Nick Frost, star of such movies as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and At World’s End, and most recently, Fighting With my Family, and currently in AMC’s Into the Badlands, was a delight to fans at the Great Philly Comic-Con earlier this month, where he did photo ops, autographs, and a meaty panel. The panel gave us fans a chance to hear the man behind the mirth, and he did not disappoint. After getting comfy on the couches, they got right into it.

You can see what he had to say, along with a video and some images from the panel, below.

Moderator: You not only got to grace Doctor Who, you played an iconic character like Santa Claus. How was that experience?

Nick Frost: I really loved it. I mean, I was a fan and then when I got the call from the agency to be a special guest on the Christmas Special, and that character is Father Christmas. It was amazing! Here’s the thing you may not know. When you are on Doctor Who, you have to pay for your own food, which is a really odd thing for me. I just assumed because it’s the biggest show in the world at that point, you just kinda get fed. So they’re like, “Well what do you want for breakfast?” So you order breakfast and they bring it to you, and then he says, “Oh, that’s 4 pounds 60.” So you have to pay for your own food on set. It is really strange.

Moderator: How big a fan were you growing up?

Nick Frost: My Doctor Who was Tom Baker. That was my guy. I don’t know, I fell out of it for a while. And then Matt Smith relit my imagination for it.

Moderator: What kind of comedy were you into growing up?

Nick Frost: I remember watching, I think were The Young Ones with my mum and dad. I was about 10. That was the one thing I was allowed to stay up for. My bedtime was like 8:00 at night. It was on about 9:30, and it was the first thing really, that my mum and dad and me would sit together and laugh at a TV show.

Moderator: Moving on in your career, we get to a little movie called Shaun of the Dead. I heard it was influenced by an episode of Spaced. Wasn’t there a zombie episode?

Nick Frost: We always wanted to make a zombie film. We had so much fun shooting that episode.

Nick Frost: It was tough it was really tough. I don’t know if you know this, but it rains a lot. So everything we had to shoot was outside. We never had enough time. I don’t know, it was a step up from doing a TV show

Moderator: Did it feel like things exploded after that?

Nick Frost: Yeah, yeah. It’s different when you are there, because you’re working from job to job trying to pay your mortgage, so you don’t feel like, ‘Yeah!!’ We did a press tour for Shaun of the Dead with like 22 U.S. cities in 25 days, and people like it. We did exactly the same thing for Hot Fuzz, 26 cities in 31 days.

Frost went on to say how the reception between the two movies was vastly different, and that he could tell by the second one how much people really loved Shaun of the Dead.

The fans jumped into the fray, pairing up with the moderator to uncover such tidbits like:

– Frost and Simon Pegg wrestled to the point of breaking a bed and almost severing Frost’s thumb.

– Cake flushing (American toilets are powerful).

– Loves being part of conventions and the “mishmash” of genres.

– Edgar Wright plans every single minute of the movies in his mind.

– The three movies (of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy — Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and At World’s End) are sequels in terms of tone, not sequence.

Here’s the panel in its entirety thanks to Fandom Spotlite.

Video

NICK FROST Panel (Shaun of the Dead, Into the Badlands) – GPCC 2019

Images