Hugh Grant has confirmed that his character of Phillip is “married to James Bond” in Netflix’s new Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The BAFTA Award-winning actor confirmed the news while speaking to Collider about the mystery film.
“It’s the tiniest little moment. I don’t really know why they wanted to do it but anyway, I thought Knives Out 1 was brilliant, and so yeah, I thought why not? I turn up for a few hours…,” Grant added during the interview.
Grant made his debut in the Golden Globe-nominated franchise in a cameo appearance in the follow-up as the husband to Craig’s character, Detective Benoit Blanc. When Janelle Monáe’s character shows up at the detective’s house, Phillip opens the door, wearing an apron and holding a jar of sourdough starter.
Rian Johnson, who wrote, directed and produced both entries in the Knives Out series, decided against making a prequel movie to show Blanc’s origin story. Instead, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker decided to instead show small glimpses into detective’s personal life through cameos from not only Grant, but also Ethan Hawke, Natasha Lyonne, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and late icons Angela Landsbury and Stephen Sondheim.
Craig recently spoke to NME about the drama, and, among other things, discussed his character’s sexuality. The actor talked about the detective’s personal life after Johnson confirmed that Blanc was gay and is now living with a man.
When Craig was asked if his character’s sexuality was discussed when he was first cast in the Knives Out franchise or it naturally emerged over time, he replied: “It was something that seemed right. You know; look who he lives with – who wouldn’t want to live with that person?”
Besides the detective’s sexuality, Johnson also recently discussed keeping each entry self-contained within the Knives Out Cinematic Universe, which has a third installment already in development at Netflix. Last year, the streaming service paid $450 million for the rights for two sequels in the franchise, plus $40 million to produce the first follow-up, which became Glass Onion.
“Honestly, I’m pissed off that we have A Knives Out Mystery in the title. You know?” the Saturn Award-nominated filmmaker admitted to The Atlantic. “I want it to just be called Glass Onion. I get it, and I want everyone who liked the first movie to know this is next in the series, but also, the whole appeal to me is it’s a new novel off the shelf every time. But there’s a gravity of a thousand suns toward serialized storytelling.”
The follow-up to Johnson’s acclaimed 2019 mystery movie initially had a limited release in theaters on November 23 before it debuted on Netflix exactly a month later. The streaming service recently revealed that Glass Onion was watched for 82.1 million hours over its first weekend.
By Netflix’s estimation, dividing viewing hours by the film’s 139-minute runtime, 35 million households worldwide watched the film over the Christmas weekend. These figures make Glass Onion the sixth biggest movie debut on the streaming service in the last two years.