Sally Phillips has shared a bizarre anecdote from the first time she came face to face with Hugh Grant.
The Bridget Jones star, 54, who plays cursing journalist “Shazzer” in the films based on Helen Fielding’s novels, had a small role in Richard Curtis’ Notting Hill, which was ultimately cut.
Phillips was set to appear alongside Grant, who played the film’s lead character, but was so taken aback by seeing him in real life that she let out a yell when she first laid eyes on him.
Speaking on author Caroline O’Donoghue’s Sentimental Garbage podcast, Phillips said: “I was walking down to set, and I turned around and the third [assistant director] said, ‘Have you met Hugh?’
“And I turned and there was Hugh Grant and I screamed. I accidentally screamed. To this day I don’t know why, but I think it was something to do with size? That he was smaller.”
“That was a really bad start to my relationship with him,” she joked.
Elsewhere in the interview, Phillips recalled how she’d struggled to make conversation with Grant and Colin Firth on the set of Bridget Jones the following year.
“I’d try and talk to them like a grown-up,” she said of the actors. “I remember one time Colin saying, ‘Oh you can come have lunch in my trailer if you like,’ and going into his trailer and just being so awkward.”
“He’s trying to talk to me about London theatre. He doesn’t know that I’m not a proper actress and I’ve never done any theatre really,” Phillips recalled. “I’m going, ‘Yes, the [Royal Shakespeare Company]’ – I’d never been – ‘Really interesting.’”
“I practically tripped going down the stairs on the way out,” she continued. “And then I could just hear this screaming laughter from the others.”
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Phillips also addressed a rumour that she’d done something on the set of the Bridget Jones sequel Edge of Reason that caused Grant not to speak to her for two years.
“Well, let’s be honest, our paths don’t cross much, so it’s easy not to speak to me for two years,” she quipped, explaining that she “got really drunk and lost her flip flops in the sea” while filming in Thailand.
“And I was indiscreet, and that was the line that – the moment that [Grant] felt I was no longer a safe person to spend time with,” Phillips admitted.
“That’s completely understandable,” she said. “We’ve spoken about it now and it’s all fine.”
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