What dance scene in a movie was very difficult to shoot for reasons you don’t suspect?
One of the most iconic scenes in the British romantic comedy Love Actually shows Hugh Grant, as the British Prime Minister, dancing alone in his Downing Street apartment.
The scene is funny and does not seem to represent any particular difficulty from a directing point of view. However, it was the most difficult to shoot in the entire film and a subject of great tension between Hugh Grant and director Richard Curtis.
“That dance sequence was a source of stress for me,” Grant told GQ in a 2019 interview. “The whole time I was shooting it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s hard enough to dance when you’re English and in your forties, even at a wedding with a drink in your nose… But I was perfectly sober when we shot that scene. It was 7am, the whole crew was on set watching me. I was convinced that that dance number was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, that I was going to become the embodiment of ridicule, that it was going to be the worst thing ever put on film…”
Hugh Grant was indeed afraid of making a fool of himself. And his fear turned into real anxiety.
He tried to convince Richard Curtis to rewrite that part of the film so he wouldn’t have to shoot it.
His main argument was the lack of logic in the script: “I said to Richard: ‘OK, I’m in my room, listening to the radio, dancing, OK. But then I go to another room and I’m still dancing. Where’s the music coming from? I go down the stairs, I’m still dancing. Where’s the music coming from? I’m in the living room, where’s the music coming from? It doesn’t make any sense! When someone listens to music in one room of 10 Downing Street, does the whole house enjoy it? And then suddenly there’s someone behind me and the music stops. Who stopped the music? It doesn’t make any sense!’ “
Richard Curtis will try to reassure Hugh Grant by answering him “Don’t worry about these details. We are in the imaginary world of movies…” But that will not be enough to calm the actor, who will fake a sprained ankle on the day of the shooting of the scene to avoid the ordeal! Richard Curtis will not fall for it and will manage to convince his actor to trust him and to go for it.
