Sela Ward and Hugh Laurie by Michael Lavine/Fox

by Peter Rubin

The biggest question on Fox's House (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET) this season hasn't been whether the brilliant Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) can cure all of those disturbing diseases — it was whether the seemingly unlovable lug would be able to win back his true love, Stacy Warner (Sela Ward), the beautiful — and married — lawyer who returned last season to shake up House's world.

In the Feb. 7 episode, we finally got the answer.

We first met Stacy when her husband needed medical treatment at Princeton-Plainsboro. Ever since then, House has ceaselessly angled to get back in her life — and in the Jan. 10 episode, their chemistry gathered some intense momentum. "We started the whole arc off very subtly — and very unsatisfyingly to some viewers," says executive producer David Shore. "So in the episodes leading up to this one, we brought them to the brink. And then we pushed them right over the cliff."

Stacy helps bring out House's softer side. "I think she's a great match for him and really does serve to bring out pieces of him that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise," Ward says. (Exhibit A: That unexpected hotel-room kiss when the two were stuck in Baltimore.)

Last week, Stacy was forced to make some tough decisions about how far she'll go for love. When she did, House was faced with an even tougher dilemma: Is he willing to change to make her happy?

Shore teased that showdown as "the Casablanca episode," for reasons that became quite clear at the end. And in true House fashion, the doc's motivations will remain somewhat mysterious. "Before Stacy came along," Shore says, "he was this curmudgeon — and he's still a curmudgeon, but he had love, and he sends it out of his life. We're all left wondering why he did it."

As for how House copes with his decision, Shore remains coy: "We're going to deal with the fallout. We're not going to have him pining for the rest of the season, but we want to at least give a nod to the end of the relationship."

But is it really over? As Ward says, Stacy's exit "definitely leaves things open. We talked about it before I left — it's such a tricky story line. I don't know if the producers will do anything; I don't think they know."

Hazy futures aside, there's plenty in upcoming episodes to keep fans glued. As House's season continues, Shore says, "We've got some good stuff happening with Wilson [Robert Sean Leonard] and his [personal life]. That gets a little bit more extreme." Maybe House should find a cure for broken hearts.

2.4.06 - Don't miss the article on Sela Ward entitled "The Goodbye Girl" on page 33 of the February 6th issue of TV Guide.

12.29.06 - Don't miss Susanna Thompson in the premiere of her new show, The Book of Daniel, on NBC at 9pm ET on January 6th.

11.28.05 - Audrey Marie Anderson (who played Carla in the second season) has replaced Amy Acker in CBS's mid-season series, The Unit.

by Matt Webb Mitovich

C.J., you know we love ya, but there's a shiny new spin doctor in the White House, and she's being played by Ever Carradine on ABC's Commander in Chief (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET, but preempted tonight). As Kelly Ludlow, she puts the best possible face on Mackenzie Allen's scrutinized presidency, all the while fielding furtive glances from the first son and lending her ear to the first gentleman. Carradine, whose previous long-term series gig was as the girl-toy of Sela Ward's ex-husband on Once and Again, chatted with TVGuide.com about life in TV's "other" West Wing.

TVGuide.com: I totally remember you as Once and Again's Tiffany. She was such a sad little... what's the word I'm looking for?
Ever Carradine: A sad little clown. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: Actually, I was looking to alliterate by calling her a "sad strumpet," until I realized that a strumpet "does it for money."
Carradine: Oh, no. Tiffany had a little heart of gold, the sweet thing.

TVGuide.com: It was always so cute/pathetic when she tried to win over Sela Ward's kids.
Carradine: I know, so pathetic. [Laughs] But that was the best time. You know, I was only supposed to do one episode, maybe two, and then I ended up doing three years, so....

TVGuide.com: That show had such a great cast, and such quality.
Carradine: Well, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick are two of the best producers in the business. It was great.

TVGuide.com: Here you are once and again butting heads with Sela, who's on a rival Tuesdays-at-9 series!
Carradine: She's on House, right?! I can't seem to shake her! [Laughs] But that's all right.

TVGuide.com: When this plum Commander in Chief opportunity came up, did you make a beeline for it?
Carradine: I was sent a ton of pilot scripts, and Commander in Chief was one of them. I saw that it was written by Rod Lurie, whom I had worked for before on Line of Fire and I really respected his work, so I put it at the bottom of the pile and saved it for last — kind of like "dessert." I read the nine or ten on top of it, then read Commander in Chief, and I was like, "This is the one for me." I would have done anything to get the part.

TVGuide.com: Were you a fan of The West Wing or, like, the film The American President, going in?
Carradine: You know, I was a fan of Rod's movie The Contender, with Joan Allen, and yeah, I was a big West Wing fan.

TVGuide.com: What steps did you take to differentiate Kelly from C.J.?
Carradine: I think I am so different from C.J. just as an actress — [Allison Janney and I] don't go up for the same roles — that I wasn't too worried. The only thing that crossed my mind is that people are pretty used to seeing her play the press secretary; I simply hoped that they'd be open to seeing me do the same job.

TVGuide.com: Have you gotten any feedback from actual political circles?
Carradine: Yeah, I've gotten some positive feedback from a few of them.

TVGuide.com: Is anyone saying that Kelly is too young and perky?
Carradine: I don't think so. We shot in D.C. for a few days and there were lots of pretty little girls in smart suits walking around. The show is about Washington's best and brightest coming together in the White House, and Kelly, although she is a bit younger than we're used to, is about the same age that Dee Dee Myers was when she was Clinton's press secretary, so it's not totally farfetched.

TVGuide.com: Are you liking Kelly's smart suits?
Carradine: Yeah, they have me looking pretty good. I like a smart suit!

TVGuide.com: If Geena Davis ran for president, would she get your vote?
Carradine: Yes, of course!

TVGuide.com: Do you find that you're more attuned to real-world politics and White House spin-doctoring since taking the role?
Carradine: Yes, definitely. I watch press conferences with a little bit of a different eye. Not that I know what goes on behind the scenes, but I'm definitely interested in different aspects of it now that I'm trying to play it day after day. I think the job of a press secretary to is to always be on your toes, and that definitely is the case for Kelly.

TVGuide.com: What was the mood on the Chief set during the Rod Lurie-Steven Bochco show-runner transition?
Carradine: We all thought that the network was only trying to protect the product and make sure everything turned out the best it could. Were all just happy to have Bochco there, and Rod Lurie is still on as executive producer, so hopefully we're stronger than ever now.

TVGuide.com: What is the dynamic between Kelly and Richard "Dickie" McDonald, the media consultant being played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar starting Nov. 29?
Carradine: There's some tension. He sort of comes in and ruffles everybody's feathers a bit.

TVGuide.com: Does he step on Kelly's toes?
Carradine: He steps on my toes, calls me on some stuff.... It should make for interesting television!

TVGuide.com: An episode or two have hinted at a growing closeness between Kelly and first gentleman Rod Calloway, played by Kyle Secor. We're not going there, are we?!
Carradine: [Chuckles] We're not really going to go there. I either get asked if I'm going to go there with the first gentleman or the first son, and I think that neither of them will actually happen!

TVGuide.com: Do you get a kick out of the fact that on the show, Kelly is rumored to be dating George Clooney?
Carradine: I do! The perverse part of me sort of enjoys that.

TVGuide.com: What has been your most memorable filmmaking experience?
Carradine: Oh, gosh... I did a horror movie a year or so ago that....

TVGuide.com: Are you talking about Dead & Breakfast?
Carradine: Have you seen it? It's a rental, I know — it's at Blockbuster now. I have memories from that of it being four in the morning, me being freezing cold and covered in blood while pretending to fight off zombies. Those are pretty vivid memories!

11.16.05 - From TV Guide Online: Sela Ward, currently in the midst of a multi-episode arc on Fox's House, will next headline a half-hour comedy being developed for ABC, Variety reports. The series — on which Ward also serves as a producer — will follow the lives of four women in a small Southern town.

11.8.05 - Sela Ward has just been cast in "The Guardian," where she will play the wife of Kevin Costner's character, a legendary rescue swimmer.

Ed Harris and Sela Ward by Matthew Imaging

Evan Rachel Wood by Michel/IPA

5.18.05 - From TV Guide Online: House's Sela Ward: 48 and Fabulous!

by Mary Murphy

Back when Teri Hatcher was making doe eyes at Howie Long in RadioShack spots, Sela Ward was TV's go-to sexy, mature woman: a fortysomething mom romancing a local hunk (Billy Campbell) in Once and Again. Now Ward, 48, makes a long-overdue return to TV on House, guest-starring in the final two episodes and the first episode of Season 2.

TV Guide: How did you feel when you were first offered a role on House?
Sela Ward: The last thing I wanted to do was another hourlong show. I am so over that schedule. I'd never get to see my kids [ages 11 and 6].

TV Guide: But then you saw tapes of the show.
Ward: It scares the pants off you! I was watching in the bathtub with my husband and saying, "I can't look now." I thought it would be fun to be a part of.

TV Guide: You play a lawyer who used to date House (Hugh Laurie). What's she doing back in his life?
Ward: Her husband has some dubious medical thing that nobody can figure out, so she goes to House.

TV Guide: So what was their story?
Ward: I was his girlfriend, an attorney at the hospital, five years earlier.

TV Guide: It's hard to imagine House dating anyone, ever. Was theirs an odd coupling?
Ward: [Big laugh] He's not a warm and fuzzy guy. I decided that they must have had really great sex.

TV Guide: Women find House sexy. Please explain!
Ward: He's idiosyncratic, a curmudgeon, not playing by the rules, a maverick. And there is something very sexy about that.

TV Guide: How about Hugh Laurie?
Ward: He's a very manly man. There is a mysteriousness about him. He has a formidable essence. Meet him for 10 minutes and that's what you feel.

TV Guide: So House/Hugh becoming a sex symbol makes perfect sense to you.
Ward: It doesn't surprise me at all. I bet every woman feels like they could heal the wounded little boy inside of him.

House airs Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET on Fox.

4.21.05 - We got the second season on DVD! Now there's a petition to get the third.

4.4.05 - In May, Sela Ward will begin a potentially long-term arc on FOX's House as a former flame of Hugh Laurie's irascible doc. "This is somebody he lived with, somebody he loved and somebody he still has feelings for," series creator David Shore tells TVGuide.com, adding that Ward's arrival will shed some light on why Dr. House is such a pill. "We get to know his backstory, [including] what happened to his leg."

3.1.05 - Susanna Thompson as been cast as the minister's wife in the new NBC drama pilot Book of Daniel. Other cast members include Aidan Quinn, with Christian Campbell and Alison Pill as the minister's children, Dylan Baker as the church warden and Garrett Dillahunt as God.

9.13.04 - Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick are setting their sights on twentysomethings in a new ABC drama titled 1/4life. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show will follow a group of young adults as they experience their "quarter-life crisis."

8.18.04 - Coming to the WB midseason is Rocky Point, a drama set in Hawaii (aren't they all this season?) and stars a woman (played by Chyler Leigh) who against her own better judgement, takes in her estranged father (Billy Campbell). Also cast according to Hollywood Reporter are Lauren Holly plays Leigh's landlord, a displaced NYC attorney; and last season's Tarzan portrayer Travis Fimmel is the boyfriend.

4.21.04 - WB's pilot drama Rocky Point (Warner Bros.) has added Billy Campbell to the cast list as the estranged father and rocky focal point of the show.

4.6.04 - Shane West will join the cast of ER next season as a medical intern.

3.31.04 - Sela Ward has signed on to star in the CBS telepic Suburban Madness, which chronicles the true story of a Texas woman convicted last year of murdering her philandering husband when she ran over him with her Benz. Ward will play the private eye hired to investigate the cheating hubby.

3.8.04 - From TV Guide Online: Sela Ward's Shocking Slap by Angel Cohn

After wrapping her stint as a modern mom on ABC's Once and Again, Sela Ward traveled back in time to the 1950s in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. She plays lead girl Ramolo Garai's mother, who's a frustrated former ballroom dancer. While filming in Puerto Rico, Ward was thrilled to strap on sexy heels and show off her moves on the dance floor, albeit very briefly.

"Damn it, I practiced for two solid weeks and there was only 30 seconds [on screen]," Ward laments to TV Guide Online. "I was so proud of all that dancing. That's the hardest work I've ever done, physically."

Is she kidding? This 47-year-old's killer body must require serious work! "I'm [usually] doing boring things like the treadmill, the weights and resistance training," she explains. "[While dancing,] I had sweat pouring off of me in rehearsal. It was great fun and I lost a lot of weight in two weeks."

Along with the pounds, Ward shed her soft-hearted mother routine from Once and Again. In Havana Nights, her character pulls a Mommie Dearest when she hauls off and smacks her rebellious teenage daughter for sneaking out to dance with a local boy. Apparently, Mom's more than a little bitter that her child's out living it up, while she gave up her pro dancing dream to have the kid in the first place. Ah, the repressed '50s.

"The [slapping] scene was easy for me because I am a parent," she laughingly admits. "Even though my children are very young — they are 5 and 9 — I can already project what it must be like to have that insolence and disrespect and rebelliousness from a child, even though they need to separate from you. So it is not difficult to go there.

"In the next scene, you see what has transpired for her," Ward continues. "[She's] coming to terms with the fact that she questions having had children and how it took away her dream. That was the tricky scene for me, not the slap. The slap was just pure, raw emotion and resentment and anger that she was too guilty to express."

2.12.04 - From TV Guide Online: Thirteen's Evan Rachel Wood looked fabulous in feathers at the SAG awards where she was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

2.12.04 - From TV Guide Online: CBS Star Visits ER

Once & Again fans remember Marin Hinkle as Sela Ward's little sister, the jealous, moody Judy. Now, she costars as Judith, Jon Cryer's estranged — and possibly gay — wife on Two and a Half Men (Mondays at 9:30 pm/ET on CBS). But if you thought Hinkle played difficult drama queens in those roles, just wait till you see her on tonight's ER!

Basically, her part is every ER day player's dream: The freaked-out mother whose kid's undergoing a medical procedure in the emergency room. That kind of cameo just begs for an actress to run the scenery-chewing gamut, from fear to anger to full-on meltdown. Here's a little preview...

"My character is a mom who's driving with her husband and two kids and gets in a terrible car accident," Hinkle tells TV Guide Online. "I'm in shock, and it turns out that the driver who caused the accident is in the [room] right next to me!" Sounds like your typical wreck-of-the-week plotline, but she promises there is a twist, and it involves a heart ailment and a Hummer SUV. We'll say no more.

Happily for Hinkle, she didn't have to go far to do ER. The hospital drama and Two and a Half Men both shoot on the same Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, Calif. "When I auditioned," she says, "they asked if I minded switching from comic behavior to playing such tragedy in one day. But that's the joy of being an actor! It's fun to look made up and put together for a sitcom, then run over to ER and be a car accident victim, where you're mussed up and have blood poured all over you."

1.29.04 - Evan Rachel Wood is set to star in the postwar drama "American Pastoral." Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are in talks to play her parents. The story is about a couple whose lives are turned upside-down when they learn their daughter (Wood) is a revolutionary terrorist.

1.15.04 - Evan Rachel Wood was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role in "thirteen." The SAG Awards will air on TNT Sunday, February 22nd.

12.19.03 - Evan Rachel Wood was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Drama for her role in "thirteen." The Golden Globes will be presented on Sunday, Jan. 25 and the show will be televised live on NBC.

10.31.03 - According to The Hollywood Reporter, Billy Campbell has signed a deal with Fox to headline his own drama series for fall 2004.

8.27.03 - Keep an eye out for Evan Rachel Wood in the upcoming movie "Thirteen."

7.24.03 - A fan has started a petition to get the second and third seasons released on DVD.

7.11.03 - TV Guide Online: Shane West on TV Again? - Although Shane West is currently stealing scenes away from Sean Connery in the new big-budget actioner The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (opening today), don't take that to mean the Once and Again alum has shunned the small screen. In fact, the 25-year-old actor has just the comeback vehicle in mind. "I would love to do a Once and Again reunion," he tells TV Guide Online. "As sappy as it sounds, it was good people...."

6.16.03 - TV Guide Online "Caught in the Act" - Birthday Boy: Actor/rocker Shane West celebrated his 25th birthday with a VH1 Save the Music benefit concert at The Roxy in Los Angeles.

5.15.03 - Susanna Thompson's new drama, Still Life, has been picked up as a mid-season show for next season by FOX.

5.14.03 - Marin Hinkle's new comedy, Two and a Half Men, has been picked up by CBS for the fall season and will air in the cushy time slot of Mondays at 9:30pm ET following Everybody Loves Raymond.

5.2.03 - Shane West has been named one of the 25 hottest stars under 25 in Teen People.

3.21.03 - TV Guide Online: Billy Campbell Plays Evil Again - Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed in 1989, but TV movies refuse to let him rest in peace. Mark Harmon played the sinister role in 1986's The Deliberate Stranger. And tonight, Once and Again's Billy Campbell goes handsome and homicidal in USA's similarly titled The Stranger Beside Me (8 pm/ET). Did he watch Harmon's gorefest for evil pointers?...