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"I was in a turkey to end all turkeys!"

"I was in a turkey to end all turkeys!"

Richard E Grant plays 'The Actor'

Peter in costume as Eye and standing in front of a blue screen

HBO

Michael Hodges

Add The Franchise to your watchlist

Is making a franchise movie as unpleasant as this show suggests?

My experience on Logan and on Star Wars were incredibly positive, but I see that it’s ripe for spoofing. In The Franchise, I play an incredibly narcissistic, appallingly badmannered, politically incorrect actor. I have encountered some of those people over the past four decades of being in showbusiness.

You have huge fun dressing up as a superhero — will that annoy Marvel? You appeared in their Loki TV series…

If I was a muscle-bound 50-year-old I might be quavering in my platform boots, but at 67 I’m not.

Your character, Peter, is also incredibly cynical. Have your years in the industry made you equally so?

Annoyingly for some people, I was born with “Richard” enthusiasm. I thought that would diminish by now, but it hasn’t. When I was nine my father said to me, “Richard, you’re like an overwound clock.” I’m not somebody who takes things in a laid-back way. I’m front-footed and ready to run at it.

What’s the worst discomfort you’ve had to endure on set?

I was involved in an unfortunate film in 1990 called Hudson Hawk that strayed so far from the original concept of the script that we knew that we were on a turkey to end all turkeys. And that was painful, because we all began with such hope and enthusiasm. When something is an unmistakable dodo and you’re on board, you feel shame. “Please take my salary back!” Then your brain recalibrates. “Actually, I deserve every dime I’ve been paid for the suffering.”

Do you still get excited by the magic of film sets?

There’s an innate glamour to the industrial nature of film-making. I will never forget the thrill of being on the final Star Wars film, because I’d been obsessed ever since seeing the first one in 1977, with those swishing doors [on the space craft], thinking they’d be electric but then discovered on set there’s a guy with a fag in his mouth just pulling these doors open. I couldn’t help myself making the swishing noise of the doors myself as I was walking through. JJ Abrams, the director, said to me, “You cannot make the noise of the door on a take.”

Which superpower would suit you?

I’d like to be invisible. I think it would be an incredible privilege to just invisibly turn up at Downing Street to see what’s actually going on behind closed doors. I’d settle scores and try to affect the course of history.

Authors

Michael Hodges

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