Politics is show business for the ugly...
A Very English Scandal marks Hugh Grant’s first small-screen role since the early 90s and the self-professed panicker has gone all out to impress viewers. He tells GEMMA DUNN why preparation was key to him nailing the role
HUGH GRANT is about to tick off, what he calls, ‘part three of my trilogy of narcissists’.
“It started with the guy (St. Clair Bayfield) I played in Stephen Frears’ film Florence Foster Jenkins, who is a sort of ‘Me, me, me; I want to be on stage’,” lists the once-king of rom-com. “And then there’s Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, who is just outrageous...”
The third? Arguably his most egotistical portrayal yet: the part of disgraced Liberal Party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, in BBC1’s A Very English Scandal, also directed by Frears.
Based on John Preston’s novel of the same name, the three-part drama tells the shocking true story of Thorpe, who in 1979 was tried but later acquitted of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott (played by Hugh’s Paddington 2 co-star, Ben Whishaw).
For those unfamiliar with the bizarre tale, the former MP was said to have embarked on a whirlwind affair with Scott in 1960s England, when homosexuality was illegal.
With the relationship eventually turning sour and Thorpe’s career on the up, it was said to be a secret that the politician was desperate to hide.
This, it was claimed, led to the hiring of a hitman, a failed murder plot and an assassinated Great Dane by the name of Rinka.
It’s an absurd turn of events but one Hugh, 57, remembers well.
“I grew up with it,” recalls the London-born star.
“In fact the timescale of this series, 1960-1979 is me from 0-19, so I became more and more aware of Jeremy Thorpe.
“And then of course we all had a lot of fun when the trial came about, all the jokes about dogs and the sniggering... Because in those days, people sniggered at gay secrets and things like that.” He follows: “(But) the more I read about Thorpe, the more I realised, like a lot of politicians, they’re show business. It’s show business for the ugly, as they say! “It was the Jeremy show,” he adds. “All his life, he was the star. “He was just determined, (he had) this terrifying ambition to rise, rise, rise. So that was a very important aspect of it. “Then of course this very complicated inner turmoil about being gay and what that felt like in the years when it was illegal,” reasons Hugh, who made his name playing bumbling, floppyhaired heartthrobs in 90s hits Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill.
A comedy tinged with tragedy, he believes the new series to be a “celebration of the oddity of life – particularly English life”.
“I love things which are funny and sad at the same time, which rejoice in eccentricity,” he explains.
“And I’ve become very interested in politics over the last six years, so I love that aspect of it.
“But unlike Stephen (Frears) said, that it was an obvious casting, it wasn’t obvious to me,” he quips, confessing he didn’t think the director would want “the guy who made big, fluffy romantic comedies”.
“He rang me up and said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ and I said, ‘Well, which part? I’m about 400 years too old to be Jeremy Thorpe at the beginning of this film’.
“I thought he might want me to play Rinka the dog or something!”
Thankfully not. But the role of Thorpe itself would take some groundwork.
“It’s unlike me to do any prep at
all, really, but I was quite panicked by this project,” confesses Hugh.
“I quite respect Stephen and then Ben Whishaw? (I thought) ‘F***, I’d better try and be good.
“I just thought, ‘Everyone is going to watch this’,” he elaborates, the show marking his return to the small screen for the first time in decades.
“I’m particularly frightened of the British and British audiences, so I panicked a lot.”
To combat his fear, he read “every single book on the subject”.
“I went to meet lots of people that knew Thorpe, I dug up old films... some of them out of the bowels of the BBC that haven’t been seen for decades!” he muses.
“I don’t know if it does any good, but it seems to soothe me a bit.”
He even learned to channel Thorpe’s musical prowess by taking violin lessons.
“I tried. God knows I tried for months,” he cries, scoffing at his newfound ‘skillset’. “But the violin is completely impossible, as it turns out.
“That piece (in A Very English Scandal) is a sort of virtuoso piece, so I said to my violin teacher, ‘How long would you have normally been playing before you take this on?’ And he said, ‘About 10-12 years’.
“So I did my best... and then my children broke two violins,” admits the father of five (Hugh has two children from a previous relationship and three – the most recent of which was born earlier this year – with Swedish television producer Anna Elisabet Eberstein).
Does he hope the series will introduce a whole new generation to politics?
“Well we’re all quite politically aware these days,” he replies, simply. “Big events, Brexit, Trump, we’ve got everyone juiced up and so a political drama set back in the 60s-70s, could be very interesting.”
As he admits, the subject of media scrutiny is not unbeknown to him.
“I’ve certainly been in the middle of press storms – such as (Thorpe) was when the scandal started to break around him,” says Hugh, who is famously pro-privacy having given evidence to the Leveson Inquiry and taken a seat on the board of Hacked Off.
“I knew what that felt like. But there are lots of other things, you always look at the character here and you look at yourself here,” he says, holding his hands out, one in front of the other.
“And you say, ‘Oh that matches up there’.”
I’m particularly frightened of the British and British audiences, so I panicked a lot Hugh Grant on preparing for his role as Jeremy Thorpe (pictured left) in A Very English Scandal