Hugh Grant shows his dark side in ‘Heretic’

In the new horror film Heretic, two young Mormon missionaries knock on the door of someone we know only 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,” Mr. Reed tells the missionaries, portrayed by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. “And that’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 menace which turns into terror as his guests find themselves held captive and trying to escape.

Now, one may be thinking "Grant, a villain?" Doesn't he usually play the befuddled romantic lead like in Love Actually, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral?

Grant spoke with Morning Edition's A Martinez about Mr. Reed and building up 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 to be a perfectly nice, decent, rather intelligent man living with his wife in a middle-class home somewhere in the middle of America. And these two nice Mormon missionary girls, they’ve heard that he’s expressed some interest in hearing a bit more about Mormonism. He’s very charming at the door and he invites them in. They say, “We can only come in if there’s a female present.” He says, “My wife’s here. She's cooking a pie. Come on in.” And they go in. They’re excited to talk to Mr. Reed. They’re excited for the pie. And then things start to go slightly weird.

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

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

A key moment in sort of working 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 film? A bio, so to speak.

Grant: Yes.

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

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

Grant: Yes. Yes. But while I’m writing them, I’m also connecting with the director, the writers saying, “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?” But a lot of it’s just me. And I prefer to keep it secret as well.

Martinez: Why do you do that?

Grant: There’s two reasons. One, 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 as a new film looms towards me on the calendar that just doing four or five hours a day, every day, for weeks and months, calms me down.

Martinez:  So Mr. Reed is charmingly creepy.

Grant: Yeah.

Martinez: You seem to slip into it very seamlessly.

Grant: Thank you. That’s sweet of you.

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

Grant: There was a limited series I did called “The Undoing” with Nicole Kidman and it was the same thing where there’s an exterior character and an interior character. I had extensive margin notes in my script for each because what the exterior character may be doing or appearing to do in the scene is not at all the same as what the interior, damaged beast is actually thinking and plotting.

Martinez: Do you like having that darker side?

Grant: I’m fascinated by it. And it’s fun for actors. And it’s also always interesting and magnetic for audiences. They’re always drawn to the bad guy rather than the dreary goody two shoes lead.

Martinez: I love gangster movies. I love movies about gang members, mob members. What is that draw – 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.

Grant: Well, my personal theory is that we are pretty unpleasant and that some people suppress it better than others.

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

Grant:  Yes. You, not so well. 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 cracking all over the place at the moment.

Martinez: I mean, it's hard. I think it's getting harder for people to hide that side.

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

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