One of Grant’s recent non-romantic comedy roles was portraying aging stage actor Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, a role that Grant remembers fondly. He says, “I’m delighted it looks like fun but it’s never fun. All of that old cliché about ‘Drama is easy, comedy’s difficult’ … But it was great fun for me to use some of my characters I’d met in my early career working in provincial theater in England.”
On why he finds comedy harder than drama, Grant says comedic roles are “more thankless” and less appreciated by audiences. He argues, “Harder in the sense that they’re more thankless, because audiences throughout the history of entertainment have always been naturally and inextricably drawn towards the baddie. They just love the baddie and they slightly yawn at the goody. No one wants to play Romeo, for Christ’s sake, they want to play Tybalt or Mercutio. To be the good guy and not a yawn or a bore is very difficult.”
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