Hugh Grant is seemingly still holding a grudge against the film critic who spoiled Paddington 2’s otherwise perfect score on the film review site Rotten Tomatoes.
The Bafta winner played the villainous actor Phoenix Buchanan in the Paddington sequel, which was unanimously lauded by critics upon its release in 2017, to the extent it held 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for several years.
However, in 2021, a writer for the website Film Authority gave Paddington 2 two stars in a retrospective review (the same critic claimed to have been similarly critical on BBC a radio show closer to the film’s release, though this obviously didn’t count towards its Rotten Tomatoes score).
As a result, Paddington 2’s score was knocked down to a measly 99%, which is something Hugh is still a little sore over.
“Some bastard didn’t like it being 100% and wrote a bad review,” he recently told SiriusXM. “Imagine being that person!”
The journalist in question later wrote of the backlash to their Paddington 2 review, revealing they’d had to turn comments off on the article after a deluge of abusive comments and even death threats.
Hugh briefly reprised the role of Phoenix Buchanan in the third movie in the family adventure series, Paddington In Peru, and while this may not have lived up to its predecessors in terms of critical score, it was popular with viewers all the same.
While promoting his new movie Heretic, Hugh has repeatedly spoken of his love for Paddington 2, which forms a major part of what he’s come to refer to as the “freak show” part of his career, that also includes playing an Oompa Loompa in the musical Wonka and Tony The Tiger in Netflix’s Unfrosted.