House fans were shocked last night by the sudden suicide of Dr. Lawrence Kutner, played by Kal Penn. The Harold & Kumar actor has a new gig working for the White House, and Penn—who volunteered for Barack Obama‘s presidential campaign—asked the producers if they could take care of Kutner’s storyline…permanently.
I was incredibly honored a couple of months ago to get the opportunity to go work in the White House. I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I’m going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They’re basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It’s similar to what I was doing on the campaign.
The producers are warning Entertainment Weekly that fans shouldn’t expect much explanation for Kutner’s sudden death (“Obviously, there are reasons, but the notion that the reasons are too complicated for even House to figure out is what was drawing us to it”). Confused fans looking for a place to grieve can go to Fox’s memorial page for the character, which leads to a Facebook group so earnest you might feel like something bad has happened to Penn. Maybe he should hold a press conference just so everyone knows he’s OK.
[Photo: AFP]
