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Pierce Brosnan has had a touch-and-go relationship with singing. In 2008, he starred as Meryl Streep’s love interest in “Mamma Mia!” The popular ABBA movie made $600 million at the global box office, but the former 007 was still roundly mocked for his renditions of “S.O.S.” and “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, …
Pierce Brosnan has had a touch-and-go relationship with singing.
In 2008, he starred as Meryl Streep’s love interest in “Mamma Mia!” The popular ABBA movie made $600 million at the global box office, but the former 007 was still roundly mocked for his renditions of “S.O.S.” and “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.”
The crooner is back in a story with songs in “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” a comedy starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic pop duo who makes it into the famous music competition, Eurovision. Only this time, he doesn’t so much as hum.
“I thought [I was cast] for my singing,” Brosnan tells The Post. “But then I found out I didn’t have a song to sing in the film, which was a relief and a disappointment. But I got the joke. When you read the introduction to my character, Erick, in parentheses [it says] ‘possibly the most handsome man in Iceland.’ ”
The debonair 67-year-old plays Ferrell’s character Lars’ father, a stubborn gent who enjoys the pub and desperately wishes his son would quit music. One trait Brosnan and his character share: As a kid, he didn’t care about Eurovision.
“I didn’t know about it when I was a lad growing up in Ireland,” he says. “We didn’t have a TV. I didn’t really come into that world of television till I left in 1964 when I was a boy of 11. I was a country lad up until then.”
His first encounter with the telecast was in 1974, when he was 21 and living in London, and ABBA famously won the contest with “Waterloo.” That memory is what sold him on his new film’s script.
“I read it one morning, and the opening page was, ‘Húsavík, 1974. Family watching Eurovision. ABBA.’ I thought there was a joke in there somewhere,” he says.
To tell it, the Californian jetted off to Europe with his wife, Keely, and made his first-ever trip to Iceland, where the couple was able to “soak in thermal baths and drink great Icelandic beer.”
A shocking realization for Brosnan was that many people of Iceland still believe in elves.
“I had no idea till I read the script, and I couldn’t quite believe it,” he says. “They seem to have this notion, like the Irish with leprechauns, but the Icelanders certainly have a deep spirituality with the world of elves.”
Still, the actor was nonetheless charmed by the locals. He even has a new, lifelong Icelandic pal.
“We made friends with our driver there, and still keep in contact with him,” he says.
