Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Hugh Grant on His Chilling New Film, "Heretic"

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Hugh Grant talks to Willie Geist about his new film, “Heretic” and about reprising the role of Daniel Cleaver in the upcoming fourth “Bridget Jones” film. They also discuss Grant's relationship with fame and how he’s creating better boundaries and protections in the industry. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. Got a great one to dial up for you this week with one of the best and most prolific actors of, let's call it the last 30 years or so. He is the one and only, Hugh Grant. He broke out, who could forget, in 1994 with four weddings and a funeral earning a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA for Best Actor and kind of became the go-to-romantic romantic. comedy guy in Hollywood did movies like Notting Hill, Love Actually, Bridget Jones's diary,

nine months, the list goes on and on and on. But now he's doing something completely counter to all of that. And the truth is, he hasn't really made a romantic comedy in the last 15 years or so. He's been doing much heavier, more serious and acclaimed work. A Very English Scandal, Florence Foster Jenkins, the undoing, all of those performances earning him Golden Globe Awards, and his latest, it is chilling. The movie's called Heretic. I'll let him explain it. But basically, he is a creepy, somehow charming, apparently from the outside, kindly man,

who opens a door when two Mormon missionaries, two young women knock on his door, to spread the gospel. He invites them inside, and we are set off on a wild psychological thriller that really becomes a horror movie. It's a meditation and an examination. of religion and faith and all these things. It's very deep. He is so, so good in it, getting tons of acclaim for this performance, people talking about awards and everything. And I think probably why it works is he is initially his charming Hugh Grant self

that you know and love from those romantic comedies before turning to this incredibly dark character. So I'll let him explain. We talk about his career, his ride over the last 30 years through Hollywood, how things have changed for him, how he sees his life and career now. how he looks at celebrity and so much more. So sit back, relax right now and enjoy Hugh Grant on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Hugh, it's great to meet you. Thanks for doing this. It's a pleasure to be here. I told you when you walked in, I've just seen the film Heretic. So it took me a minute to get to Hugh Grant and not see Mr. Reed as you sat down here. Luckily, you're not wearing the

glasses or the kindly sweater that he wears in the film. Congratulations. It's a It's done incredibly well among critics at the box office and everything else. You're getting rave reviews for your performance in it. How do you describe, first of all, this film to people? Because horror doesn't do it justice. I guess psychological thriller is in there somewhere. How do you describe it? Well, you're right.

It's not easy to shove it in a pigeonhole. 824 is not a bad genre in itself in a way. You know, they make... and back very brave, courageous, novel filmmaking of bringing it back to the cinema audience

and I would say this comes into that category the two guys who wrote and directed this took on something very ambitious a film which breaks lots of normal rules of filmmaking you know it's largely set in one house It's enormous amounts of dialogue.

And those things have in the past been thought to be kind of lethal to enjoyable films. But we had an incredible crew and some wonderful filmmakers, an incredible cinematographer. Chung and Chung, we had an incredible production designer, Philip Messina. And thanks to them, I think we've managed to make something very cinematic. So your character, we're not going to give you. anything away because people are, I mean, there's a surprise around every corner in this film, but we can say that your character is greeted at the door by two Mormon, young Mormon women, spreading the gospel, and they come into your home. Mr. Reed to you, when you read him on the

page, who was he? How did you get into that place? Well, I sensed that there was fun to be had with him. and that sounds odd for what is partly a horror film. But I felt that the more fun I had with him, the more horrifying the horrifying bits would be. And so I thought he was this, the trendy professor, the groovy professor, and I think that was his past. I think he's taught in the university,

who kind of feels they're down with the kids, and makes kind of contemporary references to rock music, and films and things like that. We're as double denim. Kind of crazy glasses. I know that, Professor. Yeah, exactly. And I thought I could have fun being him

while being diabolical beneath the surface. But, I mean, I was thinking about backstory on him because do you create that for yourself or what has he been through? What has his life been like to make him? Yeah, well, that's exactly what I do

for months and months to an almost demented degree. I build this huge biography that mushrooms every day. And in the case of Mr. Reid, I don't know what I could tell you. I could tell you that a few highlights. I think he was never very popular, or at least not as popular as he would have liked to be. Despite having a kind of facility with charm, people got the creeps around him. I think even when he was a kid at school, I think, of his kids.

After a day or two, people he thought were going to be his friend just backed away. And I think this has always enraged him and made him even more kind of desperate to make friends and to do more pranks and more silly stuff, more attention-grabbing jokes and things like that. And I think that that is part of what's made him the weirdo we see in the film. It's a fascinating process. So when this idea is pitched to you, you hear the outlines of the story from two filmmakers whose work you admire, they did a quiet place among others.

What was your first reaction? Well, I've always wanted to go full out. Diabolical. I mean, I kind of was in various things like The Undoing, you know, that thing with Nicole Kidman. But I haven't done horror since Ken Russell film in 1986, which is going back a bit. And I felt that that would be fun.

And as I say, I love the whole 8.000. 824 kind of genre of interesting stuff, cinematic stuff, shown in the cinema, not on bloody streaming. And so, yeah, I was well disposed towards the script even when I, before I read it. And then when I read it, I thought, yeah, I think I can have some fun with this guy. You've mentioned 824 a couple of times, just for the benefit of our viewers. Yes, I'm sorry. No, no, they've done incredible work and won many Academy Awards recently, everything everywhere, at once,

Moonlight, one best picture. Yeah. There's a long list of films that people are familiar with. Yeah.

What is that A-24 magic for you to an actor? Well, in an age of cinema, which has been, you know, dominated by sequels

and superheroes and great big franchises and in which films, which are just about normal people doing normal things, the kind of films

that, you know, we all enjoyed in the 90s and early noughties, they seem to have disappeared completely. And that's a little sad. And I think it's also a little sad that so much filmed entertainment disappeared into streaming. And we don't get to enjoy it in theaters the way that we used to, I think films work better when you enjoy them collectively, laugh collectively, gasp collectively.

In that environment, A-24 came along, a little New York studio had started saying, let's do original stuff, let's do weird stuff. And it worked. And they recreated a burgeoning audience for actually going to the cinema. Even now, as we're sort of promoting this film, they won't send anyone a link for a screener. Everyone has to go and watch it on a big screen. Dead, bloody right. You're passionate about this.

I can see it. I mean, there is the argument that streaming has opened the world. to filmmakers and writers and people who wouldn't have had their work broadcast otherwise. What's your view on that? Maybe, baby. But I just think it's sad.

I think, well, I don't know. I miss the old world, not only going to the cinema and experiencing films collectively, but doing other things collectively. Maybe New York and America is not the same, but in London, bars are shutting. People don't go out and sit and get drunk

and have fun together. They're indoors watching streaming or that sad telephone making TikTok videos. Yeah. It's a commentary on all of us, is it not? Yeah. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Hugh Grant right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Hugh Grant.

I want to ask you about your co-stars in the film as well. Just two extraordinary young actresses. Were you familiar with their work previously? And if not, when you sat down and got in scenes with them, were you impressed immediately? Well, I knew Sophie Thatcher from various excellent horror films and from Yellow Jackets. And she is an extraordinary, almost old-fashioned film star, in my opinion. The camera adores her. Can't get a bad angle.

You want to know who she is. You see everything going on in her head, in her heart. a very rare talent and then Chloe East I'd seen her in the fableman's in which she was wonderful but I didn't really know what to expect in this one and she's

just genius in it it's very very very difficult she has to go on being terrified for the best part of an hour and a half and in little increments sort of build it up and suddenly well I don't want to be a spoiler if I said

the next part of what I was going to say Don't give it away. No. I said horror doesn't do it justice because this is not, we're done talking jump scares and everything else. No, it is. It's a slow burn where Mr. Reed seems like a cagly older gentleman. And then we move along through the house and things escalate. It's an unsettler more than a horror from it.

It's meant to unsettle you, just orientate you, make you deeply uncomfortable, creep you out. It also does something unusual, which is while you're being occasionally horrified, often creeped out. You also think about where religion sits in your own life or in our culture, and Mr. Reed sort of provides, in these obviously devious ways, provides us cases for and against and challenges many of the assumptions we make about religion. Did you like that part of the story? I did. I don't think it's the reason for the film. I don't think we all set out to make a kind of of anti-religious film. I don't think that's the point of it.

But it is true that my character is a kind of evangelical atheist of the Richard Dawkins type. And actually, I think the arguments he makes are genuinely fascinating. They were very well researched by Scott and Brian, who wrote and directed the film. And this was stuff I never knew before, that a lot of the main pillars of Christianity. like a savior born on the 25th of December who was born of a virgin and baptized in a river and performed miracles and sacrificed and rose on the third day, that all those things appear in hundreds of religions before Christianity. I didn't know that. So that was fascinating. That scene was a bit of a revelation too to the point where I went and did a little research

afterward as well. I said, oh yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah. But you mentioned Richard Dawkins, I think Christopher Hitchens, too. There's another one, yeah. Very thoughtful men who challenge orthodoxy, to put it mildly. Yeah, iconoclasts. Yeah. And so you studied some of their thoughts to get into this space of Mr. Reed? I did. I did. I looked at them a lot.

Their arguments, what motivated them, and then things like, look. Because, you know, perhaps I'm shallow, but a lot of finding a character can often happen the outside in instead of the inside out, suddenly you think, oh my God, that hat, or in this case, those glasses, they were, I think, borrowed from, well, the idea of glasses came to me from one particular serial killer. I think I know what you're going to say. Because I had the exact same thought when you put them on in the film. Okay, all right, yeah.

But I also thought those glasses were the ones my character would have worn in his heyday when he He actually had a brief window of being rather popular and considered cool at some Midwestern university before they all got the creeps about him. And so he's still wearing them. And so we looked for mid-90s glasses. I'm so happy to hear you say that because the moment for me when things took a turn was when you put on the glasses. Well, that's right.

They have a shape as well. Yeah. That's why we delay putting them on because we felt that if I'd worn them right at the beginning when I first answered the door to the girls, they would have run. You mentioned that he is charming and he is the character. And I think part of that comes from you, Hugh Grant, the man that we've known for so many years on the screen for his charm, to me added to the performance because we buy immediately that you're charming. And then when it turns, it offers this plausible contrast. Did you see that at all?

Just bring some of your, not your previous roles, obviously, but your acting style or acting talent into this? Or is a completely different exercise? Well, I didn't really want to do that. I was aware that at the beginning of the film, when I answer the door to the girls, the whole film falls apart if you think they're idiots for going inside. So he has to be sufficiently genial and unthreatening. And I felt that that was simply one facility, one. one trick that Mr. Reed has amongst many, many tricks. He's a prankster.

He's a magician who likes to show off. He's the kid at school who likes to do conjuring tricks. And this is one of his tricks, and that's how he gets them inside the door, and he's done it many times before. It is plausible. You believe that they would be... Yeah. Well, he seems like a kindly gentleman.

I was reading a headline this morning, and there are several of them. One, I think it was in New York Magazine, said, Hugh Grant was born to play the villain. And they meant that as a compliment, by the way. Did you have fun playing a villain different from perhaps previous roles you've played? Although you've paid... Well, it's weird. ...your roles lately.

Yes, I haven't really done a nice guy for... I can't remember when. 15 years, maybe. It's been a while, yeah. It's been a while. But I did plenty before then. Enough for a lifetime, I think. And any actor, I will tell you, and I'm sure has told you that for some...

reason we prefer being bad guys. There's more juice there. And you're also aware that audiences are for some reason drawn to the baddie and have been since Shakespeare's day. I don't know what that says about humanity, but we like him. It's more interesting at least. Yeah. See, why? Why is he that way? Yeah. Yeah, why is he that way? Or we recognize something that is true about us. That's right. Maybe civilization and niceness is not really our natural state.

It's a thin veneer that we've spread on society to stop us all killing each other. But really, we're ugly. But hopefully we don't take it as far as Mr. Reed. We can pull back at a touch.

Well, I think I mentioned the reception that this film is getting and the praise that you're receiving for your performance. You talk about other actors. When I talk to them, you do something in real time, you think it's good, but you never know how it's going to go out to the world

and how it'll be received. Is it gratifying to you to hear things like this is Hugh Grant's career best performance and that kind of praise? Obviously, it's lovely. It's lovely. It would be a lie to say anything else. But having said that,

in my infinite massacism and miserableism, I scour the internet for negatives. You do? Yeah, I look through rotten tomatoes for the green splats. You don't. Yeah, I do, yeah. And then when I read them, I'm, yeah, that's right. Get off the internet, Hugh.

Well, get off the internet, all of us. By the way, I think that rotten tomatoes is 94%. So you found the 6% and just drilled down on that. I found the one. one for Paddington 2, which used to be the highest ever rated on Rotten Tomatoes. And then some B. It came along and put a bad review in just because he couldn't stand it being 100%. This is a revelation that Hugh Grant sits and kind of just refreshes Rotten Tomatoes to see what people are saying.

But only for the splats. I skip through all the red ones. Why do you do that to yourself? I don't know. Self-hatred. I think it is an instinct that we have. There would be a thousand good comments under a photograph, a post and you find the one, don't you?

Well, I think it comes back to what I said earlier about people enjoying playing baddies or being drawn to baddies. I don't know. We're just drawn to the dark side, the negative side of life, or at least I am. I think people are sunnier this side of the Atlantic, actually. I think the default switch has always been more set to thumbs up. Right. Which is great and very energizing when you come over as a cynical.

sort of exhausted European. You sort of him, well, yeah, this is the can-do place. And people say, yeah, let's do it. Let's do that project. I can't remember why I started that answer. We're just talking about the rotten tomatoes. How you found the negative. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why am I addicted to negative? All right, let's get you off rotten tomatoes. Let's just say it's doing great. People love the film. Yeah, thank you. And let's not focus on the 6%. Yeah. Okay.

You mentioned some of that. earlier work you did. I think you know 30 years now it's been since four weddings and a funeral, which is kind of amazing. When you think back to that time in your life, is that a fond memory for you when it all sort of was beginning to take off for you? Oh yeah, obviously. And so unexpected. I've told this story before, but while we were shooting four weddings and a funeral, I think in the final week they thought it might be nice one lunchtime

to watch some cut footage of the film that we'd shot and so they put some together and the whole crew and cast got together in a screening room and we watched it it was about 20 minutes long and there was not one laugh in the room for 20 minutes and we had to

limp back onto the set for the afternoon and I thought well that's it it's an absolute disaster and expected it to be a disaster in the months that ensued when they were editing the film. The first cuts of the film were made, and I had a look, and I don't know. That's awful. It's embarrassing.

I should just leave the country and hide my head. And then to my incredible astonishment, they had a screening in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, and people went nuts for it. So it was such a surprise. I don't think people realize either. I was reading, you were, I think, 32 years old. Yeah. Which is to say you'd had about a decade of sort of on the grind before you had your break.

You weren't 20 years old when that movie came out. No, no, no, no. I had had a career in very poor miniseries and what I called Euro pudding films. Yeah, he brought everybody here. Well, they were, they were. Yeah, it would be a Spanish director with an English cast and a Czechoslav. Vakian script. You know, it was just weird in those days. I did very odd things. Was that, in hindsight, though, an important part of the journey to appreciate the big things? All I can say is

I had fun. Yeah. It was lovely. Off I went to Madrid or Venice or Munich and, you know, was paid lots of money. It seemed like lots of money in those days. There were pretty girls and because the projects were often so ludicrous, you knew it stood almost no chance of getting any kind of proper release. It was maybe if you were lucky, it would go to some obscure film, first of all. And so it was sort of relaxing. It was like, they were like holidays. Right.

But I was in my 20s. What did I care? Right. You were getting a check at the end of it. Yeah, exactly. Then I have to say all that slightly faded. And there were years when all I did was a play in, you know, some London suburb. And you thought, hang on.

And then, yeah, and then to my infinite astonishment, someone sent me a good script. And it was four weddings and a funeral. Is it true that in the time just before maybe four weddings came along that you were considering perhaps giving up unacting? Yeah, because I'd never been that committed to it. I was a bit of a charlatan. I drifted into it in a kind of almost like a mistake in my early 20s. And I was really more interested. I had two partners that we had a comedy show in London, which we wrote and we performed.

It was rather a success. And I loved that. The Jockeys of Norfolk? The Jockeys of Norfolk. Exactly. And we wrote for other people, and we made and produced radio commercials, silly ones, and we won prizes. And I felt like a man. And I was less interested in just acting.

Yeah. You were having fun. Well, I was also more creative. You know, when you write your own stuff. Anyway, for me, I feel more creative. And that is why, perhaps, even. Perhaps even now, I insist on contributing quite a lot script or as much as I can script-wise. Because otherwise I just feel like a dolly.

Right. Can't mouth someone else's words. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like, I mean, there's lots of actors who are brilliant like that and we're better than me, but I'm better if I'm helping on the script side as well. Stick around for more of my conversation with Hugh Grant right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Hugh Grant.

So Four Weddings becomes what it becomes. You win a Golden Globe. You win a BAFTA. It's nominated for a couple of Academy Awards. What was it like for you just personally going from the guy who had been doing the jockeys of Norfolk to become this sort of international star in some ways overnight. Yeah, well, initially, really lovely. I can't tell you some of the joys of that. Because London life, I don't know if you've lived there, it's quite sludgy.

You know, we live by a river and there's a slight smell of mud everywhere. It can be a little sad. And then suddenly I'm put on a private jet with, I don't know, Sharon Stone and I wake up in the hotel cap in can and everyone's saying how marvelous I am, how can anyone not enjoy that. It was lovely. How do you process it, though? How do you say, this is my new reality when you've come from what you've come from, which is smaller? I don't think you can exactly do that. Anyway, the honeymoon did not last very long. Very soon, everything kind of fell apart. Well, that's not true. Well, it didn't entirely fall apart, but I have, you know, like any career, you have

your ups and down to peaks and troughs. You have, I mean, you obviously had a great run of films through the 90s. Were you worried as you got to that point as this sort of model, you are the star of the rom-com? Did you think to yourself, I need to start doing some other things to balance that out a bit? Well, I, in retrospect, I regret that I didn't keep too, Strings to my bow When I'm after we'd made four weddings and a funeral and while I was dreading its Release I went and made another film with the same director odd enough Mike Newell It was a tiny little film made in Dublin

Called an awfully big adventure In which I played a very CD rundown Nicotine-stained Predatory theatre director Who wore a monocle And we're in the kind of I think it was a thing 30s or 50s. And I really enjoyed it. I was proper acting. It was characters. Characters

is what I like doing. I like doing people who are nothing to do with me, but for some reason I just like having their spirit inside me. Like Mr. Reed, that's fun. And I was pretty good, actually, in that film. And after Four Weddings hit, you know, I was only really offered at romantic comedies, and such was my greed. I just said, all right, yes, yes. And I should have, and I should have kept the other side going at least simultaneously. Easy to say in hindsight, but when it's going fast like that. Well, also, yeah, I had terrifying Hollywood agents with dollar signs in their eyes, you know. And so at what point did that change for you when you felt the freedom?

Oh, when the dollars disappeared. Okay. That'll do it. Yeah. You've had a relationship with celebrity culture that's been fascinating, which is, to say you don't like it very much, you know, the way people talk about celebrities. Has that changed for you at all, with perspective on it? I cling to the notion or the idea that some people, just because they are actors in films

or singers, or musicians, they become well known, but they are not. What is now known as celebrities. Celebrities now seem to have become something that people actually specifically aim to become. That's their ambition. I want to be a celebrity. And I much prefer to try and stay in the former category than to be plonked into the latter category. And I've failed. Some people have succeeded.

You say, Emma Thompson, you think, well, just actress, actress. You don't think celeb. Daniel Day Lewis, obviously actor, Gary Oldman. But I don't know. I had some glamorous girlfriend and maybe we were in too many magazines. I blame my people. There you go.

Throw them right under the bus. But is that view changed for you over the years with children and you get to do all these fascinating roles you get to have? Do you appreciate the career that you've been able to have? Maybe not all that comes with it. Well, obviously, I don't want to say anything negative about the plus sides. A bit of attention of girls liking you, money.

These were all things in my sludgy 1970s childhood in London didn't exist. And so they were great. They're great. But did I specifically want the news of the world or the Sun newspaper to put listening devices in the flower box outside my window so they could hear every conversation for years or tracking devices in my car or steal my medical records. I didn't specifically want that, no. Well, you've taken that head on to your great credit.

In addition to your film career, it seems as you're, when you're not making a film, you're as committed to that as almost anything outside of your family. Well, I got very militant about that. It's true. And I'm still doing it. We do have that problem in Britain. Is it better now since you've started the fight?

There was a big public inquiry which we helped to bring about. The recommendations of that year-long inquiry haven't quite happened, but it certainly shocked the industry into being a little better behaved. But anyway, the problems, those kind of problems of deliberate disinformation of the public and of intrusion into people's personal lives. You know, especially, I don't really care about famous people, but people who, for instance, lost a child in a car accident or a sister in a murder or a husband in a war

who then have their lives intruded on and, you know, microphone to put in a bunch of flowers brought by a supposedly sympathetic reporter. Those things have got better. They have got a bit better. Good. That's an achievement. So this film, Heretic, is drawing great acclaim.

You've got a new Bridget Jones movie coming. Yeah. Are you excited to step back into that role? I have always been very fond. Both of the Bridget Jones books and the films and of Daniel Cleaver, my contribution. So it was fun to be him again. And I tell you, this is, in my opinion, the best of the four scripts. I haven't seen the film yet, but it has a lot of heart coming out next year for people who are waiting.

It comes out on what they call Galentine's Day. Which is what date do we know? Well, I've only just learned this today. I know the term, but I have no idea of the date. Well, apparently it's the 13th. I don't think we're invited. So how do you then look now, Hugh, as you move forward because you've proven you can do anything? as offers come to you, as ideas come to you, is there strategy to it or is, boy, that's a great script, let's go do it.

Yeah, well, it's mainly that. It's mainly that with a bit of, maybe now is the time to go back to more kind of sort of things I was doing in my 20s and be a little more proactively creative. I think that might make me happier. But having said that, you know, there's two scripts lying in my hotel at this moment that are quite juicy and weird. messed up, which is right up my idea. Seems to be where you are at the moment. Yeah. Professionally, I should say, yeah.

And personally. Well, I appreciate the time, Hugh. Congratulations. Thank you. What they say is true. It's a brilliant film and you're great in it. It's very nice of you to say that. I appreciate it.

Thanks. My big thanks to Hugh for a great conversation. You can see Heretic in theaters now. And my thanks, as always, to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of my conversations with our guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC to see these interviews with your own eyes. I'm Willie Geist.

We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.