Hugh Grant hailed the ‘Daniel Day-Lewis of 2024’ after Heretic horror role

As far as the filmmakers of Heretic are concerned, their new horror villain Hugh Grant is ‘the Daniel Day-Lewis’ of today in terms of both his talent and the depth of his preparation for the role.

Grant continues his astonishing career renaissance by taking on unexpected characters after its first act saw him pigeonholed as a blinky, charming romantic lead.

In Heretic, he plays Mr Reed, who comes across as a pleasant and engaged amateur theoretical scholar when Mormon missionaries Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) knock on his door. However, this masks something far more sinister and terrifying lurking beneath the surface.

Interestingly, this part still relies on some of his trademark ‘Hugh Grant-ness’ before quickly turning it on its head. He is the propelling force behind the psychological thriller’s mood and power, and writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods knew they were asking a lot of any actor that stepped into the role.

Woods calls the character ‘a 10 out of 10 in difficulty’ as he chats with me via Zoom from the US with Beck, just ahead of the movie’s release.

The press tour has already been long, but neither filmmaker shows any sign of lagging as they discuss Heretic with me, a movie that is riding a wave as one of the most talked-about releases of the year.

And when it comes to Grant, they still have an undimmed passion for chatting about their experience working with the 64-year-old Four Weddings and a Funeral star – and how they came to cast him.

‘We were looking at personal things and past work, but we were also going – and apologies if this sounds dramatic, but it’s just the truth – who is the greatest actor working today? That’s what we were looking for. “Who is the Daniel Day-Lewis of right now?” was our feeling,’ recalls Woods of their fateful casting decision.

Sir Daniel is someone famous for his method approach as an actor, which includes diligent preparation and sometimes total immersion. The only performer to win three best actor Oscars, it was recently revealed that he’d come out of retirement to act in his son’s debut feature film – his first onscreen role since 2017.

Seeing Grant play multiple roles – including a cannibal chieftain – in 2012’s Cloud Atlas for the Wachowskis was the moment the British actor first crossed their radar as someone they wanted to work with and they’re confident he’s ‘proved his character acting chops in the last decade’.

For Beck, it felt like Grant had in one fell swoop with that movie ‘overwritten everything that had come before’.

In fact, for their money, his seemingly ‘impossible’ route of reinvention continuing through Paddington 2, A Very English Scandal and Wonka, has been nothing short of an inspiration.

‘To see somebody challenge themselves role after role and constantly go, I want to do the thing that sounds ridiculous and sounds impossible and then make it work. Like, the idea of playing an Oompa Loompa in Wonka?’ laughs an incredulous Woods.

‘I have to imagine Hugh’s going, how does one pull this off? How does one do this? It seems ridiculous, it seems insane. And then he goes for it every single time, and that’s really inspiring.’

Beck also saw a lot of Grant’s potential to go beyond what he’d done before in his real-life personality and robust dealing with the phone-hacking scandal.

‘It felt like rebelliousness, and [we realised] he’s always had this in his career, even though people have viewed him as a romantic sweetheart, and everybody falls in love with him. He’s got this biting edge that he’s not afraid to hide. And that was something that immediately felt so relevant to Mr Reed.’

The filmmakers also appreciated Grant being ‘incredibly curious and challenging’ as a human being.

‘There’s an excitement to that because you don’t know what he’s going to do next. And that was the magic alchemy that we were looking for,’ adds Beck.

I ask if Grant took much wooing in terms of convincing him to sign on for Heretic, but it sounds like things moved forward pretty easily, with them hopping on a Zoom session together ‘for a wonderful deep conversation talking about the script, but also about our relationship with religion and our backgrounds’.

Both sides were ‘feeling each other out’ as Beck recalls, before bluntly confessing: ‘But we had more to lose, because at that point we’re like, it’s either Hugh Grant in this movie or I think we’re going to put the script away in a drawer. There’s no one else that that we feel like can deliver those tenets of who we now imagine Mr Reed to be.’

Once Grant was quickly on board, a flurry of emails back and forth began over months, as the Love Actually actor investigated every single line of dialogue.

This also included suggesting a couple of his own ‘Hugh-isms’ like the term ‘mucky pup’, which is used to comedically chilling effect at one point.

‘That’s indicative of the work he did ahead of time, so he could allow himself to find something genuine, to bring an ounce of levity in a moment that is otherwise horrifying and incredibly disturbing,’ shares Beck of their process to carefully balance the tone of Heretic.

In terms of working together during production and how immersed Grant was, Beck notes that it goes slightly against the previous comparison as Grant wasn’t ‘lost in the Mr Reed thing in a Daniel Day-Lewis way that you always hear about, being so method’ – but, nonetheless, there was certainly still ‘a dichotomy between who Hugh is on and off set’.

He describes it as Grant wearing a ‘Mr Reed uniform’, with the filmmakers suddenly remembering who it was they were working with only when they saw him in his normal clothes ‘which for us, he looks like he’s going out to a fancy dinner’.

‘He’s the Hugh Grant gentleman that you’re used to seeing in the in the press.’

However, that’s not to say that Woods and Beck couldn’t see similarities between Mr Reed and Grant thanks to the actor approaching everything with scrutiny, scepticism and intellect, ‘[like] he’s pressure testing the world’.

And for them, there’s no better example of that than transitioning between one chapter of his career to another so distinctively.

‘He’s not just wanting to rest on his laurels – he’s constantly hungry to investigate something new and fresh, and that’s incredibly inspiring to see for ourselves too,’ praises Beck.

Grant’s co-stars, East (The Fabelmans) and Thatcher (Yellowjackets), also give fantastic performances in the film as his foil, but also missionaries who are chalk and cheese, personality-wise.

Co-incidentally, both have Mormon backgrounds, not that it was something Woods and Beck were specifically seeking.

‘We were looking at every brilliant contemporary actor that was willing to read for the role, and it was an extremely competitive process. Some of our heroes, our favourite actors, were up for the two roles,’ reveals Woods of the callback-heavy process.

But there was something in both East and Thatcher that stood out from the start – ‘an authenticity and almost the accent with which they were talking, the patter and the style, that seems true’.

Outside of Grant, Beck and Woods want to subvert expectations around Mormonism right from the start of Heretic, where Sisters Paxton and Barnes are overheard having a frank conversation about sex.

As Beck insists: ‘There’s a view that Mormonism is this sheltered culture and that’s not the experience that we’ve had.’

Heretic is in cinemas now.

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