Hugh Grant thought Stephen Frears would "spit on" his previous movie roles when he first worked with the director.
Grant, 57, and Frears, 76, teamed up to work on the upcoming BBC One drama which tells the true story of the political drama which saw British MP and Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe stand trial in 1979 over accusations that he hired a hitman to kill his alleged ex-lover Norman Scott, a relationship that played out at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK.
The pair previously worked together on 2016 biographical comedy/drama ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ and Grant admits before he first met Frears he thought he would’ve have hated his past romantic comedy roles in films such as ‘Notting Hill’ and ‘Love Actually’ but everything "worked out nicely".
He told BANG Showbiz: "It’s lovely really. I was always surprised with Stephen in anything, he was trendy and left to independent cinema and I was making these commercial romantic comedies which I thought he would probably spit on, which he probably does spit on, but then out of the blue he started saying, ‘Let’s do a film together,’ and we worked on ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’ and it all worked out very nicely and we liked each other and then he said, ‘What’s this TV thing, we should take a look at it.’ He’s got very good taste in material, I always think I have excellent taste but his is even better, he’s very good at finding good projects."
Grant portrays Jeremy in the three-part miniseries and stars opposite Ben Whishaw who plays his lover Norman.
The two thespians previously worked together on films ‘Cloud Atlas’ and ‘Paddington 2’ and Grant knew he was in for a creatively stimulating time on set when he realised he’d be reuniting with Whishaw again.
He explained: "I’ve worked with him before, he was my wife in ‘Cloud Atlas’ and of course he’s Paddington Bear so I knew him a bit and he’s just an utterly delightful individual, not at all precious which is how I like my actors."
‘A Very English Scandal’ begins on BBC One on Sunday May 20 at 9pm.
Hugh Grant was pleased to impress Stephen Frears
