rendered speechless with fear and anxiety hearing an English voice. And I was curious to know if that was actually true,” Laurie said.
More On:
Avenue 5
Laurie told Decider that he questioned if Americans would in fact be upset to hear a British accent from a captain, noting that it probably depended upon the specific regional accent in play, but Iannucci put him at ease. “He put my mind at rest,” Laurie said. “He said, ‘No, no, no, it’ll work.'”
“I don’t know,” Laurie continued. “I honestly don’t know if people would find an English ship’s captain more alarming than an American. I mean, in times of stress people do want to hear the familiar…or is that a baseless anxiety to have?”
Whether or not Laurie’s own anxiety about the accent is baseless or not, it does allow him to fully play with the dual parts of his public persona for the very first time. The same people wondering “What is Hugh Laurie’s real accent?” are the same folks who would likely be confused aboard the Avenue 5, wondering to themselves, “What is Captain Ryan Clark’s real accent?”
Avenue 5, Episode 2 premieres on HBO this Sunday, January 26.
