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“You can’t trust anything he says or does”: the particular and detailed way in which Hugh Grant helped maintain the mystery of his heretical character

Umito November 13, 2024

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the film Heretic. If you haven’t seen the new horror movieproceed at your own risk!

When Hugh Grant‘s Mr. Reed is first introduced in Heretiche seems like a perfectly normal guy. He takes a strangely long time to open the front door to his house, but he comes across as genial and intelligent…and it takes him a minute to recognize that he has terribly sinister intentions. By the time you get to the second act of the film, you realize that nothing he says is reliable – and this provided the actor with an exciting acting opportunity to delve deep into who the character really is .

Before the arrival of Heretic At the movies, I had the great pleasure of unpacking the truth about Mr. Reed through interviews with the filmmakers and star, and they all revealed the very special work that went into bringing the stealthy antagonist to life . In speaking with writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, I directly pointed out the fact that even his name doesn’t appear to be real (“Mr. Reed” is a homophone version of “Mystery”), and Woods noted that ‘there is an interesting development in Hugh Grant’s villainous performance who sees his true face slowly revealed during the film leading to this wild ending:

That’s a great question, and I love that the name led you there because in our minds, that’s not his real name. Who knows what his real name is. You get a piece of him. I think as the film evolves or evolves or however you look at it, I think it starts to lose layers. Hugh does, in his performance you see real parts of it come out, especially as things get really traumatic in the final act of the film – without spoiling anything. Hugh really starts to peel back the layers of Mr. Reed and you just see a real raw truth there. But yeah, it’s a bit of a conundrum, that’s for sure.

Mr. Reed’s comments and perspectives certainly suggest that he is a legitimate scholar on matters of religion, and it is clear that he has devoted much of his life to his studies. But it’s impossible to tell whether everything he says to Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) about his training is legitimate. Deciphering truth and fiction is practically impossible… at least from a first viewing of the film.

This reality about Mr. Reed was something that Hugh Grant had clearly struggled to approach in his preparation for the role. After speaking with Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, I had the opportunity to ask the actor how he approached the character’s litany of lies, and he said it was an aspect of the script that appealed to him. led to the development of specific notes for this performance. Said Grant,

How did I determine what was true and what was false? Very good question. And a bit like in this mini-series that I called The Undoing, I had two sets of notes in my script. One for the outer character – the outer Mr. Reed – what he thinks he’s doing, and what the inner character thinks and does. And then I did takes that were sometimes more on one and sometimes more on the other, or I tried to mix them, but yes. So you can’t trust what he says or does.

I also asked if he had created a real name for Mr. Reed, and Hugh Grant said yes – but he couldn’t remember precisely what it was. The next week, I had a follow-up interview with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, and I asked them if they remembered the name he came up with, and they couldn’t, but they were still amazed by the preparation and approach of the actor. Said Beck,

I’m sure it’s in the notes. I can’t say it immediately comes to mind. That’s what’s fascinating, it’s like the back and forth with Hugh is an incredibly incredible process. Because it would be as detailed as “What’s the first name?” Like, what happened when you were seven?

Obviously, knowing what Mr. Reed looked like as a small child is not something that has an obvious impact on the events that unfold in Hereticbut it’s information that Hugh Grant was able to use to flesh out the character. Beck continued,

All of these things that could be discussed make no difference to the experience of the film, and yet, I could also say the opposite, that is, it matters to every aspect of who Reed is. Because without these details, there is no road map to who this man is. It dictates every inflection Hugh makes to make his point as Mr. Reed, and this back-and-forth process was unlike anything we’d experienced.

After receiving critical acclaim after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Heretic is now playing in cinemas around the world, and after struggle with comedy The best Christmas competition ever during its opening weekendit finished in second place at the box office.

Apre-salomemanzo

Apre-salomemanzo

“You can’t trust anything he says or does”: the particular and detailed way in which Hugh Grant helped maintain the mystery of his heretical character

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“You can’t trust anything he says or does”: the particular and detailed way in which Hugh Grant helped maintain the mystery of his heretical character

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