Jesse
Spencer stars in Chicago Fire. Supplied by Foxtel Source:
The Daily Telegraph
Debbie Schipp, The Sunday Telegraph, reports
He carved out his Hollywood career with an eight-year stint on the award-winning drama, House.
Now Aussie actor Jesse Spencer has jumped out of the frying pan of a hit series, and literally into the fire for his new gig, NBC drama Chicago Fire.
Spencer, 33, has come a long way since he played Billy Kennedy on Neighbours, then headed to LA in 2004 to take up the role of Dr Robert Chase - opposite Hugh Laurie - in House.
Back then the role was a coup for the young Aussie actor with the added bonus that he got to keep his Aussie accent as the savvy, fiercely intelligent, ambitious and hard-to-know Chase.
But with Chicago Fire, described by some US critics as "ER in a fire house", and the character of action-man Matthew Casey, Spencer is on a whole new learning curve.
Where Chase was an intellectual on a show in which emotion was masked, Casey, a fire lieutenant coming to grips with the loss of one of his men, thrives on adrenalin and wears his heart on his sleeve.
House ended in May, and Spencer would have been forgiven for taking an extended break after eight years of series television.
But the character of Casey was too good to pass up.
"People said I was crazy to go into another TV series so quickly, but this role was such the antithesis to what House was, and I really wanted to do something with a bit of movement," Spencer says.
"People wear their hearts on their sleeve in this show. So much of what we did on House was so cerebral and clinical and the human spirit very rarely came out.
"In this show, the human spirit is the driving force behind it and that just seemed like a breath of fresh air to me.
"Everything else I was offered was people out to hurt each other or kill each other or screw each other over, and this was literally the only thing that had a positive sort of light and spin."
Spencer also finally gets to use his American accent on Chicago Fire for the first time on US television since he moved to LA.
And then of course, there's the chance to do dangerous, blokey stuff.
"Look, who doesn't want to ride around in a fire truck, and kick open doors and that kind of stuff," Spencer says.
In fireman mode, Spencer lugs around 30kg of equipment when in full regalia, and sweats his way through days on set.
"I look upon it as a free workout, basically," he says.
He admits the physical work is just as hard as it was getting his head around the convoluted medical terms that had to roll off his tongue in House.
"One's physically demanding, the other's mentally demanding, and right now this is harder for me," he says.
But the laconic Spencer admits the pay-off is every kid's boyhood dream.
"Yeah, I do get to cruise around in a fire truck, and yes, I have control of the sirens and horns," he laughs.
"I'm sure the city of Chicago (where the show is shot) hates us. We shoot at a real firehouse, so sometimes the bells do go off, the real firemen run out, and go on a call. We hang out with them, sometimes we do runs with them.
"I haven't been to a real fire yet. I keep on getting what they call 'bulls**t runs', where you get halfway down the freeway and turn around and come back."
Chicago Fire starts on Fox8 on January 10. It has received mixed reviews in the US, but has been given the go-ahead for a full, 22 episode, season.
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