A few days after my interview with Mira Sorvino, I had the opportunity to speak with Olivia Wilde, who plays the character nicknamed Thirteen on House. She had some great answers about upcoming episodes and about her character, as well as the “contest” that took place on the show.

When the group of doctors came into the hospital to interview for the job on House’s team, no one, not even the final 3 actors themselves, knew yet who would be the ones hired. What did that mean for the long-term outlook?

Well it meant that we never took it for granted, which was great. We never knew if our characters were a short-term arc or if we would be there for awhile. And so it sort of made it more of mystery and kind of kept us on our toes, which I think is a really good thing. And I think it’s why the performances turned out as well as we all feel they did is because there was no chance to get lazy, no time for laziness. It was all finding out each week, whether we’d be there the next week. And it was pretty exciting and pretty stressful and what it did was just make us really enjoy every minute of it.

Ironically, the second that we, that Kal and Peter and I, became series regulars, the strike happened. So we still haven’t had a moment to take it for granted, but that’s good. I think that’s a healthy outlook.

With such a huge group for awhile, it would seem obvious that there would be horrible competitiveness, tension and jealousy, but according to Olivia,

We decided very early on that the only way to deal with the competitiveness that was obviously in the air was to joke about it constantly.

The great thing is that everyone had a very kind of relaxed and secure personality, and so there wasn’t any cattiness. I’m being completely honest when I say that. We were shocked ourselves. We were sure that there would be some sort of disappointment and kind of jealousy, but there wasn’t because everyone just had a great sense of humor about it. And we all understood that being on one episode of House is a huge break for any actor. So once we had done one, it was like, no one can complain, really. This is all good for all of us.

And we trusted the creative producers of the show to pick the people that worked best for the show. And with so much respect for the show, that seemed wise, and we trusted them. So amazingly, there was no competitiveness. There was no jealousy and we all became really, really good friends, which we still are.

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