‘About a Boy’ Walked So Rachel Weisz and Nicholas Hoult Could Run Into Battle with Each Other in ‘The Favourite’

If you haven’t yet seen The Favourite — the film that, along with Roma, holds the most 2018 Academy Award nominations with 10 — well, first of all, you’re in for a treat. It’s a wicked and funny mix of ruthless ambition, free sexuality, and palace intrigue. That’s literal palace intrigue, as the film takes place in the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) in 18th century Britain. Rachel Weisz plays Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough and favoured advisor to the queen — and also her lover in secret. Sarah has to deal with not only scheming, social climbing Abigail (Emma Stone) but also the resistance from the Tory parliament, who are in opposition to Sarah machinations. Foremost among those Torys is Robert Harley, the Earl of Oxford, played by Nicholas Hoult. And though it took me almost the entire movie to realize it, it did eventually dawn on me that what I was seeing in Sarah and Harley’s power struggle was also an A+ About a Boy reunion.

About a Boy — which was just added to the Netflix rotation as of February 1 — was the 2002 movie based on a Nick Hornby novel about the Peter Pan existence of an independently wealthy man named Will (Hugh Grant) who comes across a sweet young tween named Marcus, who he ends up reluctantly mentoring while at the same time (rom-com complication alert!) passing Marcus off as his own son in order to attract women. Women like … Rachel (Weisz). Here, Weisz and Hoult aren’t at odds with each other; in fact they seem to get on pretty well. It’s Rachel’s son, Ali (Augustus Prew), who is pretty much a rage volcano towards Marcus from the start.

The above scene is kind of the extent of Hoult and Weisz’s time together, she telling her son to apologize to him. Who knew 16 years later they’d be locked in a delightfully bitchy power struggle with the fate of England in the balance?

In 2002, Hoult was just dipping a toe into the acting thing; he still has his starring role on the UK’s Skins, and getting cast as Beast in the new X-Men movies ahead of him. By the time 2018 hit, Hoult had become a rather intriguing young actor, capable of disappearing into some real oddball characters, like war-boy Nux in Mad Max: Fury Road. The Favourite gives him maybe his best film showcase yet, with a character written to be biting and ruthless and a massive dick; Hoult has a blast with it. And he’s never more alive than when sniping against Weisz.

Maybe they chatted between scenes about working with Hugh Grant and Toni Collette on About a Boy, and how that movie is a lowkey perfect little romantic comedy that balances its romantic plot with other relationships in Will’s life. If there was any justice, it would’ve earned Grant his first Oscar nomination. Alas, justice is fleeting. Maybe the real justice is that in 2018, Grant was doing award-worthy work in projects as varied and popular as A Very English Scandal and Paddington 2, while Toni Collette gave the best performance by an actress in any 2018 movie in Hereditary, and Weisz and Hoult graduated to Best Picture contender The Favourite. All may well be right with the world now.

Where to stream About a Boy