Nick Frost: ‘I’m afraid of getting Covid. I don’t know what the truth is. I don’t understand the tier system’
Nick Frostâs 2015 memoir, Truths, Half-Truths & Little White Lies, ends on a surprisingly downbeat note. Typically, these memoirs conclude with the celebrity lying by their pool in Beverly Hills, congratulating themselves on how itâs all turned out. Not Frostâs. Together with his best friend, Simon Pegg, he has made Spaced, Paul, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The Worldâs End. He has money in the bank, a new son and an international reputation, but his life has been marked by an extraordinary amount of tragedy. His 18-year-old sister died of asthma when he was 10. When he was 16, his father went bankrupt, and the stress caused his alcoholic mother to have a stroke. Neither parent fully recovered. Frost attempted suicide when he was 17. Then, in the space of a decade from 2005, Frost lost both of his parents and four of his half-siblings.
âMy professional success (relatively speaking) comes at a price,â he writes. âI want to tell you that things got better for me emotionally but I canât, they didnât. Seemingly every time I did a film another member of my family died. Was this the price I had to pay for success?â
Itâs with this thought in mind that I sit down in a cafe near Frostâs home in Teddington, west London, to catch up with him. Despite the difficulties presented by 2020, this looks like a good time for Frost. He has a new eight-part Amazon Prime series out, Truth Seekers, which reunites him with Pegg in a sitcom for the first time since Spaced. He has an 18-month-old son with his girlfriend, and a nine-year-old, Mac, with his ex-wife, Christina.
Seven minutes before he is due to arrive, however, I get an email from his publicist informing me that he has to cancel. A few hours later, Frost emails to apologise and explain that a close friend has died. Later itâs reported that itâs Miles Ketley, the CEO of Stolen Picture, the production company Frost owns with Pegg, who has died suddenly at the age of just 52.
âIâm afraid, man,â Frost says, when we speak a couple of weeks later, by which time Covid has sent interviews back to Zoom. His familiar bearish torso is clad in a blue Ellesse T-shirt, and his chin, which he strokes frequently, is covered in stubble rather than the thicker beard heâs had more recently. For someone who has always been a âbig manâ, coronavirus presents an extra threat. âI shaved my beard off the other day, thinking Iâd be some chiselled Judge Dredd-style guy underneath, but instead I cried for like two hours.
âIâm afraid of getting Covid, of the misinformation around it. I donât know what the truth is. I donât understand the tier system. Then Miles passing was just like, âF***!â He was my brother. I know nothing about being a producer, but everything I know I learned from him. He was creative and fantastic at making deals. It was completely unexpected.â
In the new series, co-written by Frost and Pegg with James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders, Frost stars as Gus Roberts, an internet repairman who has a double life as a paranormal investigator. Samson Kayo plays his partner, Elton, and Pegg has a supporting role as his boss, Dave. Malcolm McDowell even crops up as Gusâs infirm father, Richard. Itâs a charming, witty series with some genuinely spooky moments, anchored by Frostâs performance. Watching it, you would never guess that it was such a nightmare to create that Frost walked out halfway through.
âThe edit was difficult and the writing was a pain, too,â Frost says. âWe were late in delivering it. We wanted it to be too big and we didnât have a clear end in sight, which made it really difficult. We got to a point where we were just sitting around and I was like, âF*** this.â I quit, James and Nat quit. I really learned a lesson in terms of writing. Weâd do it differently next time.â He has no time for the idea, floated by Joker director Todd Phillips and others, that comedy has become more difficult to write in an era of greater respect for personal sensitivities. âItâs only harder if you want to write jokes about black people,â he says. âThatâs never been our thing.â
Whatever the seriesâ gestational difficulties, itâs nice to see him reunited onscreen with Pegg. Their relationship at times has seemed like a kind of fantasy bromance, in which they have somehow managed to translate an adolescent male friendship based around lager and video games into genuine Hollywood stardom. The legend is well worn by now: they met when Frost was working as a waiter at an Indian restaurant with Peggâs then-girlfriend and instantly bonded over Star Wars. Pegg got Frost into stand-up, they lived together, sharing a bed and reading to each other. Pegg cast Frost in Spaced, alongside Mark Heap and Jessica Hynes, and a great double act was born. Truth Seekers lets the pair revisit old interests, after years in which Pegg has achieved global fame, starring in Mission Impossible, Star Trek and Star Wars, while Frost has had steady, if less glamorous work, such as last yearâs wrestling comedy, Fighting With My Family.
âSimon and I have always loved horror and conspiracy theories and things with an X-Files element,â he says. âI didnât know there was such a thing as cinema until I met him. I knew there were films, but I didnât know there was âcinemaâ, or âgenreâ. In Gants Hill [where Essex meets east London, and where Frost grew up] there was a newsagent next to the pub where you could get VHS. On a Sunday when my parents were drinking, the payoff was I could get any film I wanted, and it was always The Exorcist or Poltergeist or I Spit on Your Grave. Itâs got to be kind of s*** [at home] if you run away to see Omen films. Maybe it was an escape, although I didnât see it like that at the time.â
For all the tragedy in Frostâs life, including the shocking death of Ketley, he strikes a more hopeful tone than in previous interviews, where he has said he thought he would never be âfixedâ.
âI think things for me can be fixed. It would be unfair to my children to use that idea as an excuse to be a poor father or poor person. After all the years of being depressed and thinking so much about everything, Iâve found that maybe itâs simpler than I thought it would be. There are things I can do that bring it back to the moment, and Iâm that much happier. Iâve always been trying to make people happy, and always imagined that if I can make you happy, Iâll be happy, but that never came. It has to come from me. If someone had said to me 18 years ago that the key to being happy was just to worry about living right now, Iâd have laughed you out of the boozer.â
He has been teetotal for four years, and says he only misses pints of lager. He collects art and trainers. In lockdown he started painting, which takes his mind off things. âI go into my shed and I donât worry about money or if the kids are happy or if people like Truth Seekers. It helps.â Is he any good? âIf someone had had a really terrible crash or stroke and injured their brain and the surgeon said, âMaybe you should try art to learn to speak again,â itâs about there at this point.â
He mentions money a few times, and I wonder if things are leaner in the Frost household than they might appear from the outside. âA successful actor talking about money in the press always comes off badly, because people are like, âYou donât know what itâs like,â and I understand that. We had f*** all growing up, but I never thought about it. Itâs another thing about being blinkered in your life, wanting to be a child forever. When my dad died, and I had no parents, that was the first time I realised I was utterly alone, and I couldnât phone my dad to ask for a tenner or ask him for advice. Thatâs when I thought, âIâm a man.â I wanted someone to take care of me, to look after me, but once he died I was like, âOK, I need to look after myself.ââ
He is off to America shortly to film a big new series, the details of which are still under wraps when we speak, which ought to help. âListening to some of the economic fallout just for normal people, itâs terrifying,â he says. âI feel very lucky and grateful that Iâve got the chance to make something good and make some f***ing money.â He would like to lose weight. âItâs a difficult thing to do anything about but thatâs no excuse,â he says. âI used to think I didnât want to lose weight until Iâd played Henry VIII and Churchill. But big funny guys when theyâre 30 donât last to be big funny guys when theyâre 50. Watch this space.â
Beyond that, he hopes he and Pegg get a chance to make more Truth Seekers. âI love the show, I hope we get another chance to do another one,â he says. âI like playing Gus Roberts. Heâs a funky character. He has a sadness to him, and heâs driven by loss. Iâm always interested in that.â
Truth Seekers will premiere on Amazon Prime on 30 October