MOVIE NEWS – Hugh Grant told how committed he is to playing the twisted main villain of Heretic…
Hugh Grant takes the horror to the top! In a brand new interview promoting A24’s upcoming horror film Heretic, the actor talks about how he enhances his character’s creepiness. Mr. Reed is nothing like Grant’s romantic roles in Notting Hill, Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary. (Well, he might have a few things in common with the latter…) When he first opens the door to invite Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) into his house, Mr. Reed seems kind and “Grant-like” endearing. But the disguise is about to be blown away…
The latest Heretic trailer will leave all fans of the actor wondering as Grant flashes his usual flawless smile as Reed in the film’s later scenes in the creepiest of ways. And the actor is fully committed to not only bringing Mr. Reed to life on screen, but also exploring the inner workings of the antagonist’s character. Speaking to GamesRadar+, Grant said:
“This is what I do now: I go through the script with an extraordinary tooth comb, over and over again. Why does he do that? Why does he say that? The answer to each question suggests something about him and his past, and that mushrooms into a full biography, which I have all typed out on my computer, about his relationship with his parents, his siblings…”
“What happened at school? What traumatic things have happened, and what hurt him in this particular case to become the monster that he is now? I think it’s very important that the audience can kind of smell the damage inside him.”
“Otherwise, there’s a danger that you just become a pantomime villain, but if they can smell there’s a suffering person in there, then they’re more interesting.”
Hugh Grant admits that Mr. Reed was inspired by real people
Hugh Grant clearly doesn’t let stereotypes ever get in the way of his acting career. Of course, Grant doesn’t always play so-called “good” or romantic roles. It’s true that the blackmailer Fletcher, played so brilliantly by Grant in The Gentlemen (2019), was not a healthy fellow, but he was nothing like the terrifying Mr. Reed in Heretic. Perhaps even scarier than his character, however, is the fact that Grant was inspired by real people from his own life when it came to portraying Reed. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Grant said:
“There have been people in my life who were useful to me, people who were very, very clever – brilliant, really, and in some ways very plausible and quite charming and quite bewitching, but who you gradually realize that there’s something deeply wrong with them. And these people very often really struggle to have any relationships in life, any meaningful friendships, and resort to things like pranks and slightly unfunny jokes and model-making and stuff like that.”
Grant, who won a Golden Globe (Best Actor | Musical or Comedy) for his outstanding performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral, detailed in the same interview how he developed the unique character of Mr. Reed, the villain in Heretic:
“Villains have usually got a facade, and this is a very good example of that facade being important to how the story is told. It would’ve been obviously all wrong if, from the moment I’d answered the door to Sophie [Thatcher] and Chloe [East], I’d been demonstrably psychotic and evil. A slow reveal is the key. And in this case, really as slow as possible.”
Heretic hits US theatres on November 8th, and critics are raving about A24’s upcoming horror film and its star, Hugh Grant. At the time of writing, the creepy film has an impressive 93% rating on the Tomatometer after 60 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes…
Source: GamesRadar, EW
