Thirteen (House)

Dr. Remy Hadley
House character
First appearance	"The Right Stuff" (4.02)
Last appearance	"Everybody Dies" (8.22)
Portrayed by	Olivia Wilde
Information
Nickname(s)	Thirteen
Gender	Female
Occupation	Physician Department of Diagnostic Medicine Fellow (seasons 4–8)
Family	Anne Hadley (mother, deceased) John Hadley (father) Unnamed brother (deceased) Amy Hadley (sister)
Significant other(s)	Eric Foreman (5.12–6.03) Unknown girlfriend (8.03–present)

Remy "Thirteen" Hadley, M.D., is a fictional character on the Fox medical drama House, portrayed by Olivia Wilde. She is part of the new diagnostic team assembled by Dr. Gregory House after the disbanding of his previous team in the third season finale. The character's nickname derives from the episode "The Right Stuff", when she is assigned the number during a competition for her position at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

The show depicts Thirteen as a secretive character who does not divulge personal information; her surname was not used on the show until the fourth season's penultimate episode "House's Head", nor her given name until the fifth season episode "Emancipation". Instead, several of the character's traits are implied before they are depicted as true. In the season four episode "You Don't Want to Know", Thirteen tells House that her mother died from Huntington's disease; a test she performs several episodes later confirms she carries the gene. After hints were given regarding her character's sexuality, actress Olivia Wilde confirmed that her character is indeed bisexual. This is confirmed by Foreman in the episode "Don't Ever Change". Thirteen was included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Lesbian and Bisexual Characters. The character was also listed in Wetpaint's "10 Hottest Female Doctors on TV" and in BuzzFeed's "16 Hottest Doctors On Television".

Characterization

Thirteen is reluctant to reveal information about herself. The season four finale reveals she has the dominant mutation for Huntington's, the disease from which her mother died. In "Lucky Thirteen", Thirteen says that her Huntington's is more aggressive, greatly decreasing her life expectancy and hastening the onset of symptoms. She exhibits self-destructive behavior, using recreational drugs and having repeated one-night stands. House fires her for recklessness, but eventually rehires her. She later ceases to behave self-destructively, agreeing to participate in a Huntington's Disease drug trial.

Character history

In "Lockdown", Thirteen says she went to Newton North High School. In "Epic Fail", Thirteen reveals she attended Sarah Lawrence College. At the end of the fellowship competition, Cuddy tells House that, since he already has Eric Foreman on his team, he may only hire two additional people, so House fires Thirteen and Amber, claiming fellow applicants Chris Taub and Lawrence Kutner outperformed her, and that if he could keep Thirteen, he would. Cuddy overrules House's decision, forcing him to accept a woman, realizing only a minute later that this had been House's plan from the start.

At the end of the fourth season, Thirteen is diagnosed as having the mutated Huntington gene. After nearly dying when forced to be injected with several medicines in "Last Resort", she asks Foreman to admit her to his Huntington's drug trial. Several episodes later, the couple embark on a relationship, which affects Foreman's professional judgment to the extent that he fixes the drug trial, which causes serious side-effects in Thirteen. Foreman almost loses his medical license, resulting in House ordering the couple to break up. The couple fake a split and continue their relationship in secret, but come public after House discovers they are still seeing each other. As Foreman takes his position after House quits, he fires Thirteen in "Epic Fail" in order to save their relationship, but they end up breaking up as a result.

In the sixth season episode "Instant Karma", Thirteen buys a one-way ticket to Bangkok, Thailand and is seen boarding the plane. In the episode, "Teamwork", Thirteen eventually returns to House's Team with Chase, Taub, and Foreman. She subsequently requests a leave of absence in the season finale "Help Me", citing personal reasons.

In the season seven premiere, Foreman finds information about a Huntington's drug trial in, and flight info for, Rome, but Thirteen disappears without saying goodbye. Foreman then discovers that the clues about Rome were purposely planted by Thirteen as a red herring. Thirteen returns in the show's 150th episode, "The Dig", in which it is revealed that she has been in prison for the past six months and grew up in West Virginia. Thirteen reveals to House that she had a brother who developed Huntington's; she helped kill him in order to end his suffering. House later tells Thirteen that he is willing to euthanize her if she wants him to do so.

In "After Hours", a then unknown woman arrives at Thirteen's apartment, with a serious wound in her abdomen. She is revealed to be a cell mate of Thirteen's from prison. Thirteen phones Chase requesting help on false pretenses, bartering on their relationship to convince Chase to bring her medical supplies without explanation. After it becomes clear the woman will die without a hospital, Chase engages in a physical confrontation with Thirteen to get the patient to the hospital. After the two drive the woman to the hospital, she awakes alive but in custody. Thirteen apologizes, but her friend lashes out, claiming she only used Thirteen because she needed someone to talk to in prison.

In "Charity Case", Thirteen was called in once more by House to help solve a case. Thirteen then decided to join the team once more. In the end, House saw that Thirteen was happy with her girlfriend and fired her once and for all so she can live out her last days being happy. She made her final appearance in the series finale "Everybody Dies".

Concept and creation

""Thirteen" is hidden, and hasn't yet revealed very much about herself. She doesn't really want to look into the future, and House finds that enormously compelling".

—Executive Producer Katie Jacobs.

Along with fellow actors Peter Jacobson (Taub), Kal Penn (Kutner), and Anne Dudek (Amber Volakis), Wilde did not know which character would be cut until the actors were given the scripts. Producers watched to see how the actors developed their characters and interacted. Wilde thought this technique improved the acting during the "Games" story arc. However, the story arc inspired a spirit of camaraderie between the actors instead of competition, due to the high-profile roles. While Thirteen's name was originally intended to be revealed during the story arc, the production team decided against doing so. Thirteen's actual name was replaced on all documents, including the call sheets, with the word "Thirteen" to further the in-joke in the show's narrative. Wilde describes her character as a "big bowl of secrets" in stark comparison to her own openness.

Thirteen's sexuality was initially written ambiguously: Foreman and House suggested she is bisexual. In response to the ambiguity, Wilde confirmed in July 2008 that her character is bisexual, the second time she has played a bisexual character (the first being on The O.C. as Alex Kelly). Thirteen has been compared, sometimes negatively, with Allison Cameron, the previous female diagnostician. Wilde described Thirteen as "almost the opposite" of Cameron, who is "compassionate and emotional", and attributed the comparisons to the similarity in the tasks that House delegates to both characters, and that "with two girls on a show, people are always going to compare them. Thirteen resists handing her trust to people, and has proven herself to be a rather difficult person."

Name

The name "Thirteen" comes from the character's introduction: House assigned numbers to her and others during an extended competition for the job and persistently used it in reference to her; she did not correct him with her real name, and the nickname stuck.

Although the producers gave the character a full name, and told Olivia Wilde what it was, they chose to keep it a secret from the viewers as part of the ongoing relationship between the character and House. Before the character's official name was revealed, none of the actors, apart from Wilde herself, knew the character's name. In episode 15 of season four ("House's Head"), Cuddy refers to her as "Dr. Hadley". This is the first mention of her actual name. In episode 8 of season five ("Emancipation"), she reveals she is called Remy. In later season five episodes, the character refers to herself as Dr. Hadley, and so do other doctors.

In an interview with The Star-Ledger, however, David Shore commented that he will not be using Thirteen's real name too often, because "she will always be Thirteen". In the Season 6 episode "The Down Low", a fake pay stub shows Thirteen's middle name to be "Beauregard", though it is uncertain if that is actually her middle name.