THE PRISON
A bear — albeit a talking one — buying a book
for his aunt is a deliberately small-scale start.
“We tried to make a snowball story where it
starts with a little thing and then gets bigger
and bigger,” says King. “By the end you should
feel like you’ve been on a journey, but the
emotional journey is about getting his aunt
a birthday present.” And that journey takes
Paddington to the one place nobody expected:
prison. Framed for a crime he didn’t commit,
the bear winds up in the big house, where he
meets Brendan Gleeson’s Knuckles McGinty.
But anyone expecting this to suddenly become
Scum 2, with Paddington beating the shit out
of fellow prisoners with a sock filled with
marmalade jars, might be disappointed. “We
tried to channel a lot of Hunger,” laughs King.
“But that piss-sweeping scene just had to go.
No, Paddington’s very blasé and manages to turn
the place into a ridiculous tea room. It’s slightly
ludicrous, what he does to the place.”Grantian self-deprecation. “But he’s a theatre
actor rather than a film actor. That’s the
tiny difference between him and me. He’s
considerably more of a fruity, theatrical luvvie
than I like to think I am.”
King describes Phoenix as both aptly
named (“He’s down on his luck and wants to
rise from the flames”) and an absolute fiend,
who won’t let anything, even a cute talking bear,
get in his way. “He’s a rotter. He wants to put
on a one-man show. This is how we’ve gotten
bigger and better. Other films have villains
who want to blow up the world. We’ve got an
actor who wants to put on a one-man show.”
That one-man show, an evening of music and
monologues, sounds like anyone’s worst
nightmare. “I’m not sure that would be my
favourite evening out,” agrees Grant. “But I’m
ashamed to say that I go to the theatre maybe
once every 10 years. I know that makes me
a disgrace as an actor, and that I should go
and I should love it. But I can’t bear it.” Extra
points for the pun.a secret fortune that makes it a target for the
film’s villain. Enter actor extraordinaire and
all-round rascal, Phoenix Buchanan.
THE VILLAIN
Raising the stakes in the bad-guy department
was not an easy task for King. After all, Nicole
Kidman, a bona fide Oscar winner, held that
position in the first movie as the terrifying
taxidermist, Millicent Clyde. So in the end
he, and producer David Heyman, went for
an honest-to-goodness national treasure
in the shape of Hugh Grant. As it happened,
their choice was in the shape of Hugh Grant
because it was actually Hugh Grant. “It’s tricky
casting a slightly over-the-hill actor on the
downward path of their career, desperate
for one last shot at glory,” says King. “So we
reached for Hugh. And miraculously he could
see himself in the role.” Grant laughs when
Empire relays that description to him. “It’s
all true,” he says in that patented tone of ❯