Hugh Grant is aware that he’s best known for playing the bumbling love interest in romantic comedies. Now, he’s embracing his villain era.
“To be absolutely honest with you, I’ve felt more comfortable in the last eight or nine years where I’ve played almost exclusively twisted narcissistic monsters,” Grant told Yahoo Entertainment. “So I don’t know what that says about me.”
In Heretic, which is in theaters Nov. 8, Grant plays a scholar who is visited by two Mormon missionaries. As they share their message with him, his sinister intentions become increasingly apparent.
Grant took some inspiration from his own community, as well.
“A lot of the models that were in my head or mood board are actually people from my real life whose names I would prefer not to share because they might possibly take offense,” he joked.
Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher, who play the two Mormon missionaries who visit Grant’s character, are both former Mormons in real life.
Thatcher told Yahoo Entertainment that she was impressed by how the script shares so many viewpoints with sensitivity. She shared the script with her mom, who is still a practicing Mormon.
“As soon as I got her approval, I felt like I could do it,” Thatcher said.
East told Yahoo Entertainment that when she first read the movie’s logline, she was immediately concerned that being a part of the film might offend people she cares about because Mormons are so often made fun of in popular culture, from The Book of Mormon to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
“[I thought] it’s probably just this one-sided take on Mormonism and we get it. It’s in media everywhere. Mormons are the butt of the joke and all the stereotypes,” East said. Reading the script and noticing how precise it was in its terminology assuaged her fears.
“It really is a true depiction of sister missionaries and what they do,” she added.
Beck and Woods began writing the script a decade ago. They were stumped by Grant’s character, Mr. Reed, who speaks fluently about many religions, and took time to study scholars and learn more about life before returning to the script.
“Scott and I have known each other since we were 11 years old, and since [then] we’ve been, believe it or not, imagining doing some kind of religious horror exploration,” Woods said. “In seventh grade, we saw the movie Contact by Robert Zemeckis, and that had a profound effect on us … because it felt like an adult conversation about religion inside of the context of a popcorn movie.”
That’s exactly what they’re hoping Heretic is for their audience.
Heretic is in theaters Nov. 8.
