Nicholas Hoult studied Kelsey Grammer’s accent but says his Beast is a bit angrier.

Bleeding Cool has an excellent interview with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS actor Nicholas Hoult, who plays young scientist Hank McCoy aka Beast in the film. The British actor says he prepped for the role by studying the X-Men comic books and learning Kelsey Grammer’s accent via TV’s ‘Fraiser’ to make sure it was consistent with the character’s portrayal in X3, but notes that the character is very different in his earlier days.

“I feel they were very different characters.” says Hoult. “In [X-Men: The Last Stand] Beast was a politician, and he’s been in this place for a long time. In this one he’s young and he’s a scientist. And when he changes, that comes with quite a bit of anger and embarrassment.”

Hoult is a big fan of his blue and furry character saying that “there’s this inner tension, because he’s a scientist, and a careful man, and a worldly man, and he has this crazy exterior. He’s scary.”

As with all the other actors working on the film, Hoult says director Matthew Vaughn is a great creative force for the mutant franchise saying that “he understands what it means, to make a film work. So he gets going, and he’s right. He’s a very clever man. He knows the meaning of every line written. He knows what makes them work. These are just interesting stories, you know, epic in scale and massive backdrops, but at the heart of them they are quite human stories.”

You can read much more from the interview here!