Netflix Sick Note creators reveal fears of working with Rupert Grint - and star's secret talent

Rupert Grint was fresh off Harry Potter when he joined the cast of Sick Note, and the show's bosses revealed he was one of the 'greatest joys to work with' after they settled a major concern

Netflix hit show Sick Note wowed viewers when it hit the streaming site in February, and one of its cast members also wowed the show’s creators.

Harry Potter star Rupert Grint plays main character Daniel Glass, who finds himself in more and more trouble after deciding to pretend he has cancer. Black comedy Sick Note was made soon after Harry Potter ended, and co-creators and writers James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders admitted that they didn’t know what to expect from the child star.

Speaking to the Mirror of their final cast list - including Don Johnson, Nick Frost, and Lindsay Lohan - the duo admitted that the names were not in their initial brainstorm. “We thought Rupert - he was just coming off the back of Harry Potter - he wasn’t on our minds to do this,” they said.

James and Nat then admitted that Rupert impressed them from day one, and was more than willing to dive into the tongue-in-cheek humour that was so different from his Harry Potter past.

Nat described: “He was literally one of the greatest joys to work with,” adding: “I was really worried that some of the stuff that we were going to ask him to do and say, he might be like, ‘Hey, can I have a little side chat? I’m not comfortable doing this’ - every line!”

However, Rupert went on to surprise them by easily accepting the harsh language and wild plotlines, and blew them away with an enviable skill.

“Also, we’d rewrite a line on set and give them a whole new speech or something, and he literally - he’s got a photographic memory,” James revealed. “He’d just look at it and go, ‘Okay, great.’ And then he’d be word-on-word perfect. It was insane, all the time,” he said, as Nat added: “We were just like, ‘How does he do that?’ It was amazing.”

While the show revolves around Rupert’s character faking cancer, just a couple of years after making the show James experienced a very real cancer journey. The comedian was diagnosed with kidney cancer, from which he’s now in remission. James’ cancer diagnosis, however, has made both creators even more proud of the comedy they created, and able to see startling parallels between scenes of the show and James’ real experiences.

In the first episode Daniel Glass is (mistakenly) told that he has cancer, in a viral scene doing the rounds on social media. “It’s very similar to the experience I had when I was diagnosed,” James shared, revealing how stunned he was to see the scene whenever he opened Twitter.

While in the appointment, James was told that he had a “little bit of cancer” in his kidney, with the doctor’s unusual wording making him laugh. James added that it “took about three minutes” for him to understand his diagnosis due to the “odd” delivery, and he exited the hospital “in a daze” - “like what happens to Rupert’s character” in the scene he and Nat wrote.

James also dealt with some bumbling health professionals, and immediately likened one of his doctors to Dr. Glennis, played by Hot Fuzz star Nick Frost. “I just thought, oh God, I’ve just got a really incompetent doctor like the one we invented a couple of years before. Even though it was awful, it still made me smile,” he said as he recalled the experience.

“Which I suppose, in a way, is what the show was about. The British gallows humour…” James said as he thought of his moments of laughter during such troubling times. Nat added: “Even in adversity we tend to find ridiculous things.”

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