Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Nick Frost felt like he’d “won the lottery” when he was cast as Hagrid in the Harry Potter TV show.
The 54-year-old actor is thrilled to be playing the giant groundskeeper in HBO’s adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s beloved wizarding novel series and admitted it was impossible to play it cool over the dream role.
He laughed in an interview with the Sunday Times’ Culture magazine: “I’d be going to the bathroom at night and come back to bed and find myself suddenly going, ‘You’re f***ing Hagrid!’
I felt like I’d won the lottery.”
Nick claims he landed the role after manifesting the job by writing out the word ‘Hagrid’ a staggering 8,000 times.
But he admitted: “Though strictly speaking the last 2,000 of them I wrote the word ‘Hadrig’. I’ve got dyslexia. I didn’t notice that I wasn’t writing ‘Hagrid’ any more.”
The Hot Fuzz star is following in the footsteps of the late Robbie Coltrane, who played Hagrid in the film series, and he’s already accepted that not everyone will be happy with his portrayal of the beloved character.
He said: “I’ve tried to take what Robbie did and honour that … but also I’ve got eight hours here each series, while Robbie had two and a half — there has to be a bit more to him. So: he’s from Bristol. He’s nice, a bit quiet.
“Some people won’t like it. They’ll go, ‘Not my Hagrid.’ And that is all right.”
And Nick isn’t worried about being criticised for signing up for Harry Potter at a time when Rowling has been lambasted over her gender-criticial views.
He said: “I can’t control all that stuff. I only know what I feel, and I don’t really have to justify it to anyone. No one is ever going to be happy all the time. And I think what I have learnt over the past seven years is don’t even bother. Keep yourself true, that’s all you can do.”
For his portrayal of Hagrid, Nick has been inspired by his uncle Emy, who contyracted scarlet fever at the age of 10 in the 1950s and “never grew up from that point”, as well as Michael Clarke Duncan’s The Green Mile character, the “huge, violent but childlike” John Coffey.
While Nick previously worked with friends Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the World’s End, the pair recently joked their pal would be too busy to work with them again because of Harry Potter, but he insisted there is plenty of time to get him involved with their upcoming collaboration.
He said: “I’ve got every summer off for the next eight years, so I’ve definitely got ten weeks”.
