Downtown Abbey star Arty Froushan has responded to calls for him to be the next James Bond as the journey to cast cinema’s most famous spy is reportedly reaching its endgame, if not outright finished.
Earlier this year, a small online movement named Froushan as a strong potential 007, while he also received the backing of his Daredevil: Born Again co-star Vincent D’Onofrio.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy at last night’s UK Special Screening of The Love Hypothesis, the actor spoke about the support.
Rory Mulvey//Universal
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“I mean, no comment, but I will follow Vincent into battle. I’ll jump off a cliff for that man. Actually, maybe not. That’s probably too much, but I love him,” he said.
“A vote of confidence from him goes a long way so I’m glad to have him as my kind of weird, bald fairy godmother, looking out over me in the industry.”
Froushan’s new film The Love Hypothesis is quite a different beast to Bond, Daredevil or even Downton.
It’s a modern-day romantic comedy where a graduate student pretends to date a professor to prove to her friends that her love life is going well.
Prime Video
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Froushan isn’t the professor in question, instead serving as the film’s antagonist. He explained: “I play a lot of difficult characters, a lot of villains, so I thought going further down that path of exploring authentic portrayals of bad men so that it illuminates for people the reality of power dynamics and manipulation in organisations and workplaces.
“It was tough because I thought the more authentic and the more truthful I can be to the role, the more upsetting it will be to watch which, on a purely acting level, was a gratifying experience.”
He praised co-star Lili Reinhart and director Claire Scanlon for creating “a really collaborative, largely female-led effort”, which helped him give an “honest” performance.
The Love Hypothesis comes to Prime Video on 23 September.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he’s covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I’m a Fish.
Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.