ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Nick Frost and Bruce Goodinson about the new supernatural thriller movie Black Cab. Frost and Goodison discussed how Frost approached playing such a dark character, the different ways the ending can be interpreted, and more.
“When Anne (Synnøve Karlsen) and Patrick (Luke Norris) hail a black cab after a night out their driver (Nick Frost) is chatty, jovial even, but they are in no mood to talk. In fact, the couple is barely on speaking terms,” the synopsis reads. That is, until they realize the driver has no intention of taking them home. Locked in the cab with no means of escape, the driver transports the couple to a stretch of deserted and supposedly haunted road. But what is his purpose? Is he mad or just plain evil? And why has he selected Anne and Patrick as his victims?”
Black Cab will begin streaming on Shudder on Friday, November 8, 2024.
Brandon Schreur: First question for you, Nick, I’m just kind of curious what stood out to you about this character. It’s really fun getting to watch you play totally against type here. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, you seem like a really nice guy and like everything is going well. Then, obviously, things kind of change.
Nick Frost: You’ve probably hit the nail on the head with the question. It was the chance to be — or, at least, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, to appear to be a jovial ‘ole Nick Frost character, lots of fun. Then, it becomes a little more sinister. And then, the real joy began. I worked on the script as well, so I had some input on that.
Also, I’m a fan of Bruce, you know. It was one of the projects that’s like, you get to sit in a taxi for six weeks, you get to work with Bruce, and the script is what it is. ‘Could you bring your inner lunatic?’ I was like, “Well, absolutely, yes please.” I think, if I’ve done the job right, even if you shouldn’t feel sorry for him — it’s a bit dubious in terms of how he got where he got. I think he’s lost something along the way, you know.
Oh, sure. I think that totally comes across, too. Was it — you said it was fun and everything to be able to play a totally different character like that. Is it fun when you’re actually filming the scenes or do you kind of have to bring yourself to a dark place to become that guy?
Frost: Yeah, absolutely. Synnøve was such a great person to act in those scenes with because she takes it seriously, I take it seriously. There were definitely days and scenes where, once you exited the scene, there were tears, definitely.
It’s difficult. You put yourself in that place, and then, what I’d say, your body and your hypothalamus don’t know that those things you’re feeling aren’t real. You react realistically to those things. As I said, his life is sad, and he’s not a violent man. He’s pushed to this. There were a couple of times when I spent a lot of time screaming at Synnøve — who, herself, was really sad — and it affected me. I’m not that person, so to become that person…Also, you become slightly ashamed that that person is absolutely in me, you know.
Yeah. I’m sure it’s a challenge to hit all those different tones, but I think you do it really well. Like I said, I really enjoyed watching you in here and I thought it was so much fun. Bruce, I’m curious about your perspective on helming this movie as director. I really liked how the movie has a foot in two different sub-genres. For a while, it’s very much a psychological thriller, and then it goes into some more supernatural places. I was reminded of both Alfred Hitchcock and The Twilight Zone while watching it. Was that always the vision, from the beginning, for this movie? Did you always know you to firmly do these two things or did that kind of just come about naturally as you were working on it?
Bruce Goodison: There’s a reflection in your previous question to Nick about how there’s a switch. [It begins] in kind of a realistic space of having a horrible boyfriend who’s being manipulative to this poor woman. The woman is in a very difficult state. She may or may not have lost her child. These are big, heavy questions. You have a coercive control man in the back of a cab. You have a man who wants to protect that woman, who is Nick. And these are very real-life problems, so they’re very easy for an actor to get their head around. And it’s in a very concentrated space, a cab.
Nick’s character, we were trying to bring a level of realism. I come from a realistic background, but I also really enjoy this kind of genre. So it was a bit of a gift. Most of the best, from my observation, the best horror genre or ghost genre [movies] come from a realistic place, whether it be Carrie, who is getting bullied at school and then takes her revenge, or other films. I think that people like Hitchcock, etc., have their foot in things coming from character.
So when it came to the point of ghosts — because this is a ghost story — the question you come out of the theater with, if you go to a theater to watch it or on TV or whatever, was were they real? Or were they a projection of Nick’s character? I think that’s a really good question to come out of the cinema with. Nick and I had a screening in Manchester the other week at the Grimmfest. It was really fascinating to watch people who are [into] the horror genre, ghost genre coming out going, “Thank you, thank you, thank you for making a film that doesn’t just tie everything up in a neat way.” Where this is a disturbing psychological undercurrent for Nick’s character. And where there is a sadness, as well, because he’s also lost a child.
These things, as an audience, you can decide which way it’s going to go. So Nick, I, and I think the rest of the team, we were quite keen to ensure we didn’t lock it all down. Some of the things I said might ring true for some of the people watching it and may not ring true for others. I wasn’t necessarily looking for ghosts or jump scares, but I was looking for a psychological thriller.
Sure. I was going to tell you guys that, too, I loved the ending of this movie and how it leaves things open-ended like that. You can kind of fill in the blanks and your imagination is sometimes scarier than actually putting it on-screen, so I thought the ending was perfect how you guys did that, that was great.
Frost: I think thinking about it now, too, there’s probably four or five potential versions of what’s happened. I love the fact that lots and lots of different members of the audience or people watching at home will be like, “Well, I think this happened,” and they’re like, “Well, I think this.” I always loved that when I was a younger man, coming out of a movie theater and seeing a movie with a few friends, you were just chatting about what you thought the movie was about.
No, definitely. It starts a conversation and I love that.
Goodison: Just adding one thing to Nick’s performance, which I think is extraordinary, to be honest. I had not seen Nick do that — I’m sure he has, I haven’t seen all of your work, Nick. But I was determined, and we were determined, to try and find and use the kind of warmth that Nick has. That comedic strength, his timing, and his wit are impressive, even when we’re trying to invent stuff. It’s just there, it’s in him. This was about trying to create that depth, if you like, that really emotional depth of someone that loses a child and has to try and sort of come to some sort of bargain with an evil spirit in order retrieve some sense of his own moral code. I think that’s a really, really challenging thing to try and play and I think Nick’s done a really impressive job.
Oh, totally. I was going to ask you that, too. This movie has a very distinct kind of tone, I guess. As a director, were you working with Nick a lot to make sure you balance that tone or was this kind of a movie where you could sit back, let him do his thing, and watch him go nuts a little bit?
Goodison: There’s a combination of things in that question because, technically, you’ve got 70 percent of the movie in a cab. We took the decision very early on with the designer and DP to make sure we found a cab that was quite retro. I don’t know if you’ve been to England, but we have cabs that are electric now, apparently. This was a diesel cab from the 1980s. Fortunately, Nick had already gotten his cab license, so that was good. When he’s out of work, he can always keep himself in cash.
Frost: I’ve got three kids. I need to pay for them!
Goodison: What we did was chop a cab in half and open it out like a book so that we could shoot each end of it. My pet hate are low loaders and putting actors on low loaders, particularly when you have intense scenes. Because you never have enough time or enough road in England to be able to get good performances. So that was the strategy.
Because Nick insisted on being on set and in that cab 24/7, even when there was no crew around, by the way. 24/7, he was in the cab. But he could see everything that was going on. Nick’s knowledge of film is so, so sharp that he knows exactly what’s going on at every point. He could see what was going on and we’d be able to work with that as well. His deep, deep roots and understanding of the genre and filmmaking itself just make him a bit of a dream to work with.
Thanks to Nick Frost and Bruce Goodison for discussing Black Cab.
