Actor Nick Frost is reunited with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz collaborators Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright in The World’s End. Their sci-fi comedy, soaked in booze and nostalgia, sees a begrudging pub crawl take an unexpected turn for a group of friends revisiting old watering holes. While in New Zealand for the film’s premiere, Nick Frost had a yarn to Flicks about drinking, mates and rugby.
Thanks so much for coming down here and showing us your film. It’s great!
NICK FROST: It feels weird not being in England when it comes out. Usually we like to be there and do that weird thing where we go to our local cinema and stand at the back… It’s going to be odd to not be there this time.
I’ve been doing Dry July and I need a booze replacement, what’s in the fake booze I presume you were all drinking while making The World’s End?
It was water with burnt sugar to give it the lager colour, then a mixture of creaming soda and tonic water for the foam. They used one of things you can buy to make a cappuccino at home – a motorised whisk thing – so props would have a jug full of that foam and then they would come along with spoons and spoon the foam on top.
How many of those do you think you drank?
Oh we drank a lot, we were so hydrated. Our coats and our skin were glowing, you know. We looked really hydrated. But even if you do low-alcohol lager, like 0.01% there is still an odd placebo effect you get. I did a sitcom recently at home and there was a lot of time in pubs in that too. After the second day I had to say to the guys “you have to turn to water with burnt sugar” because the low alcohol lager was giving me a weird placebo effect, a drunk feeling.
I suppose that’d be heightened by gang mentality of the cast.
Yeah! We were a very supportive bunch on set. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a thing where it felt so nice, in terms of the main five of us. We all get our big speeches and our moments, and there were a few times where, after a take Paddy would come up and [offers a few pats on a Flicks thigh] or Eddie would come up [offers a few pats on another Flicks thigh] and vice versa. You go on a film sometimes and you never fucking talk to the other people when you’re not on set acting with ‘em. We laughed a lot, a lot. All the time. Just standing around watching Paddy Considine be naughty.
There’s a strong physical component to The World’s End. What were those fight scenes like for you?
Fun! Great! I loved it. I was very fortunate that I’d finished a film called Cuban Fury – that comes out in January – which is a dancing film. So I was taught how to dance. I did seven hours a day every day for seven months before we even shot any of the dance film. I came up with the idea for that film to get over my fear of dancing essentially, so I think I was really lucky because I had a week between the end of that finishing and this starting. In terms of the choreography it was easy to learn the steps to fight ten men at once.
There are a lot of similarities between fighting and dancing. Jean-Claude Van Damme segues wonderfully between the two in Kickboxer.
It really helped me, because you have to be quick and balletic and kind of beautiful in the fights, you know. A beautiful violence.
Did you draw on any personal experience of pub crawls?
I never really pub crawled to be honest. I never saw the point. I’d think “why don’t we find a nice pub and sit in it”. I like that if you sit in a pub for a long time you start to become part of it, it’s like the Overlook Hotel in that respect, and the thought of having to have a drink and then walk off somewhere and then have another one and then walk off somewhere and have another one and never really fully integrate into a pub, I don’t like that idea. I don’t understand why we’re doing cardio in the middle of a drinking session, you know?
All stag nights essentially become pub crawls, don’t they really, but on my stag night we did three or four pubs and then my mate turned up with a bottle of absinthe shaped like the Eiffel Tower and that was that, it was kind of all I remember. Although I am told it went on a lot longer that that point…
It’s quite a different relationship you have with Simon Pegg in The World’s End. Was it good to approach an onscreen friendship in a different way?
Yeah, of course! We are friends, but we’re also actors. I think what we wanted to avoid is that people just assume that we are the characters you see in Shaun of the Dead. Probably not so much Hot Fuzz, but certainly Shaun of the Dead. I think we have been those characters, but we’ve also been these characters. I have been [Simon’s character] Gary at some point. Simon has been [Nick’s character] Andy at some point. I think for people to fully enjoy and get into these characters you have to put some of yourself, even if it’s one per cent, you have to put some of yourself into that. It’s nice to not portray a kind of stoned goofball all the time, you know, because I’m probably nearer to this person than to Ed [Shaun of the Dead] you know?
Your character Andy is an ex-rugby player in the film. Did you play rugby?
I played a lot of rugby, yeah, I played from 7 until I was 21. I got quite badly injured when I was 16, so I took a year and a half off, and in that year and a half the game moved forward quite quickly. When I came back, the team I was playing for were quite violent so there’d be giant fist fights during training. It was at a point in my life where I’d found weed and girls and drink, and I thought do I want to be punched by big men or do I want to drink and flirt with women and so I chose B. But I was good, I played for years and years. I was a very good prop forward.
