Sick Note's Rupert Grint: After Harry Potter, I want the chance to show that I can do different things

The actor returns to the spotlight in black comedy 'Sick Note', in a role that could hardly be more different from his character Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films

Rupert Grint stars in black comedy 'Sick Note' – a far cry from his Harry Potter days (Sky)

Even now, some 17 years after it happened, Rupert Grint can still sometimes scarcely believe that he landed the magical part of Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films.

“That role was my dream!” the actor exclaims. “Even before the films started, I was a huge fan of the books, and the character of Ron in particular. I always had an affinity with him, so suddenly to be playing him in the Great Hall of Hogwarts was mind-blowing for an 11-year-old boy.”

But his gratitude does not end there. Grint is modest and realistic enough to acknowledge that playing Ron has been an enormous boost for his subsequent career. “I’ve always felt very lucky to be part of those films. Harry Potter did wonderful things for me. It was a huge part of my life. And I’m grateful that thanks to Harry Potter I’m now able to do fantastic projects like Sick Note.”

Sick Note, a black comedy in which Grint plays the duplicitous character of Daniel, could scarcely be further removed from the Harry Potter films.

Grint as Daniel and Nick Frost as Dr Iain Glennis in ‘Sick Note’ (Sky Atlantic)

At the start of Nat Saunders and James Serafinowicz’s six-part comedy, on Sky 1, Daniel is one of life’s losers. Ditched by his girlfriend Becca (Pippa Bennett-Warner, Harlots) and on the verge of losing his job as a tele-salesman at an insurance company run by the rapacious Kenny (a gloriously over-the-top Don Johnson from Miami Vice), he is an inveterate malingerer and insatiable liar.

He even lies about the death of Becca’s beloved cat, Peanut, in order to avoid the blame for inadvertently killing him in an unfortunate door slamming accident. Daniel is going nowhere – extremely fast.

Until his fortunes change quite dramatically one day. At a routine medical consultation about his (perfectly healthy) elbow, Daniel is solemnly informed by Dr Iain Glennis (played by Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead) that he is actually suffering from oesophageal cancer.

As he mournfully tells people at work the bad news, Daniel retains his job and receives endless sympathy from his formerly hostile colleagues. Becca even takes him back.

Grint played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films

But it soon emerges that the incompetent Iain has misread the X-rays and that Daniel is in fact fine. However, he is enjoying the upturn in his fortunes so much, that Daniel can’t bring himself to tell anyone that he is actually not dying of cancer.

He confides to a close friend that, “It sounds awful, but having cancer all week has been so great. I feel like I’ve won the lottery.” So Daniel and Iain, whose job is also under threat, conspire to keep the doctor’s mistake secret. Once a liar, always a liar...

Of course, the more Daniel keeps digging a hole for himself, the funnier it becomes. Saunders explains that, “The second Daniel tells a lie about still having cancer, it’s the worst mistake of his life, and it only gets worse. You can’t retract a lie of that magnitude, especially when you’re using it for your own ends.”

Sick Note cleverly fuses light and shade. Serafinowicz describes it as, “Dark, but silly as well. It’s Breaking Bad meets Fawlty Towers.”

The cast of ‘Sick Note’: Tolu Ogunmefun (Ash), Pippa Bennett Warner (Becca), Frost (Dr Glennis), Grint (Daniel), Don Johnson (Kenny West), Daniel Rigby (Officer Hayward), Karl Theobald (Michael) and Marama Corlett (Linda) (Ray Burmiston/ Sky Atlantic)

There is also a rich vein of farce running through Sick Note. Iain, for instance, is a ludicrously inept doctor. Frost laughs that, “Iain is so bad at his job that he can’t even pronounce the word ‘oesophagus’. We did a scene the other day where he tells Daniel, ‘You have cancer of the osnophagis’.

“I mean, how on earth has this guy not been struck off? It’s actually quite scary. There are a few places where he alludes to the fact that he may or may not have killed lots of people: ‘Listen, they were all patients – at least most of them were patients!’ I like that farcical aspect of the show. British TV likes farce. This is a great chance to play a nice, dark idiot.”

We are at Wimbledon Studios watching a scene involving all sorts of beeping medical machinery. In a break from filming, Grint comes over to meet me by the Centre Court Restaurant – well, it is in Wimbledon.

The actor was clearly well cast as Ron. In person, the 29-year-old is as charming and easy-going as his most famous alter ego. Grint, who made a very well-regarded stage debut in a West End revival of Jez Butterworth’s Mojo four years ago, says that as soon as he read the script of Sick Note, he could identify with Daniel. “I had a similar experience when I had swine flu a few years ago. When you’re ill, you get a lot of attention, and people bring you cups of tea. It was actually quite an attractive thing.

Grint (right) making his West End stage debut as Sweets in ’Mojo‘ with Daniel Mays (left) playing Potts

“So I get Daniel’s predicament. Obviously, what he does is a lot more serious, but I admit I was tempted to pretend I was ill for longer than I was, and I remember being a bit sad when I actually got better. So I can relate to that.”

Daniel is light years away from Ron; where Ron was faithful and fearless, Daniel is false and fake. But Grint says he did not take the lead in Sick Note just to demonstrate his range. “It’s not a conscious decision to show my versatility,” he muses.

“Of course, you do feel a pressure after something like the Harry Potter. You want the chance to show that you can do different things. And it’s refreshing to work without CGI and on a smaller budget. I love the fast pace of filming TV. But Harry Potter was never something I was desperate to shake off. I just enjoy doing different things.”

Grint certainly makes his alter ego in Sick Note very credible; like all of us, Daniel is deeply flawed. Matt Lipsey, the comedy’s director, outlines why he was convinced from the outset that Grint was the man for the job. “Over the years in Harry Potter, I’d seen Rupert really grow as an actor,” reflects Lipsey, who has also directed Little Britain, Big School, Gangsta Granny and Psychoville.

“I saw him in the re-staging of Mojo. He was playing a speed-fuelled thug opposite Daniel Mays. They were that show’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Rupert was utterly astonishing. So I knew he had what it takes to play this man who gets tangled up in a web of his own making as his trail of lies gets worse and worse. Rupert instantly made the part his own.”

All the same, is there a danger that viewers might find that Sick Note strikes a, er, sick note? Saunders stresses that, “We are not in any way condoning lying about having a serious disease. We were very careful about that. We’re not having fun at the expense of anyone who is ill. Daniel’s lie is very bad, but in this series everybody is lying and being hypocritical.”

For his part, Grint thinks the show is not tasteless as “Daniel genuinely thought he had cancer – that was completely real. Things just spiralled out of control.

“And he’s not just flippantly doing this because he can. He’s always very much aware that it’s a terrible, terrible thing to be doing. Sick Note is not taking the Mickey out of people with cancer. It’s taking the Mickey out of people who lie.”

Before we part, Grint returns once more to the subject of Harry Potter. “I look back on it very fondly. We had so much fun. Occasionally I miss that because it was such a great place to be every day.

“It was certainly better than school!”

‘Sick Note’ starts on Sky 1 at 10pm on Tuesday 7 November and streaming service Now TV