“I’d rather not act for a year and write a film, than just do something for the money.”

A few weeks ago, I had the extremely great fortune to speak to Nick Frost in London. He was passing through while promoting the U.S. version of THE BOAT THAT ROCKED, called PIRATE RADIO. You can read the full interview that took place in the roundtable tomorrow, but today, I snipped out the parts where we got into a slew of discussions. Nick gave us insights on acting, what he'd be doing if he never got into acting, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN, PAUL, and why there will never be a season three of the popular U.K. show, "Spaced."

Check it out after the jump, and let us know what you think!

On acting:

I never wanted to be an actor really, I just kind of fell into it...being a mate of Simon [Pegg]’s and being the funniest man he knew...doing weird sketches and characters for him all the time in the pub, and he and Jessica got commission to write "Spaced" and he said, “you got to come in and do this character.” Being a bit of a cynic, I said, “Yeah, whatever...it’ll never happen.” And sure enough there we were at the first table reading. Every time I said a line, I’d go red and shake. You can see if you watched “Spaced,” there’s a couple of scenes, you can actually see me blush during a scene because I’m embarrassed because I’m acting and people are having to watch me.

On what his life would probably be like if he didn’t act:

If I had to kinda of, extrapolate out where I was then and what would have happened, I guess I would be the assistant floor manager of a Mexican restaurant somewhere in the north of England...I worked in restaurants for ten years. I hate to say it, but I really enjoyed it. I never learned how to act, but I think if you want to be a good waiter you have to be a good actor...you’re a different person for each different table...if working class comes in, you’re a working class boy serving them food, and if someone comes in who’s driving a Ferarri, you stand back and call him “sir” a lot...you have to alter your role for each different table. So I guess I’d still be in a restaurant somewhere...or prison. (laughs)

On the upcoming film, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN:

Simon and I, we play the Thompson twins...Simon is with the “P” because he is Pegg...We shot that in February down in Santa Monica with Stephen Spielberg and Peter Jackson was co-directing.

Stephen was on set and Peter was in Wellington, and he had lots of live links via iChat. So I’ve never been directed before via iChat...it was a bit strange, you know, Stephen would come on and give a note and then through the PA system you’d hear Peter say, “Hi, guys! Can you try this?” and they’d turn the camera around so we could see him, and it was strange you know...it was the most pressure I’ve felt doing anything...every day it was that terrible feeling that they’re gonna find out I’m a waiter and I’ve stumbled upon the freakin’ set...It was very stressful, just cause, I wanted to do a good job, you know and you couldn’t - excuse my language - fuck up in front of three more powerful people (laughs) - Stephen Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Kathy Kennedy.

Peter rewrote the script most evenings because he was in New Zealand, so you’d get on set in the morning with no idea what you were gonna say and they would give you 3 or 4 pages of dialogue and say, “we are shooting this in 30 minutes, so get ready!”

On Twitter and “Spaced” fanship outside of the UK, and why a third season will never happen:

Yeah...I’m on Twitter, I tweet quite a lot, and I'm kind of asked more than anything, “is there going to be a third season of 'Spaced'?” ALL the time, and it’s fairly annoying, because it’s like, “you know we’ve done other things now in that ten year period!” I get people saying to me, “oh I loved 'Spaced...' I don’t know about your films, but I love 'Spaced.' But yeah, I think people would love us to do a third season, but it’s never going to happen...I think it was fine as it was. Simon and I were massive fans of "Northern Exposure," and we were slightly upset that [it] went on too long in the end as well. If we had continued making 3, 4, 5, 6 series of “Spaced,” maybe now we wouldn’t get so much attention.

On pressures of writing PAUL:

When we were shooting PAUL, Simon and I felt that kind of expectation more than anything we’ve ever done before because the budget was very big...there is a lot of expectation when you think, “well, the budget is [this number], and they're going to spend so much on PR, and so the bottom line is the film has to make 'this' amount of money...I’ve had a few sleepless nights thinking “fuck, we’re never gonna do this.”

You know, I’ve kind of branched of way from just acting, and I’ve written this film with Simon, and we’ve kind of exect. [executive produced] it as well. It’s a lot of fucking work you know...it’s not just turning up at 8 AM to shoot and you wrap at ten at night. [For PAUL] You wake up to 50 emails and you have script meetings at lunch...it’s full on...it’s great. I liked that, I really enjoyed it.