'House' Star Hugh Laurie Blasted by Left After Standing with Sophie Cunningham and Her Fight to Keep Men Out of Women's Sports
I hate to pull out the hoary, obnoxious indiehead upsmanship card, but I was into Hugh Laurie before you were into Hugh Laurie.
In fact, he got me into what’s arguably my favorite British author, P.G. Wodehouse.
In the early 1990s, when network TV would cold-storage all their terrible shows on Friday night and public broadcasting hadn’t become the insufferable mess it is today, the most watchable thing on network TV — for we were too far out in the boonies of New Jersey for cable — were the superb Laurie/Stephen Fry adaptations of Wodehouse’s “Jeeves and Wooster” comic novels, produced by Britain’s ITV but aired by PBS.
I always found it a bit confusing, therefore, that Dr. Gregory House didn’t speak with a posh English accent.
Both roles speak to the fact that Laurie is one of the great comic talents of his or any generation: a man who could pull off the jovial-but-oblivious idle-rich drone Bertie Wooster and the grimly misanthropic medic House can pull off anything.
He can even pull off figuring out that a man is a man and a woman is a woman and that the former don’t belong in women’s sports. Imagine that!
Unfortunately, that’s gotten him into a spot of trouble, because you can imagine the comments section. People are annoyed that he eventually acknowledged that he stood by WNBA star Sophie Cunningham in her battle to keep men out of women’s sports, and boy did that get ugly quickly.
According to GBNews, the whole thing began when Laurie got into a spat with Graham Linehan — the Irish creator of great Britcoms like “Father Ted” and “The IT Crowd,” who’s since been canceled by the entertainment industry for having too many sane positions to mention — for calling the debate over men in women’s professional basketball, with no small amount of sarcasm, a “broigus,” or a bitter, pointless feud.
“Strange this whole broigus should happen in professional basketball, where 99.9 per cent of the world are, effectively, ‘women,’” Laurie originally wrote in a post Sunday.
“Per Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated, if you’re an American man between 20 and 40 years of age and 7 feet tall or more, there’s a 17 per cent chance you’re already in the NBA.”
Strange this whole broigus should happen in professional basketball, where 99.9% of the world are, effectively, ‘women’. Per Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated, if you’re an American man between 20 and 40 years of age and 7 feet tall or more, there’s a 17% chance you’re already…
— Hugh Laurie (@hughlaurie) August 9, 2026
This isn’t as much of a faux-broigus as you might imagine. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up on this, three men with pro basketball experience (two in the NBA) have declared for the WNBA draft. The WNBA, meanwhile, established a task force to determine what the W in the acronym WNBA means and, if this weren’t already farcical enough, somehow failed to reach a conclusion on the matter.
A WNBA task force of team presidents and general managers met Wednesday and discussed transgender athletes but did not arrive at any eligibility rules, according to a statement sent to ESPN by a league spokesperson.https://t.co/woN41EFRHC
— ESPN (@espn) August 13, 2026
But whatever: Linehan, making assumptions, wrote in a now-deleted post, “Do you think men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports? @hughlaurie. Yes or no? That’s what the argument is about. Calling it a ‘broigus’ to distance yourself from it is cowardly. Look how easy this is: Women deserve fair sports.”
Laurie, with admirable terseness: “Firstly, f*** off; secondly no, I don’t believe men should compete against women.”
Linehan: “Why ‘f*** off’ then? Just say that you support Sophie Cunningham in her fight for fair sports and stop trying to be arch.”
Laurie: “You started it. ‘Cowardly’ to ‘f*** off’ is the going rate of exchange around here. And yes, I support Sophie Cunningham. And you, some of the time.”
WARNING: The following post contains vulgar language that some readers will find offensive.
You started it. ‘Cowardly’ to ‘fuck off’ is the going rate of exchange around here. And yes, I support Sophie Cunningham. And you, some of the time.
— Hugh Laurie (@hughlaurie) August 10, 2026
I hate to see people I normally respect fight, but Laurie got the better of it here because of Linehan’s assumptions and tone, and also because he made me laugh. Plus, “Jeeves and Wooster” is underrated. That’s my criteria, but both are right.
But that’s not the end of the story. No, that’s the beginning, because despite his barb aimed at Linehan, and Linehan being the aggressor here, the knives were suddenly out in the comments section for… Hugh Laurie, for stating obvious facts.
You can’t spell Hugh without ugh. How pathetic. Glinner is an insane hateful terf and you’ve rolled over
— Bec Shaw (@Brocklesnitch) August 10, 2026
A shame to find out you support bigotry (and bigots). I would’ve thought you were smart enough not to fall for anti-LGBTQ propaganda and scapegoating distraction campaigns, but more fool me for giving you that kind of credit, I suppose.
— kevin is 🧶 redrafting 🧶 | he/him (@BurnettWrites) August 10, 2026
So you’ve outed yourself as a transphobe. Pathetic, Hugh. There have been zero trans women players in the WNBA in its 30-year history, and zero in the WTA. It’s a manufactured non-issue driven by transphobic bigots and MAGA grifters.
— Ve 🏳️⚧️🇮🇹🇺🇦🇪🇺🇹🇼🔯⚛️ (@RinascitaVe) August 11, 2026
Yeah, there’s nothing that says “transphobic bigot” and “MAGA grifter” like, um, a Cambridge-educated Labour Party supporter like Hugh Laurie who started his career as a comic duo with Stephen Fry. (Who, in case your gaydar is permanently jammed, does not like the ladies except in a platonic fashion.)
And of course there was some support, but that’s the tenor of this debate — or, more specifically, was the tenor, and still is for some holdovers. Remember that whole “Woke 1 was crazy” thing that AOC suddenly popularized? The left hasn’t moved to the sequel quite as readily as you might assume, and nowhere is that more true than women’s sports.
Here’s a confirmed leftist saying that he stands with Sophie Cunningham and believes men don’t belong in women’s sports, but that the current NBA players declaring for the WNBA draft thing is a bit of a pseudo-event. The knives couldn’t come out quickly enough. And for the record, the messages of support were all from conservatives. The left knows full well they can’t say the sane and obvious truth unless they’re 67 and a comic genius who has no political ambition and nothing left to lose.
Anyhow, it’s almost the weekend. If you’ve already watched all of “House,” do note that the under-appreciated (at least in the States) “Jeeves and Wooster” is available on YouTube. I know these comment trolls would hate it if you were supporting the brilliant work of “transphobic bigots and MAGA grifters.” But I still got there first.
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