‘How To Train Your Dragon's Nick Frost Gives Us Food For Thought

Forbes

17-06-2025

Whether it is the projects he picks or the meals he eats, How to Train Your Dragon's foodie actor Nick Frost is full and sated. Similarly, audiences are devouring the live-action remake.
Debuting in theaters at the top of the box office and exceeding expectations, it has grossed $83.7 million domestically, the best domestic opening weekend for the franchise. Additionally, it grossed $197.8 million globally, making it one of the best openings of 2025 so far.
Based on the 2010 animated film that launched a lucrative franchise, How to Train Your Dragon takes place on the Viking island of Berk, where an ancient threat endangers both the human inhabitants and the dragons alike. However, an unlikely friendship between Hiccup, the son of Gerard Butler's Viking leader, and Toothless, a Night Fury dragon, proves to be the key to both species creating a new future together. Shaun of the Dead's Frost plays veteran warrior Gobber, a character originally voiced by Craig Ferguson. So, who inspired his take?
"Ray Winstone," he reveals without hesitation as we chat in a Beverly Hills hotel. Winstone is best known for his iconic performances in films such as Sexy Beast, The Departed, and Nil by Mouth. "When I was doing his voice at home to prep for the film, I was like, 'It sounds a bit like Ray.' I'm absolutely channeling my inner Ray."
'That is also the name of my new book, The Inner Ray," Frost jokes.
How to Train Your Dragon was filmed in Belfast, Northern Ireland. While there, the Hot Fuzz actor saw it as an opportunity to make the most of the food scene, which led him and the film's cast to discover a spot that he believes serves "the best pizza in the world."
"You're going to love this," he laughs. "There is a guy called Peter Thompson, and he runs a pizza place in Belfast called Flout. He had a job in marketing and then this thing happened to him, which was awful, and it made him reevaluate his life."
"He went from never making pizza at all to making arguably the best pizza in the world, and he did it in five years. He's like the Yoda of pizza dough. He had never cooked before. We were in contact with each other on Instagram, and he said, 'Come down and try the pizza,' and it was fantastic."
Frost freely shares his love of food and cooking on social media and has spent years improving his relationship with food. He knows what he likes, and he knows what he's talking about. So, has the gastronome ever been offered a foodie TV show? He's come close.
"People brought me some after my cookery book came out, and we are at a point where we signed some kind of deal, but then other stuff happened," he laments. "It goes pretty way down your pecking order once you're going to be Hagrid until you're 63, so maybe cooking can come after that." Frost is referring to his casting as Rubeus Hagrid in HBO's Harry Potter television series.
When How to Train Your Dragon came his way, Frost wasn't that up to speed with the series of animated films. Although he's a father, his oldest was "kind of at the tail end of it."
However, he was drawn to the project because of his ongoing love of movies and animation, which goes back to the days when he shared an apartment, or flat as Brits call them, with friend and collaborator Simon Pegg in North London. He would have loved How to Train Your Dragon even back then.
"Me and Simon and our flatmates were all massive animation fans, so as soon as anything anime was released, we were watching it," the actor recalls. "We were all also sci-fi and fantasy geeks, so all we asked was, 'Is it animated? Does it have dragons in it or a spaceship? Yes. Two out of three ain't bad.' What this film is going to do, though, is it already has that audience, and then it will just ignite a whole other bunch of people, which is great. It deserves to be seen. I never saw the originals in the cinema, so when I saw this, it was like, 'Wow, that was fantastic.'"
Another thing that appealed to Frost was the fact that writer-director Dean DeBlois was willing to let him do his own thing with Gobber.
"I went for a meeting with Dean, and he's lovely. He was like, 'Do whatever. Come and have a laugh,'" he recalls. "What I have thought about a lot this week is that I'm so lucky to have worked as long as I have, but also what it does is it enables you to is to listen to the little voice that sometimes says, 'Hey, could I try this?' One would have been forgiven for thinking that Dean would say, 'Do this because it works.' I would have been fine with that and just do it because what Craig did was great anyway, but Dean wanted us to have a play and bring whatever we wanted. Once you realize what's possible, saying yes to the job becomes a no-brainer."
Frost admits that the reality of Gobber wasn't always fun and games. The heavy costuming and the character's trademark facial hair were challenges.
"They were heavy," he admits. "I'm very lucky in as much as I kind of have a jerkin then a big furry thing on top, and that was kind of it for me. Gerard got it in the neck. His stuff must have weighed 50 kg. It was nuts. My problem was my mustache. That was my bugbear. I hated it."
"I hated the process of getting it on. I was very respectful for the first six weeks or so, going back at the end of the shoot day and letting the makeup team take it off gently. After that, it got to a point about four weeks before we finished, where as soon as they wrapped me, I would pull it off, which is very unprofessional, but as I was walking back to the car, I'd yank it off and hand it to my beard lady and say, 'Thank you.' The next day, it would be ready to go again."
However, he has nothing but respect for the craftspeople who made the magic of How to Train Your Dragon come alive.
"Stuff like that is fascinating to hear about and beautiful to see. We're in the film, we're the actors, and sometimes we're on posters and in the trailers, so it's easy to look at what we do, but when you look at what the puppeteers did, you'll see their names in the credits, but you won't know who they are and you won't see the work they did," Frost enthuses. "To see those guys turn up every day in their green leotards, holding their huge dragon heads, it's a lot of work they put in. I've noticed that with many different departments, they do these little things that people may not notice, but as an actor, you do notice it 100 percent. For me, that is a dragon. I can't see the people in it. I can't see them controlling it. I don't notice the blue screen. It comes down to you and me, and Dean and Bill Pope, the DOP, and that's what it is. If you start thinking about the big picture and that 300 people are watching me acting, it's nerve-racking."
Something that continues to impress Frost is the enduring legacy and depth of love for the How to Train Your Dragon universe, as well as its deep influence on pop culture. A prime example is the creation of a world at the Universal Epic Universe theme park in Orlando, Florida. How does he feel about a world he's now a part of being immortalized that way?
"It happens all the time," he jokes. "There was Shaun of the Dead World, but then kids got killed so that shut it. Then they had the Hot Fuzz Land, and again, children died. The World's End Place is still open, but it rains a lot, so the weather's kind of shit."
"I'm connected to three already now when you think of it. I'm SM-33 in Star Wars, and that has theme park attractions. There are also the Hogwarts and Harry Potter ones, so my Hagrid has to get in there eventually. When I started out 23 years ago, it's what I wanted to happen to me,' the How to Train Your Dragon actor laughs. "Basically, I just wanted to be a part of theme park ride culture."