- Smith befriended Rickman while filming Dogma in 1999
- The Jay and Silent Bob creator told the story during an interview with GQ
- Rickman was a huge fan of Smith’s friend and co-star Jason Mewes
Kevin Smith and Alan Rickman’s friendship may have made for a pretty unlikely pairing, but it produced a great story that Smith has shared with the world in a recent interview with GQ.
Rickman starred in Dogma, the 1999 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Smith, as the angel Metatron. It was during the filming of the controversial, Catholic church bothering comedy that Smith and Rickman became friends. It would be a relationship that lasted 17 years, until Rickman’s untimely death in 2016, at the age of 69.
Speaking to GQ, Smith reminisced about a scene shot in Pittsburgh, where he looked over to see Rickman having an “intense conversation” with co-star Jason Mewes aka Jay of Jay and Silent Bob fame.
“I remember thinking, ‘what the f**k could these two have to say to each other?'” remembers Smith, “But Rickman was genuinely interested in Jason. He was always just like, ‘He’s a true American icon’.”
But it was away from the set of Dogma that one of Smith’s fondest memories of the Die Hard icon took place. And it involved a pretty mind blowing behind-the-scenes Harry Potter anecdote that would have sent fans into a frenzy had they known about it at the time.
“Rickman and I remained friends up until he passed away. Any time I was in England he would be, like, ‘I’m coming to your show’. So he went to the show I did in London at the O2.
“So I said, ‘what you been up to?’ and he says ‘I bought an apartment. I finally broke down and bought an apartment in New York. But there’s problems,’ I said, ‘what?’ and he goes, ‘I bought it in the same building as my friend,’ I was like ‘why is that a problem?’, he goes ‘my friend is Ralph Fiennes’ and I was like ‘and?’ and he goes, ‘if the Harry Potter fans find out that Snape and Voldemort live in the same building, they’ll bring it down, don’t you understand?’ It’s adorable.”
Rickman, an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award winner, who was once named by The Guardian as one of the best actors never to receive an Academy Award nomination, died of pancreatic cancer in January, 2016. The diagnosis of the cancer came after he suffered a stroke in August of the previous year. He revealed his diagnosis only to his closest friends.
Some of Rickman’s most renowned roles were as East German criminal mastermind Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, borderline affair haver Harry in Love Actually, Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest and Éamon de Valera in Michael Collins.
