Nick Frost, known for famed British cult comedy trilogy “Three Flavours Cornetto” comes stateside for more American fare. Frost, who starred alongside Simon Pegg in “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End,” finds himself among the likes of Vince Vaughn, Dave Franco, Tom Wilkinson, Sienna Miller and James Marsden in “Unfinished Business.” Frost plays Bill Whilmsley, who Frost describes as “jovial and a little bit sad and single and lonely” but, ultimately, “just a bloody good egg.”
Daily Wildcat: You’ve starred in various British comedies. However, “Unfinished Business” is more American. To you, how do the comedic styles differ, and if they do, how does that influence how you approach a role?
Frost: I think, generally, even though obviously a script is always going to be important for a film, for a movie, I think over with you guys, you’re always keen to improvise a little more and find things in the script that perhaps weren’t there before. I think, as an actor … you have to come on set A) knowing your lines but B) knowing that at one point, that script’s going to go away, and you get to freewheel it slightly, which is, when you’re working with [Franco], and [Wilkinson], and [Vaughn], and [Marsden] and [Miller], they’re all such clever actors. It’s good doing improvisations with actors who can do improvisations. A lot of improv always ends up with people having an argument, and it’s kind of ego-driven in terms of sometimes one actor doesn’t want to let the other actor get the last word in a scene. It can become very confusing, but everyone on this picture was very generous in terms of improvising.
What was one example on-set when your director helped you to realize something about the scene, or your character, that you hadn’t realized previously?
Oh dear. You know what? I have no answer for that question, to be perfectly honest. It’s just never happened like that where the director says, “Hey, what about — ?” I mean, for me personal, on this, there was no bell rung and I said, “Oh my God, of course!” You hopefully try to work all that out before you start shooting, you know.
What movies in theaters — say, over the past six months — have you most enjoyed watching or have been most been impressed with?
I loved “Nightcrawler.” I really liked “The Babadook.” You know what, weirdly, I watched “Annabelle” and really loved it. I thought it was frightening and really nicely directed. It was really clever the way he kind of harvested the fear on the screen. I loved “Fury.” I watched that film last week and I hadn’t seen it before, and I thought it was fantastic. I thought [Brad Pitt’s] fantastic in that. “Birdman” we watched, which I liked very much. You know, there’s kind of being a dearth of great movies out in the last eight months or so.
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