There’s something inherently likable about Nick Frost. It often feels as though he’s not acting at all – just being himself. That may be because he wasn’t an actor at all until Simon Pegg cast him as his best mate Mike Watt in the much-loved sitcom Spaced, when Frost was working as a waiter in a Mexican restaurant in London. After bonding over a shared love of comedy, horror, Star Wars and video games, the pair became slacker flatmates as well as friends.
Their bromance soon continued on screen, with Frost playing slovenly best mate Ed to Pegg’s Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, followed by the guileless West Country police officer Danny Butterman opposite Pegg’s Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz. They reunited once more for the final instalment of their Cornetto trilogy, with Frost as teetotal lawyer Andy – childhood friend to Pegg’s Gary – in The World’s End. The pair also co-wrote and starred as British geeks on a US road trip with an alien in Paul, and later teamed up again for the criminally underrated Amazon series Truth Seekers.
Away from Pegg, Frost has carved out a varied and surprisingly eclectic career. You might have seen him as factory worker Don Burton in Kinky Boots; DJ “Doctor” Dave in Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked; a local drug dealer in Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block; a former teen salsa champion in Cuban Fury; Ricky the Tattooist in Iain Morris’s The Festival; and WWE wrestler Ricky Knight in Steven Merchant’s Fighting with My Family. In 2024, he wrote and starred in the horror comedy Get Away. He’s up next in horror, Whistle, about a group of high school misfits who come across an ancient Aztec death whistle. Sounds spooky.
On television, Frost has played Commander Henderson in the BBC Two sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive; led the Sky comedy Mr Sloane, appeared as Santa Claus in two Peter Capaldi-era Christmas specials of Doctor Who; and – perhaps most improbably – narrated Channel 4’s Supernanny. More recently, he voiced SM-33 in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. And then there’s the small matter of his upcoming role as Hagrid in HBO’s Harry Potter – the second most famous groundskeeper in the world, after Groundskeeper Willie.
So, there’s plenty to ask the great man: from his love of West Ham to why he hates the word “bromance” (oops), to that time he flushed not one but two birthday cakes down the toilet. Please get your questions in by midday on Tuesday 27 January and we’ll print his answers in Film & Music on Friday 30 January.
• Whistle is in UK cinemas 6 February
