Hugh Grant on his new horror film: NPR

In the new horror movie Hereticstwo young Mormon missionaries knock on the door of someone we only know as Mr. Reed (played by Hugh Grant). At first he seems harmless and curious about their religion.

“It’s so important to find your faith in a doctrine you actually believe,” says Mr. Reed to the missionaries, portrayed by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. “And it’s a very, very personal challenge that I’ve struggled with for a very, very long time. What is the one true religion?”

But a conversation about faith soon reveals a slow-burning threat that turns into terror as his guests are held captive and try to escape.

Now you might be thinking “Grant, a villain?” Doesn’t he usually play the confused romantic lead like i Love actually, Notting Hilland Four weddings and a funeral?

Grant spoke along Morning edition‘s A Martinez on Mr. Reed and building what he calls his resume of “weirdos.”

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A Martinez: Who is Mr. Reed?

Hugh Grant: He appears at the beginning of this film as a perfectly nice, decent, fairly intelligent man who lives with his wife in a middle-class home somewhere in the middle of America. And these two sweet Mormon missionary girls, they’ve heard that he’s expressed an interest in hearing a little more about Mormonism. He is very charming at the door and he invites them in. They say, “We can enter only if a woman is present.” He says, “My wife’s here. She’s making a pie. Come in.” And they go in. They are pleased to speak with Mr. Reed. They are excited about the pie. And then things start to get a little weird.

Martinez: So the interaction between you and the two missionaries… For me, as a guy in his mid-50s, I always think that when I’m in a cafe or in a store and I have to interact with someone who is 30 years younger than me, it looks like at a distance. or even close to…awkward. I’m not saying sexual or anything like that. It’s just that I don’t speak the language anymore. I felt that when I saw Mr. Reed talking to the two girls.

Give: Well, you might be right that some of the weirdness is simply an age difference. But I think Mr. Reed believes he is very down with the kids. I think he worked at the university as a teacher and considered himself the kind of hip that the kids warmed to more than the other professors.

A key moment in terms of figuring out who he was: I decided he was the kind of teacher who wore double denim. Double denim was incredibly important to my vision of this character.

Martinez: Did you create a character that we don’t see in the movie? A cinema, so to speak.

Give: Yes.

The older I’ve gotten – the more acting I’ve done – it’s almost obsessive. So, yes, there are hundreds of pages of biography on this guy.

Martinez: Wait, wait. Hundreds of pages you wrote?

Give: Yes. Yes. But as I’m writing them, I’m also connecting with the director, and the writers are like, “What do you think about this? What do you think about that?” But a lot of it is just me. And I prefer to keep it a secret too.

Martinez: Why do you do that?

Give: There are two reasons. First, I have this belief that this intense marinade in the character and background somehow makes the character richer on camera. And the other is that I’m so nervous about acting, especially when a new movie looms over me on the calendar, just doing four or five hours a day, every day, for weeks and months, calms me down.

Martinez: So Mr. Reed is charmingly creepy.

Give: Yes.

Martinez: You seem to slide into it very seamlessly.

Give: Thanks. That’s sweet of you.

Martinez: How did you get there? Considering what we’re going to see in the movie and how it starts – it’s quite a transition.

Give: There was a limited series I did called “The Undoing” with Nicole Kidman and it was the same where there’s an outer character and an inner character. I had extensive margin notes in my script for each of them because what the outer character might do or appear to do in the scene is not at all what the inner, damaged beast is actually thinking and plotting.

Martinez: Do you like to have the darker side?

Give: I am fascinated by it. And it’s fun for actors. And it is also always interesting and magnetic for the audience. They are always drawn to the bad guy rather than the boring goody two shoes lead.

Martinez: I love gangster movies. I love movies about gang members, mob members. What is it that draws – like a moth to a flame – to the criminal element, to the evil side. I mean, that’s the part that I think everyone has, whether they want to admit it or not.

Give: Well, my personal theory is that we’re pretty uncomfortable and some people suppress it better than others.

Martinez: Some people suppress it better than others. (laughs)

Give: Yes. You, not so good. But the older I get, the more I think that the veneer of civilization, it’s a very thin veneer. And I actually see it breaking all over the place at the moment.

Martinez: I mean, it’s hard. I think it will be harder for people to hide that side.

Give: I’m interested in what social media did because before social media and the ability to anonymously troll each other, all of this was hidden. You almost never knew. That these people hated you or hated your wife or hated black people or Jewish people or whatever disgusting thing they say online. And now it’s all there. And I think it’s deeply depressing for humanity to learn. Oh, my God, we’re terrible.

The audio version of this interview was edited by Phil Harrell, with digital adaptation by Majd Al-Waheidi.