Hugh Grant plays the villain in the new A24 film, Heretic.

Kimberley French/A24

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Kimberley French/A24

In the new horror movie Heretictwo young Mormon missionaries knock on the door of someone we only know as Mr. Reed (played by Hugh Grant). At first he seems innocent and curious about their religion.

“It is so important to find your faith in a doctrine that you really believe in,” Mr. Reed tells the missionaries, played by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. “And that’s a very, very personal challenge that I’ve struggled with for a very, very long time. What is the one true religion?”

But a conversation about faith soon reveals a slow-burning threat that turns to fear as his guests are held captive and try to escape.

Now you might be thinking, “Grant, a bad guy?” He doesn’t usually play the confused romantic lead like in Love actually, Notting HillAnd Four weddings and a funeral?

Grant has spoken Morning edition‘s A Martinez on Mr. Reed and building what he calls his resume of “crazies.”

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sophie Thatcher (left) and Chloe East (right) play Mormon missionaries in the new film ‘Heretic’.

Kimberley French/A24

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Kimberley French/A24

A Martinez: Who is Mr. Reed?

Hugh Grant: At the beginning of this film he seems like a perfectly nice, decent, fairly intelligent man who lives with his wife in a middle-class home somewhere in the middle of America. And these two nice Mormon missionary girls have heard that he has expressed some interest in hearing a little more about Mormonism. He is very charming at the door and invites them in. They say, “We are only allowed to enter if a woman is present.” He says, ‘My wife is here. She is cooking a cake. Come in.” And they go in. They would like to talk to Mr. Reed. They are excited about the cake. And then things start to get a little weird.

Martinez: So the interaction between you and the two missionaries… For me, as a man in my mid-fifties, I always think that when I’m in a coffee shop or in a store and I have to communicate with someone 30 years younger than me, it seems from a distance or even up close…awkward . I’m not saying sexual or anything like that. It’s just that I don’t speak the language anymore. That’s what I felt when I saw Mr. Reed talking to the two girls.

Scholarship: Well, maybe you’re right that part of the weirdness is just an age difference. But I think Mr. Reed thinks he is very sad about the children. I think he worked as a university teacher and considered himself the kind of hipster that the kids liked more than the other professors.

A key moment in figuring out who he was: I decided he was the kind of teacher who wore double denim. Double denim was incredibly important to my vision for this character.

Martinez: Did you create a character that we don’t see in the film? A bio, so to speak.

Scholarship: Yes.

The older I’ve gotten – the more I’ve acted – it’s almost obsessive. So yes, there are hundreds of pages of biography of this man.

Martinez: Wait, wait. Hundreds of pages you’ve written?

Scholarship: Yes. Yes. But as I’m writing them, I’m also interacting with the director, where the writers are saying, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?” But a lot of it is my fault. And I prefer to keep it a secret.

Martinez: Why are you doing that?

Scholarship: There are two reasons. First, I’m convinced that this intense marinade in the character and background somehow makes the character richer for the camera. And the other is that I’m so nervous about acting, especially with a new movie looming on the calendar, that just doing it for four or five hours a day, every day for weeks and months, calms me down.

Martinez: So Mr. Reed is charmingly creepy.

Scholarship: Yes.

Martinez: It seems like you slide into it very seamlessly.

Scholarship: Thank you. That’s sweet of you.

Martinez: How did you get there? Considering what we’re going to see in the film and how it starts, it’s quite a transition.

Scholarship: There was a limited series I did called “The Undoing” with Nicole Kidman and it was the same thing with an outer character and an inner character. I had extensive caveats for each of them in my script, because what the outer character does or appears to do in the scene is not at all the same as what the inner, damaged beast is actually thinking and plotting.

“I decided he was the kind of teacher who wore double denim,” says Hugh Grant. “Double denim was incredibly important to my vision for this character.”

Kimberley French/A24

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Kimberley French/A24

Martinez: Do you like having that dark side?

Scholarship: I’m fascinated by it. And it’s fun for actors. And it is always interesting and magnetic for the audience. They’re always attracted to the bad guy instead of the brooding goody who leads two shoes.

Martinez: I like gangster movies. I like movies about gang members and mafia members. What is that attraction – like a moth to a flame – to the criminal element, to the evil side. I mean, that’s the part that I think everyone has, whether they want to admit it or not.

Scholarship: Well, my personal theory is that we’re pretty obnoxious and some people suppress it better than others.

Martinez: Some people suppress it better than others. (Laughs)

Scholarship: Yes. You, not so good. But the older I get, the more I think that the veneer of civilization is a very thin veneer. And I really see it cracking everywhere at the moment.

Martinez: I mean, it’s hard. I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to hide that side.

Scholarship: I’m interested in what social media did because before social media and the ability for people to troll each other anonymously, this was all hidden. You almost didn’t know it. That these people hated you, or hated your wife, or hated black people, or Jewish people, or whatever despicable things they say online. And now it’s all here. And I think it’s very depressing for humanity to learn this. Oh, my God, we’re horrible.

The audio version of this interview was edited by Phil Harrell, with digital editing by Majd Al-Waheidi.