While Jerry Seinfeld and his writing partner Spike Feresten didn’t necessarily have an initial plan for the casting in Unfrosted, the pair knew they had to have Hugh Grant as Frosted Flakes’ mascot Tony the Tiger.
The director and writer recently spoke to IndieWire about how they scored the Notting Hill star for the role of Thurl Ravenscroft in the Netflix Pop-Tart comedy.
“There was a long time where we didn’t have anybody to make this movie. We had the budget, we had the script, but we didn’t have any people to play the parts,” Seinfeld recalled. “That was one of the most terrifying moments. We would go into this little room that we had with each part on a 3×5 card on the wall. And we had [Jim] Gaffigan as Kellogg — and that was it. And there were like 30 parts.”
They started filling out the cast, one by one, and once they got to Grant, they knew he was perfect for the role when he took his character’s lines very seriously. Feresten said the actor even got into character and sent them a homemade iPhone video after he was offered the role.
“He had a glass of wine in his hand, and he was on the couch,” Feresten explained. “We were just stunned on how homemade his audition was — and how good it was. Here’s Hugh Grant at 8 o’clock at night before he goes to bed, crushing the lines. Crushing. That’s when we said, ‘Jerry, close this for us. Get this guy.’”
After Grant signed on to the project, Seinfeld said “somehow,” that’s when “a lot of other people started falling in after that.”
The star-studded ensemble in Unfrosted includes the director himself, Grant, Gaffigan, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Poehler, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, James Marsden and Jack McBrayer.
While the film’s castmembers have top-notch acting skills, Seinfeld added, “Luckily, acting was very low on our list of job requirements to be in this movie. Basically, it was, ‘Could you get here on this day?’ was what we cared about.”
Unfrosted, which hits Netflix on May 3, follows cereal rivals Kellogg’s and Post and their race in 1963 to create a pastry that will change the breakfast game forever.
