Thirteen (House)

Dr. Remy Beauregard "Thirteen" Hadley
House character
File:Remyhadleypromoseason6.jpg A season six promotional shoot of "Thirteen"
First appearance	"The Right Stuff"
Portrayed by	Olivia Wilde
In-universe information
Nickname	Thirteen
Occupation	Physician: Diagnostic medicine fellow (Season four - present)

Remy Beauregard "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 finale "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 revealed her character is indeed bisexual, a fact that is pivotal to the plot of the episode "Lucky Thirteen".

Characterization

Thirteen is reluctant to reveal information about herself, creating an air of mystery. Early on, House tries to guess what her 'big secret' might be, such as asking if she is the "daughter of an alcoholic father". In "Mirror Mirror", a patient who mirrors the most dominant personality he is with, describes himself as "scared" when alone with her. She hints her secret in the eighth episode of the fourth season, "You Don't Want to Know", when she tells House her mother died from Huntington's disease, but she does not wish to know if she carries the gene. Not knowing, she explains, allows her to summon the bravery to do things she thinks she cannot do. House surreptitiously obtains a sample of her DNA and has screening performed, but in the end throws out the unopened envelope containing the results. The season four finale reveals she does indeed have the dominant mutation for Huntington's.

In the fifth episode of the fifth season, "Lucky Thirteen", Thirteen says that her Huntington's is more aggressive because the generation that received the gene has more repeats of the CAG triplet of the previous generation, decreasing her lifespan and hastening the onset of symptoms. She exhibits self-destructive behavior, using recreational drugs and having repeated one-night stands with women. House fires her for recklessness but later rehires her, using the circumstances to test if she would grow close with a terminal patient. When the patient's diagnosis changes to a non-terminal affliction, Thirteen tells Eric Foreman, "I feel alone... and she hasn't gone anywhere," to which he replies, "She gets to live." Thirteen reverts to her self-destructive habits, which climaxes in the ninth episode "Last Resort" when she risks her life to test medication for a man who took the hospital clinic hostage.

Character history

In "Epic Fail", Thirteen reveals she attended Sarah Lawrence College. In "97 Seconds", she correctly diagnoses a collapsing and disabled patient with Strongyloides, and treats him with ivermectin, but the patient fails to take the pills because his English Shepherd mobility assistance dog eats them, causing the death of not only the patient but the dog as well. House chastises her about not supervising the patient taking the medicine, but does not fire her because he feels she will not make the same mistake again. 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 into the fellowship to create a team of four diagnosticians, to which House then admits that was his plan all along.

At the end of the fourth season, Thirteen is diagnosed as having the mutated Huntington gene. After nearly dying from a medicine overdose 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, almost losing his medical license in the process and 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.

In the sixth season episode "Instant Karma", Thirteen buys a one-way ticket to Bangkok, Thailand and is seen boarding the plane at the end of the episode despite House's attempts to prevent her from leaving, in order to convince Thirteen she is the only person on the team that House has not treated badly or manipulated, and that he needs her. In the episode, "Teamwork", Thirteen eventually returns to House's Team with Chase, Taub, and Foreman.

Concept and creation

"Cameron is a person who feels the compulsive need to heal. She's attracted to the most wounded characters, as evidenced by the fact that she married someone who was dying. "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. So, to me, they're both different. They are both beautiful, however. That much is true".

—Executive Producer Katie Jacobs.

Along with fellow actors Peter Jacobson (Taub), Kal Penn (Kutner), and Anne Dudek (Amber "Cutthroat Bitch" 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 between House and Thirteen that he could simply check her file to find out her name. 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; and Thirteen herself hints that 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). On the show, jokes are made to the character being bisexual, such as Dr. House referring to her as "Thirty-one", and saying "oh, I'm sorry -- I thought that either way was good with you".

Thirteen has been compared, sometimes negatively, with Allison Cameron, the previous female diagnostician, even by the actress Jennifer Morrison who portrays Cameron. 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 her the number 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, besides Wilde herself, knew the character's name, due to it having disappeared from call sheets and from around the set.

In later season five episodes, the character refers to herself as Dr. Hadley, and so do other doctors. In the episode "Emancipation", she introduced herself to a patient's family as 'Dr. Remy Hadley'. In "Joy to the World", she also referred to herself as Remy when talking to a woman on the Huntington's trial, and Foreman, when telling House about Thirteen's problems with the trial, called her "Remy", much to House's mock-confusion. In "Simple Explanation", she jokingly introduces herself to Foreman at his door, saying, "Remy Hadley; I also answer to 'Thirteen'."

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".