Nick Frost On Snow White And The Huntsman

Nick Frost stars as the Dwarf Nion in director Rupert Sanders’ stylish dark fairytale Snow White And The Huntsman. There’s a full interview with him in the new issue of SFX, but here’s an extract to keep you going until that hits the shelves on Wednesday:

What made you want to get involved with this film?
I was the last dwarf to be cast, and I went in to meet Rupert [Sanders, director], and even before the pre-production he’d done so much work. He’d made a little 10-minute short off his own back that I was impressed with. I thought, “Gee whiz, if you can do this on your own, imagine what it’ll be like when you’ve got a lovely big budget!” So it was Rupert, and the chance to meet and work with the likes of Bob (Hoskins), Ray (Winstone) and Ian (McShane – who all play dwarves). Particularly Bob and Ray – those two guys are part of the reason I got into acting, seeing working class men who happened to also be great actors.

There are some big personalities in the cast. Was it difficult to find a balance between the dwarves?
No, I don’t think it was. We did a lot of rehearsal and we went to dwarf college to learn how to walk properly.

You went to dwarf college?
We did! We had three weeks to learn to walk like dwarves. We spent hours walking around, trying to look exactly the same and walk the same. The way we got on and off chairs, and sat down… everything was worked out and we had to keep that shape and that physicality throughout the whole shoot.

What can we expect from these dwarves? They look terrifying!
You hit the nail on the head. Part of our backstory that we talked about a lot in rehearsal is that the dwarves were originally a big, thriving population, and they came out of the mine one day to find that everything and everyone they loved had been destroyed. So the eight dwarves you see in the film are, potentially, the last eight dwarves in the world. When you first see them they are essentially monsters, animals. They’ve gone from being very noble artisans with families and lovely lives to this.

• SFX #223 is on sale from Wednesday 30 May.

• Snow White And The Huntsman in is UK cinemas from Wednesday 30 May.