Hugh Grant on Murdoch phone hacking scandal and embracing the bad guy role

from KCRW I'm Kim Masters and this is the business these days Hugh Grant is delighted to play the bad guy as he did in the HBO series The undoing but in an earlier phase of his career he became famous as the charmingly divident character in romantic comedies Four Weddings in a funeral nodding Hill Love Actually and more he made it look effortless as if he were almost playing himself but in fact he was finding it the opposite of e because I got this thing about 20 years ago where I suddenly for no reason at all in the middle of shooting a film was doing a perfectly easy straightforward scene and I just started panicking and uh the problem is it's just embarrassing because there you are and suddenly you can't time a joke you can't remember your lines your armpits are pouring sweat they have to keep coming in and mopping you down you you can't breathe properly and I know what the devil's going on here hug Grant tells us how he got his groove back and reflects on his decade of work as an activist following the phone hacking Scandal that engulfed the Murdoch Clan a decade ago and continues to reverberate today but first I get back to bantering stay tuned it's the business from [Music] KCRW I am joined by my colleague and banter Matt bellany hello Matt hi there so the box office uh we saw the big opening weekend of Summer you were holding out for quiet place too although I I heard that you actually did not go to see it the theater as you had vowed due to circumstances but other people went to see it not because it's bad I will see it in theaters I just couldn't get to it but uh I'm sorry to Break My Vow yes you broke your vow but uh others did not and they went it did really well especially considering that theaters are not at capacity did so well that John krinski and Emily Blunt who had been concerned about the 45-day window that Paramount allotted a relatively generous window compared with other Studios completely generous if you compare it with Warners which has gone day and date for everything in 2021 they had been a little worried about will they get their due from the box office percentage that they is part of their deal and they've decided they will it did that well and and the 45 day window as I said is pretty long uh and they I think feel that it will squeeze all the juice out of that film and do fine yeah and this is where we are in the Battleground right now I mean we're seeing all these different models play out and the summer is going to be an interesting test because over the next few weeks we've got some big movies we had this weekend with Conjuring the sequel uh to that franchise we have in the Heights coming then we have Fast N and they're all on different models I mean the Warner movies uh Conjuring and in the Heights are both day and day but the interesting thing about that is that the Warner marketing especially for in the Heights is really going hard on SE it in theaters and they think they can get that movie to become a kind of Summer phenomenon like crazy Rich Asians even though it's a available on HBO Max at home and then obviously we're going to see Fast N the big fast and furious movie which is not available at home but we'll get this three week plus exclusive window in theaters and uh we'll see how that does for that movie I think that movie will be huge when it opens and the good news for the theaters is that people are coming back the number for a quiet place while not as big as the original and people thought this one would in a normal time be bigger the number 57 million for an opening is pretty darn good considering all the circumstances and it's really a testament to Paramount's decision to hold that movie for 15 months not put it on a streamer not launch Paramount plus with it support the filmmaker and support the film and they got a number out of it yeah I mean these are the pressures that studio Chiefs face Jim ginopolis at Paramount had to fight to keep quiet place to in Theatrical when Viacom is trying to launch Paramount plus and want something attractive to put on there in you know Jim G wants to keep theaters alive and keep John krinski and the family and happy so this is the tight RPP that the studios are walking you know ende de which went public recently had its first earnings call in the past week and I think certain people were hoping to see some kind of Ari Emanuel doing something you know unusual uh but they did discuss this issue he didn't tell anyone to f off or hang up on anyone during the call he didn't yell in the beginning he was reading the ear earnings and he I it did sound a bit like a hot Stitch statement and it probably was because I'm sure the lawyers were like do not color Outside the Lines here you can get in trouble very quickly with the SEC if you're a part of a public company and you do color outside the lines and I'm sure people are keeping a close eye but so Ari read the beginning and it was a bit monotone and he handed off to Mark Shapiro the president of endeavor who was a little a little peier uh with the delivery but they were very bullish you know they were talking about live events coming back and of the things they touched on is the incredible demand for content and they are of course trying to play to the street and say all of our businesses are back after a very rough run but this question of of talent and compensation and the demand and you know the agency aspect WME part of the Endeavor company was brought up and they talked about the incredible demand and you know Ari Emanuel talked about how there's only so much talent out there and said the WME represents a lot of it uh Mark Shapiro play up the vantage point that studios are wanting this kind of flexibility as to what to do with the stuff that the talent makes and he said we are flexible with Studios we are having these conversations up front and they are paying for that flexibility and we certainly saw that when Warner put everything for 2021 on day and date that's interesting because WME represents John krinski and they were very involved in the quiet place negotiations and it's also an interesting sign going forward because it suggests that that while there was such reluctance on the part of talent when Warner unilaterally put all the movies on streaming without telling anyone if you just go to them and if you make a deal most Talent is going to be amenable to some kind of change in the distribution plan as long as they are brought into the process and compensated in a way that they feel is fair that's the big problem that Warner had is they didn't do that and there are some like Chris Nolan who might object to any kind of change from straight theatrical distribution all the way but I think most people get that we're entering a new era there's going to be different models different things are going to come up and in order to be successful long term you have to experiment and they're willing to do it as long as they are made whole financially yeah I mean I I'm not making a fresh Point here but the one of the things Warner did was to say we have concluded that the entire calendar year the movie theaters will be shut and that wasn't true if they had said we're doing it quarter by quar I think the consensus of the town is they would have gotten away with it one of a better word but they didn't do that so now we are in this wrestling match and that it's a selling point for endeavor like we have leverage because they want flexibility we're going to get our people paid more uh and I think we'll still see fights but they may in fact have to pay more for that privilege with aess Talent yeah and after a year and plus of no movies or very few movies in theaters we're going to start to see a log Jam of big movies coming out in the summer and fall and holidays so we're going to see this issue play out over and over and over again yeah I mean one thing we will see is whether there's a burst of movie going as people get released from the pandemic that levels off or whether this sustains thank you Matt thank you that's Matt bellany a founding partner in a New Media Venture and we are going to learn the name soon starting in the mid90s Hugh Grant was famous as the Charming slightly awkward but witty heartthrob in a string of romantic comedies among them nding Hill in which he played Bookshop owner will fer who finds his life changed thanks to a chance encounter with a movie star played by Julia Roberts naturally they embark on a whirlwind romance that then seems destined to go wrong until our hero sneaks into a press conference and poses as a reporter I just wondered whether if Mr ther realized he'd been uh a dar and got down on his knees and begged you to reconsider whether you would in fact then reconsider yes I believe I would that's very good news um the readers of Horse and Hound will be absolutely delighted now at 60 Grant has been embracing his dark side in last year's HBO series The undo he plays a fabulously wealthy doctor and doting father and husband who may be hiding some things he's also played the bad guy in Paddington 2 and the Amazon series a very English Scandal offscreen Grant sits on the board of hacked off a group founded in 2011 in response to Revelations of phone hacking that had been rampant in the UK specifically at the Murdoch own tabloid the news of the world Grant was among the celebrities and politicians who were targets of the hacking as were people who were not famous even 13-year-old murder victim Millie Dowler before her body was discovered News of the World reporters got into her voicemail and deleted messages leading her family to think that she might still be alive right before my chat with Grant I Revisited the Grim details of that case to refresh my memory and the strangest thing is that as I was reading about that this thing about the Daniel Morgan murder came up and this is a private investigator murdered in 1987 this now a controversy in London an inquiry this had to do with police corruption hacking News of the World and guess who the murdocks are you following that I just kind of was like I can't believe this is still a thing that we are not at the bottom of well yes I have obviously followed it very closely it's was always a big sort of issue within our campaign and and alist Morgan Daniel's brother has been a great hacked off supporter and we I hope hopefully sported him and he's a he's a hero he's fought to uncover the cover up as it were for all these years since 1987 and finally an independent panel was set up it's taken I think it's three or four years to examine all the evidence it was just about to publish its uh report and uh in an extraordinary and unprecedented move the Home Secretary stepped in and said uh give it to me I I need to check this first and they said no no you can't and they won't give it to her because they don't want it redacted or buried or whatever she may be wanting to do to it and why is she so nervous of it and why has the truth about this murder been covered up all these decades but what I what I can recall is that the chief suspect in this murder worked for a private investigation firm that was regularly used by Rupert Murdoch's newspaper the news of the world and there are people who think that those particular private investigators as well as many others had a very close relationship with the Murdoch tabloid press and that money changed hands and um it's just interesting now that a home secretary who is renowned to be both personally and professionally very close to the murdocks seems to be getting very nervous about the release of this independent report it really is amazing in a way the murdocks have a way of sidling up to whomever is in power it's always to interrupt you Kim but it really is the other way around it's the people in power who Sidle up to the murdocks okay in this country um in fact you you can forget holding power in this country unless you have already gone on bended knee to the murdocks and said please may I be a prime minister that's how it works in Britain yes I mean I I just note it I guess that way because we all know that rert became very close with Tony Blair even though we know his politics were not aligned with Tony Blair's you know he sidled up to Trump having been earlier not a trump guy so he I'm just noting his uh flexibility I guess I would say yes you see Tony Blair led a okay it was a labor government but it was a labor government that some people would regard as on the very first this right extreme of that interpretation I mean it was and therefore not antithetical to Rupert Murdoch's business or political agenda I was really really impressed with that what you did with the hacked off campaign and uh you wrote this wonderful story where you was called bugging the Bugger I think you you recorded a former news of thee World guy uh secretly to turn the tables and wrote about it in a very funny piece uh you obviously felt that that you had been uh the victim of this but did you feel that in pushing back as hard you became even more a victim or do you felt did you feel liberated by just having it finally come out and being able to denounce it uh well on the whole liberated although obviously uh it was a little scary to go face to face with these are these are very powerful organizations and although hack off has done pretty well and you know we pressed for a public inquiry which which happened the Le inquiry and recommendations were made and the law was about to be changed uh in the end such is the power of the people we we've taken on that the government in the end found a loophole and backed away from enacting these uh new laws that would have protected people like Millie daa because politicians are so terrified of these newspaper organizations who have the power to make or break their careers do we despair or do we have hope well we have hope in that if we had another general or when we have another general election in Britain you know the conservatives could lose we could have a labor government or we could have a coalition government with maybe the labor and the Liberals and the greens and then I think that lon's recommendations would be put into law and so that would that would mean Victory well we can cross our fingers for Change and hope that it lasts I'm sort of crossing the bridge between politics generally and Hollywood politics I think you've done one Fox movie is that right yeah but before before ruer mured it and you said subsequently you said that it would stick in your crw to work for fox when he owned it now now I believe he doesn't anymore didn't he sell it it's Disney yeah but yeah but there is still a Fox Entertainment outlet and and there's a they have you know a network here and they make TV shows I have certain people in the industry who have done business with Fox you know and some of them are public Seth McFarland and some others are afraid to go public uh who but they say to me you know given what the murdochs have done in this country in terms of Fox News people should just not work for fox and they keep wanting someone else to say that to people in the industry I don't know do you have an opinion on that is it something that you think you just would not associate yourself with that organization I wouldn't no but I I I I hesitate to tell anyone else what to do you know one of the things that's it's been an issue for me throughout 10 years of banging the drum about press abuse in Britain is that I have never really liked preaching actors I I've tried to avoid it all my life so I don't want to do any more of it than I can possibly help and if people feel differently and they maybe don't mind so much about what happens with r Murdoch his control over government Etc then then they're entitled to do whatever they want I I I just I personally wouldn't want to work for him coming up after a short break two Grant explains why rehearsal is the enemy of Comedy you're listening to the business from KCRW this is the business and I'm Kim Masters we're talking to Hugh Grant who most recently stared with Nicole Kidman in the 20120 HBO series The undoing Grant and Kidman played Jonathan and Grace Frasier Super Rich New York parents who share easy banter over morning coffee in their perfectly appointed townhouse why you so dressed up what's his name ladies T planning the fundraiser oh the school auction did I mention I'm not going did I mention you are I think you'll find I'm not my love naturally not everything is as cozy as it seems Jonathan is carrying on an affair with a woman who soon turns up dead it sure seems like he did it but the series directed by Oscar winning Danish filmmaker Susanna beer offers up an array of other suspects throughout its six episode run I was looking at your Wikipedia page actually and it said 2016 to present mature career Renaissance is this something you look at I I wondered who came up with that I know who does write Wikipedia I think people just people yeah but I've tried in the past to correct an embarrassing mistake and it's bloody difficult yeah really really difficult they say well who are you and you say well I'm him they say well we need it's like you we can't trust you when you look at a project what makes you say yes because I read where Nicole Kidman said ask him but he'll never do it doesn't matter if it's a wonderful role he just doesn't want to work which I thought really she said that about you is that fair well yes uh I don't know why I know I I can be a bit reluctant to work but less so now I will say less so now in my mature inessence I I almost I almost enjoy it it's just really fear and fear of fear because I got this thing about 20 years ago where I suddenly for no reason at all in the middle of shooting a film was doing a perfectly easy straightforward scene and I just started panicking and uh the problem is it's just embarrassing because there you are and suddenly you can't time a joke you can't remember your lines your armpits are pouring sweat they have to keep coming in and mopping you down you you can't breathe properly and I thought what the devil's going on here right and that was not your first film you were a seasoned actor at that point yeah I was relatively seasoned not mature like now but seasoned and uh and I I got them periodically for the next you know 10 15 years I probably could still achieve one now if I really tried and they the fear of them is horrendous it's horrendous thing itself it's yes much worse than the thing and it almost brings them on they're self-fulfilling prophecies right if you start thinking about it you're like yeah yeah it's it's the tennis player who says I must not serve a double fold I'm it's 3040 and you serve a double fs and U it's that anyway um so yes I I have had some reluctance but this project comes along and he was Dripping with class and quite clearly something I had to do the only thing I needed to check was that I was the murderer because that was infinitely more interesting than if I was just the Unfaithful husband yes well I I guess it's spoiler alert yes you you are indeed the murderer uh and I read at some point that you thought the ending was ambiguous and you wanted it to be crystal clear that you in fact were the murderer there was a version of the ending that arrived just before we started shooting the whole project which I thought might be a little ambiguous and I I thought that was a shame and so did so did Susanna beer who directed the thing and so it was redrafted and made clearer and she also was the one who pressed to shoot the actual murder itself cuz once you've seen that there's no going back she had a method of shooting this where you're shooting all different parts of the story out of sequins sometimes in a day because she thinks that this infuses the production with energy and keeps everyone on their toes is that in fact a thing that happened uh no she's just shot it like an ordinary film uh which was I suppose a little unusual because it was six-part TV so normally I think people who shoot TV shoot one episode at a time very often with different directors and very often not knowing what the next script will bring but in this case it was much more like a film we had all six episodes written and we shot it like a gigantic 400 page film over six months completely out of sequence which is which is normal yeah it's normal yes and for a film didn't feel different to you so that no no I was I was told it but you know oh Susanna beer has some interesting Scandinavian methods where you know you rehearse half the day and then you start shooting and it never really that never really materialized that must have sounded not yeah alarming in a way right if you're don't want to start well I might not have suited me that well because the one of the few things I've learned over the years is that the things that work best on film are things that are brand new in that moment uh that you've just invented or is completely fresh and anything that's rehearsed rehearsed rehearsed can go a bit dead on you right you have it moment in rehearsal and it doesn't come back yeah that's that's absolutely ghastly and that happens quite a bit and and and especially for this wasn't a comedy so the problem didn't arise but the nightmare is in comedies you go in in the morning they say just want to do a lineup Hue and you go on the set and you can see the anxious writer thinking go is the scene G to work so instead of wisely just mumbling the lines just so that you can sort out where you're going to sit and where the cameras are going to be i' give it my everything and try and make the crew laugh and I might succeed but that is the last time it'll be funny for the rest of the day oh no because you just can't reproduce it you know if you say to your kid or something you do that funny imitation of Boris Johnson they can't they just can't do it in front of other people you know right you can't do these things to order yeah I suppose it's a bit of a conundrum because if you do it and in a very flat way and nobody reacts you think e maybe it's not funny and then well you've got to be brave but you have to announce beforehand you have to say now look don't panic but I'm going to do this as though I've taken 20 grams of madon yes but I will be there later for this I will nail this thing yes yeah and you notice the really skilled experienced actors they not only won't give it their all in the rehearsal they don't give it their all in the Y shot they don't give it their all in anyone else's closeup but when it's theirs boy then it all comes they bring it yeah now Suzanne has been known to say that you improvise and I sort of had that feeling watching it because I'd seen an interview that you did with um stepen colar and in the beginning when I was started watching I thought wow he sounds so much like that guy and I know it annoys you sometimes that people confuse your character with who you really are but in that case I had to say the kind of humor that the kind of way you wereing talking the jokes I thought that really does did you make I wondered if you improvised some of those lines yes and although I I don't mind in the case of this film because I did it deliberately I realized that's what Susanna wanted she wanted a kind of Hugh Grant character at the beginning in the hope that people would think well he really can't have bashed that woman's skull in not after to Notting Hill so and also because my my London life is actually sin ly similar to Jonathan's life in Manhattan in that I've got small children at you know Posh Lev fee paying schools and I've got a beautiful wife and I go to fundraisers and so although I have in my mature Renaissance very much preferred being a character actor and being as far away from me as possible and I think that makes me on the whole a better actor uh I did in this one deliberately go you know I used quite a lot of myself and that included yes in episode one especially improvising jokes and uh and then I improvised quite a bit in the last episode when I'm in the car with the boy the best fried clams in the universe Dad we can't go get fried clams you need to pull over and let me out I witch clams as well which means they're big fat bastards as any self-respecting clam should be so why don't we just do this sorry see that can happen that can happen we can just lose ourselves sometimes that was scary yeah we become uh but I you're making me feel very intuitive and clever so clever I think for me this is your mature inoc you are not the only one having that thought probably right about now uh seeing as how I've been around for a long time so you've been doing that role right you've been doing the villain I mean obviously Paddington too yeah I I mean I I look i' I've been very bad at planning my career before Four Weddings and a funeral I did a lot of baddies a lot mostly for some reason champagne Barons who collaborated with Nazis I did hundreds of them then Four Weddings came along and I did nothing but romantic comedies for years and years and then that stopped and i' I've done a lot of um some narcissistic Psychopaths that is absolutely true of one in one way or another and so yes I've done quite a few of them in a row and I've just shot another one in turkey and I'm just about to do another one in belast and they're all baddies so really I need to play Someone good again fast right right it might screw up the whole thing if you get typ cast in this way I know well this is my speciality getting typed off I do it to myself uh do you in fact think you know about I mean is this seriously that you think about pivoting do you get enough material that you have to pick and choose or is it like there's so little that you would even want to pick and choose that's good enough well I've always been fussy about the material and whether it's you know well written and do I actually want to turn the page because quite frequently I don't and and I sometimes uh think that I there are too many boxes I have to tick before I say yes to a project because I think some actors just think is this an interesting role but I have to say is this an interesting role and is this whole project going to entertain anyone because for me it just seems utterly pointless to do anything to act or or or or or do anything in in terms of film making if you're not going to create an entertainment that people actually get to enjoy and I think that's where I slightly partk company with some of my comrades in acting because I see it less of a sort of uh pure religious experience in itself and more as a a tool for creating entertainment Hugh Grant actor activist star of the undoing on HBO Max thank you very much for joining us it's a pleasure thank you for having me and that's the business Caitlyn Parker produced and edited today's program with help this week from cat Yore and Paul Smith who also mixed the show you can stream the business as well as other great KCRW podcasts on the KCRW app I'm Kim Masters we'll see you next week on the business it it