In the past, Hugh Grant has come to the correct opinion that Paddington 2 is the greatest film he’s ever acted in, presumably because he got to wear dozens of cheeky disguises and perform a Follies number in a prison. His children, though, weren’t as easily sold on the marmalade sandwich industrial complex. As Grant recalled on Wednesday’s Late Night, he still considers Paddington 2 to be “kind of a masterpiece,†even if his flock of inconsiderate kids think otherwise. “I set up a special screening for them. That takes a whole cinema, I have hundreds of children,†he explained. “I got them in there and they pretty much hated it. They kept whispering to me, Why are you in it so much? I make them like it now. They have to watch it every night and tell me how good I am, otherwise they don’t get fed.â€
Grant also admitted that working concurrently with Ben Whishaw on Paddington 2 and A Very English Scandal gave him a case of creative whiplash, for reasons we’ll just let him explain. “To have to basically rape him and then try to kill him for the whole autumn of 2017 was weird,†Grant said. “It didn’t feel right.†To be clear, the worst thing he does to Paddington is chase him on a train. It does not go further than that.