Hugh Grant “crushed his lines” in his audition tape for Jerry Seinfeld’s directorial debut Unfrosted.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral actor plays Thurl Ravenscroft, an actor cast as Kellogg’s cereal mascot Tony the Tiger, in Seinfeld’s fictional Pop-Tarts origin story.

To land the role, Grant sent Seinfeld and his writing partner Spike Feresten a homemade iPhone audition in which he sat on a sofa holding a glass of wine.

“We were just stunned on how homemade his audition was – and how good it was,” Feresten told IndieWire. “Here’s Hugh Grant at 8 o’clock at night before he goes to bed, crushing the lines. Crushing. That’s when we said, ‘Jerry, close this for us. Get this guy.'”

The comedian added that he doesn’t know who decided the British actor needed to audition in the first place.

As for the star-studded cast, Seinfeld added, “Somehow, a lot of other people started falling in after that.”

Alongside the funnyman himself, the ensemble includes Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, Peter Dinklage, and Christian Slater, among many other familiar faces.

The Seinfeld star admitted a lot of the casting decisions came down to availability.

“There was a long time where we didn’t have anybody to make this movie. We had the budget, we had the script, but we didn’t have any people to play the parts,” he shared. “That was one of the most terrifying moments. We would go into this little room that we had with each part on a 3×5 card on the wall. And we had Gaffigan as Kellogg – and that was it. And there were like 30 parts.

“Luckily, acting was very low on our list of job requirements to be in this movie. Basically, it was, ‘Could you get here on this day?’ was what we cared about.”

Unfrosted will debut on Netflix on Friday 3 May.

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