House Spoilers: Alvie (House's Roommate) Speaks

Lisa Chambers at TV Guide Magazine was able to get in touch with Lin-Manuel Miranda who plays House's roommate.  He is Alvie, a talkative crazy roommate who in real life is a great composer, lyricist, and actor.  Here it is: 

If painfully detoxing from Vicodin while locked up in a mental institution isn’t enough to make Greg House even more sour than usual, in the House season premiere (Monday, 9/21, 8.7c, Fox), he also has to put up with a roommate so manic he puts Roger Rabbit to shame. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor behind Broadway’s Tony-winning "In The Heights," plays the garrulous gadfly who bunks with House. We talked with him by phone from his vacation in Greece about his first big TV gig and working with Hugh Laurie.

How did the House job come about?

[Executive producer] Katie Jacobs came to see “In the Heights” in New York, and she saw me in it, and told me that once they realized House was going to be going to a mental facility she thought of me. I don’t know if that’s good or bad [Laughs], but they basically called my manager and said, “We’ve written a part for him.” And I said yes, script unseen.

Were you a fan of the show?

I’m a huge House fan. I’m a huge Hugh Laurie fan, since the days of Black Adder. I got obsessed with Black Adder in college, like all of my British-comedy nerd friends. So it was a no-brainer! I had no idea what was in store, I just said yes.

When you saw what your character, Alvie, was like, did it give you pause—because he’s a little bit annoying?

No, not at all. He is a little bit annoying and incredibly manic, but beneath the manic-ness he’s a real sweetheart. I was very touched when I read it.

Did you do anything to prepare for the role?

There wasn’t time to do much research, although what we did do—which never happens, and Hugh kept turning to me and saying, “We’ve never done this!”—is we had a solid week of rehearsal before we shot the two-hour season premiere. I got a whole week to just play with Hugh and the other inmates and Katie in the room, and that was a real gift.

Had you met Hugh Laurie before?

No, I met him the day we read the first script and basically the entire thing was like a master class in acting. Mentally I took notes and just did what I could.

Is he a musical fan? Was he familiar with your work?

Definitely a musical fan. I don’t know if people know, I think he has a lot of musical input on the show as well. He talked a lot about music for specific moments in the scenes.

You wrote “In the Heights,” and the Spanish-language dialogue for the Broadway revival of “West Side Story.” There’s a scene in the House premiere where music plays a major role—did you write any lyrics for that?

Basically no, they wrote it. I added a couple of internal rhymes here and there. I think that was the hardest part for me. You know, I’m in this hip-hop group called Freestyle Love Supreme, where we literally do these improvised hip-hop shows: We get a word from the audience and we freestyle the rest of it. So pretending that I didn’t have a rhyme handy was the hardest thing I had to do the whole House shoot. As soon as they would yell cut I’d say 50 rhymes that I wasn’t allowed to say.

Hugh gets in on the musical action a little bit too, and of course we’ve seen him play the piano on the show. How did he do?

He did great! He’s an incredible musician, there’s nothing I could teach Hugh Laurie at all.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on my tan! House was my summer vacation. It’s so different from doing eight shows a week [on Broadway]. But I am working with Dreamworks Animation on an animated musical and writing the score for that, and then I’m working on this hip-hop concept album about the life of Alexander Hamilton. Lord [Andrew] Webber wrote a rock musical about Jesus, I’m writing a rap album about Alexander Hamilton!

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