Nick Frost: 'Me and Simon Pegg will definitely do something else' (original) (raw)

Nick Frost used to be unusually worried about the threat of demonic possession. The actor and writer was raised in Essex in a Catholic household where talk of the supernatural was commonplace. Plus, he watched too many horror movies. “For me The Omen was like a documentary,” says the 52-year-old. “I read a book that said cases of possession usually peak at the age of 16. When I woke up on the morning of my 16th birthday I punched the air.” He laughs. “Yes! I wasn’t going to be possessed.”

But Frost’s family was still plagued by earthly terrors: financial ruin, collapsing health, bereavement, alcoholism. Starting when he was around 10, in return for making him sit in the pub for hours, his parents let him choose a film from the video shop next door and watch it while they slept through the afternoon. He selected horror because it was taboo: The Exorcist, Poltergeist, Night of the Living Dead. “Even though the subject matter is brutal or frightening, for me it was like a lifeboat,” he says. “That was my safe space.”

Frost is video calling from his iPhone, which jounces as he buzzes around his house in Twickenham. A shaky signal and interruptions from delivery drivers add to the air of chaos. I can just make out a thick gold chain around his neck and a fistful of gold rings, including one that says “DAD”.

Maisie Ayres as Jessie, Sebastian Croft as Sam, Aisling Bea as Susan, and Nick Frost as Richard in ‘Get Away’ (Photo: Film still)

In his new film Get Away, on which he is writer and producer as well as star, Frost plays the father of a jolly, loving family (Aisling Bea is the mum) who holiday on a remote Swedish island with a traumatic past and a suspicion of outsiders. Bad omens proliferate. Mayhem ensues. Gallons of blood are spilled. Like Shaun of the Dead, which launched his film career in 2004, it’s a cocktail of horror and comedy – two genres that share a mission to elicit involuntary physical reactions.

“I didn’t even think about [_Get Away_] as a horror, really,” Frost insists. “I wrote it as a comedy with some killing in it, and only realised after I showed it to my wife who said, ‘God, it’s really gruesome’. The comedy should be funny and the horror should be scary and if you water either of those down, you’re left with a sludgy mess.”

Frost got the idea from holidaying on a similar island for the past 15 years. “Part of going on that island was feeling like I never belonged,” he explains. “I spoke to one of the male elders and said, ‘Would you ever consider letting me shoot a film here?’ and he said, ‘Don’t shit where you eat.’ And that was that.” Frost grins. “But he did at least acknowledge that I eat there.” Diplomacy demanded that the shoot take place in Finland instead.

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Frost loves the camaraderie of film sets. “I feel a responsibility to entertain the whole crew: here’s a joke, there’s some banter. I’ve got little bits that I’ve been doing for 20 years.” As someone with ADHD, he also appreciates the routine: the reassuring rhythm of the call sheet, the same meals at the same time every day. It’s why he likes to keep busy (he’s recently filmed Jordan Gray’s ITV1 sitcom Transaction and the live–action blockbuster How to Train Your Dragon) and dreads blank spaces in his diary. “But that’s why I paint and write and cook,” he says. “That, too, is a way to create.”

Cooking is a big deal for Frost. In his recent book A Slice of Fried Gold, a memoir wrapped in a cookbook, the recipes are as psychological as they are practical. The way he tells it, preparing food is a creative expression, a vehicle for memories, a form of therapy and an act of love. “I think I would have been a great chef,” he says. “I would have been good in the army — or in prison. I have all those things in me.”

In his twenties, he worked for seven years as a waiter and a line cook at Chiquito’s, a Mexican chain restaurant in north London. One life–changing night, he went to the pub with a colleague and met her boyfriend, Simon Pegg. They soon became inseparable friends and flatmates. Pegg was an ambitious up-and-coming comedian but nobody made him laugh like Frost, so when Channel 4 commissioned Spaced, his postmodern flatshare sitcom directed by Edgar Wright, he insisted that Frost play his character’s best mate. Its success led all three to Shaun of the Dead. “I f**king loved it,” Frost says. “It fired something up in me: this is what I want to do.”

Best friends Mike (Nick Frost) and Tim (Simon Pegg) in Channel 4’s hit show ‘Spaced’ (Photo: Channel 4)

For a long time, Frost couldn’t watch Shaun of the Dead without being bugged by his inexperience, but last year’s 20th-anniversary screening felt different. “I think because so much time had gone by, I wasn’t as critical of my role as I had been. It made me quite emotional, seeing us all so young. It was beautiful.”

He realised with a jolt that, at 52, he was almost as old as Bill Nighy was when he played Pegg’s stepfather. He has three kids himself and entered the cinematic “dad zone” as Florence Pugh’s father in the 2019 wrestling comedy Fighting with My Family. “I’m starting to work out that the characters I write for myself aren’t 30 anymore,” he says, “which is probably where I think I am still.”

For a decade following Shaun of the Dead, Frost and Pegg’s rapport was one of British cinema’s most appealing brands. In Hot Fuzz and the UFO comedy Paul they represented an archetypal Gen X friendship, oiled by pop culture references, daft in–jokes and prolonged adolescence. But the midlife crisis theme of 2013’s The World’s End hinted at something darker beneath the surface. Pegg subsequently revealed that he was an alcoholic who had been in recovery since 2011, while Frost unveiled his own struggles with anxiety and addiction. It was a cold splash of reality: they hadn’t been having half as much fun as we thought.

Lucy Davis as Dianne, with Kate Ashfield as Liz, Dylan Moran as David, Simon Pegg as Shaun, Penelope Wilton as Barbara, and Nick Frost as Ed, in ‘Shaun of the Dead’, 2004 (Photo: Oliver Upton)

Their off–screen relationship, however, survived it all. They text every day and their production company Stolen Picture is behind Get Away. “Our films are about how male friendships evolve as men get older,” Frost says. “I think me and Simon [Pegg] and Edgar [Wright] will definitely do something else at some point. Even if we’re 60, it’s like, so how are these 60–year–old friends now? What’s their relationship like? And our audience will be 60 as well. We’ve all grown up together.”

Frost used to keep his problems close to his chest – “Maybe I’m of a generation where you just f**king get on with it” – but he has since opened up about both his troubled past and his mental health, first in his 2015 memoir Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies and then in A Slice of Fried Gold, which slides painful confessions between tips on how to make the perfect risotto.

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“I just like to be honest,” he shrugs. “There’s nothing to hide. But I’d hate for my children to be affected by my honesty. If I was to write another one, I’d be maybe less candid.” He pauses. “Maybe this is the way I tell my kids about how shit went down. These things are there for them when I’m gone. When I lost my parents [in his 30s], I knew nothing about them really.”

At 47, Frost was diagnosed with not just ADHD but PTSD, OCD, dyslexia and anxiety. I wonder what difference that knowledge has made. “I’ve thought, would my life have changed if no one had told me?” he ponders. “I think it makes it easier to ask for help. But obviously you can’t just blame your neurodivergence. It’s not a free pass. You’re still responsible for the things you do badly.”

Usually when celebrities write about their problems they draw a line under them, but Frost’s books avoid tidy happy endings. Even as he writes that he’s finally ready to break the “chain of fear and misery and drink and drugs and violence and death” [he has lost all four half–siblings as well as his parents], he admits that life is still challenging.

“What’s ever tied up in a bow?” he says with a sigh. “When you see a lot of death from quite a young age, you realise that maybe the happy endings are the little endings you have every day: a kiss good night, or a cuddle. A thickly buttered crumpet with jam. A cup of tea. The stroke of a cat. Just try to acknowledge that those things are happy endings, too.”

Get Away is out now on Sky Cinema