Simon Pegg on His Most Iconic Characters

I broke my hand on the set of The World's End.

Afterwards I went to see Morag, the set nurse,

and she gave me two very powerful painkillers,

which I took both of.

And then she called me and said Just take one.

That was a fun night.

Spaced.

Yeah, that was my first kind of lead role in a sitcom.

Tim was a kind of extension of who I was at the time.

A bit of a sort of sci-fi geek, comic book fan.

I wrote the series with Jessica Hynes, who played Daisy,

who is an incredibly gifted actress and writer.

Together we sorta came up with this flatshare sitcom

and got all our friends to be in it.

And it was the first time, the second time actually,

we'd worked with Edgar Wright,

where I really formed my creative partnership with Edgar.

The first time I played Tim Bisley,

I was required to kill a whole bunch of zombies.

And we shot the zombie sequence one morning.

I was a little bit hungover, I seem to remember.

The idea was that Tim had done so much speed

that he was hallucinating that he was

actually in the video game he was playing,

which was Resident Evil Two.

(zombie moaning)

You want a piece of me?

Come get some.

And it was after that morning of shooting

that we decided we would quite like to make a zombie film.

And that zombie film was Shaun of the Dead.

Shaun of the Dead.

Shaun of the Dead was our first feature film,

mine and Edgar, and I played the part

of Shaun Smiley Reilly, as his name was.

You probably didn't know that.

That was his DJ name.

He was an electrical store retail chap

who was stuck in a sorta cycle of torpor

and inactivity with his best friend Ed,

much to his girlfriend's sorta disapproval.

That really, at the time, was fairly autobiographical.

Nick and I, Nick Frost and I, who played Ed,

were ensconced in a pub in Highgate called The Shepherd's,

where we spent much of our time,

to the disappointment of our then-girlfriend Edgar Wright,

who used to try to get us to go into town

and go to the Groucho Club and places like that

where celebrities hung out.

But we didn't want to do that, we wanted to stay in the pub.

And my girlfriend at the time, Maureen

who is now my beautiful wife of 13 years,

she also was trying to get us to leave.

And we didn't want to.

So we wrote a whole film about it and added zombies.

When we came up with the idea for Shaun,

we wanted him to stay in the same costume

for the whole movie, apart from the sort of

first scene and the last scene,

so we came up with this very very

distinctive white shirt/red tie, which became his look.

And now, every Halloween, I get sent pictures

of people who dress in that costume,

because it's actually quite an easy

Halloween costume to replicate.

It's just a white shirt with short sleeves and a red tie

covered in blood, and you're Shaun of the Dead.

Hot Fuzz.

In Hot Fuzz I played the part of Nicholas Angel,

who was a very dedicated police officer.

Very by-the-book, not a maverick.

He was the opposite of the classic action movie hero

in that he did everything straight down the line.

And during the process of the film

he learns to essentially dumb down

and become more like an action hero.

For Nicholas Angel I had to kind of

do a little bit more research.

Shaun was basically me, but Nicholas Angel

was very very much not me,

and I had to go and do some research with the police

and hang out with cops, you know,

research procedure and all that kinda stuff.

A few drive-alongs.

We put the blues and twos on

a couple of times and went screaming around,

and then turned them off and then

were told not to tell anyone that we did that, no.

We were lucky enough to be in the car one time

when there was a domestic in the West Country.

It wasn't lucky that the domestic happened, obviously.

But there was a big argument in some house,

and a lot of noise.

We got there with the blue lights flashing

and were careening down some alleyways in the West Country.

Which was enormous fun.

And fortunately, nobody was hurt.

It was just a dispute over a tractor.

Ever since, I've had a nodding relationship

with most British police officers.

You know, usually the bobby is seen

as a slightly parochial character,

when in actual fact, you know,

we thought it was time the British bobby

got a cool representative.

Most of the police that I encounter, if not all,

seem to be slightly grateful for that.

Because we weren't really taking the piss,

we were actually kind of making a sort of tribute pic.

So I've been let off so many murders because of Hot Fuzz.

The World's End.

Gary Fucking King is my favorite character I've ever played.

Gary is a lost soul, a warrior in the name

of something completely pointless.

He was a complex character, in that Gary comes across

as being very annoying at first, and irritating,

and not someone you particularly like,

because he seems selfish at the expense of his friends.

But you learn, as the film goes on,

that there's a lot more to him than that,

and he's actually, you know, beset by complications.

How can you tell you're drunk if you're never sober?

I don't wanna be sober!

It never got better than that night!

That was supposed to be the beginning of my life.

When the truth of him is revealed,

you kind of slightly understand

with more clarity why he behaves the way he does.

Mission Impossible III, Ghost Protocol,

Rogue Nation, and Fallout.

Benji Dunn, Benjamin Disraeli Dunn.

That's not his name, I just made that up.

I got a call once from this guy J.J. Abrams.

I don't know what happened to him.

But he called me at my office,

and I was writing Hot Fuzz at the time,

and literally said, hey, do you wanna come

and be in Mission Impossible III?

And I said, all right then, why not?

I'll give it a go.

He had a big future, that guy.

I remember looking at him and thinking,

you've got something, you're gonna go somewhere.

I don't know where he went, it's weird.

I think I saw him in L.A. last time I was there.

I was shooting in skid row, and there was

a box with J.J. written on it,

and I lifted the lid and there he was,

skulking in the background of this little box.

He was just wearing a pair of white underpants,

and they were very grubby,

and I said, J.J., it's me, Simon, you remember?

From Mission Impossible III?

But he was gone, he was too far gone.

At least he gave me the opportunity

to play Benji for the first time,

and subsequently three more times

in Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Fallout.

Benji was a sort of lab technician

who I think got a taste for adventure

in Mission Impossible III.

He ends up being Ethan's GPS when he's in Shanghai.

Go down, left.

Left? I'm going left.

[Benji] Good, good.

It's in the second building on your left.

The signal bearing's plus or minus

three meters from the northeast corner.

And I think that the thrill of that,

the thrill of sort of being a bit naughty

and going rogue with Ethan

gave him the taste for adventure,

and so he enrolled in the field agent program.

And then, when Ethan gets out of Russian prison

in Ghost Protocol, there's Benji, in the field.

And that's like seeing that kid from IT

who fixed your computer yesterday

suddenly with you in the mine.

Or whatever you're doing for a living,

I don't know why you'd be in a mine.

So it's been really fun playing Benji,

because he's sorta changed over the years.

He's become more and more adept and more and more capable.

But, at the same time, he's still

that wide-eyed, wet behind the ears kinda new guy,

and for that reason, he's sorta the audience's

way into these crazy adventures.

Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond.

Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott.

Scotty is such an iconic character,

and that's not anything to do with me.

That's to do with James Doohan,

who brought the character to the screen in the first place

and made him such a beloved sorta feature

within the Star Trek TV series and latterly the movies.

I was very lucky enough to be offered the role of Scotty

by the guy J.J. again.

I was able to take part in Star Trek,

and eventually got to write, co-write,

a Star Trek film with a guy called Doug Jung,

who was, he became my dear friend

in the trenches of writing a Star Trek film in six months,

which was what we had to do.

And it was a load of fun.

I loved playing Scotty.

A lot of people say my accent's terrible.

I'd like to say it's not, it's actually okay.

But people like to be passive-aggressive

towards strangers 'cause their lives are so empty.

So, you know, have at it.

Now hang on a minute lassie,

I'm having a difficult day here.

I've gotta find my crew mates.

You help me and I help you.

All right, well, things being as they are,

I doubt I'll get a better offer today, so lead the way.

My wife is Scottish.

As such, so is half my family.

So they all help me out with my accent

and teach me words to say like scunner

and ye wee clatty bastard and things like that.

So that's really good fun, having some authenticity,

despite what mainly English people will say.

Oh, you're Scottish accent's rubbish.

But most of the Scottish people I encounter

are like, aye, well done lad, you did well.

So I love them for that, I love the Scots.

More than the English.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Collision Course.

I play the character of Buck the Weasel,

who is a one-eyed weasel,

which is also often a euphemism for a man's parts.

It's not a euphemism for my part,

'cause my part was actually Buck the Weasel,

who was trapped in a prehistoric ice cave

for many years with a group of dinosaurs,

in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,

and then came topside for Ice Age: Collision Course

to help the Ice Age gang, Manny, Diego, that lot,

avoid a collision with a massive asteroid.

I love playing Buck.

He's a crazy sort of ball of energy.

You'd be surprised to know

how exhausting it is to play him,

even though I'm only in a room

with a microphone on all the time.

I've never met Ray Romano or Queen or any of those guys.

I met Denis Leary once when I was younger,

but he won't remember that.

And yet we've had all these adventures together.

And that's the strange thing about doing voice-overs,

is that you sometimes, or generally always, do it solo.

One day I'll get to meet those guys

and we'll reminisce about the great times we had together.

But until then, not gonna happen.

Paul.

In Paul I play the character of Graeme Willy,

who is the friend and wingman of Clive Gollings,

played by Nick Frost, my longtime friend and collaborator.

Graeme and Clive are two nerds,

in the real sense of the word,

not in the new sense where everyone's a nerd

just 'cause they go and watch Iron Man.

And Clive and Graeme are both big sci-fi fans.

Clive's an author, Graeme's an illustrator.

They go to Comic-Con, and then they take a little

pilgrimage to the black mailbox at Area 51 in Nevada.

When they get there, they happen to run into

an alien on the run, and they help him get back to his ship.

It's like a wish fulfillment for nerds, really.

Paul was played by Seth Rogen, as an entirely CG character

beautifully brought to life by Double Negative.

I become a father in Paul.

You can look out for this if you'd like.

On the scene where we knock on Tara's door

and she opens the door, in the interim

between us knocking and her opening,

I went back to Los Angeles and was present

for the birth of my daughter,

and then went back to film the rest of the scene.

So when I watch the movie,

I see myself become a father in a single edit.

And it's a remarkable little moment for me

when I watch that film, which I do every week,

'cause I love it so much.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a film

in a series of movies which began in 1977

with Star Wars: A New Hope,

as it was called a year after it came out,

and then Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi,

The Phantom Something, Attack of the Things,

and Revenge of Something.

And then there was another one, and it's this.

And in that I play Unkar Plutt,

who is essentially like a scrap metal merchant.

Unkar was an interesting role for me,

because it was a fully synthetic suit,

fat suit, silicon mask with CG augmented features.

It was a tough call, 'cause I was in the deserts

of Abu Dhabi, in 50 degree heat,

and then in Pinewood Studios in similar heat,

'cause we were in a studio.

But it was great, it was great to play

such an important part in the Star Wars universe.

And I hope I'm not spoiling it for anyone

to say that Unkar Plutt, in Episode Nine,

will become something of a significant character.

And he is actually the force, and as such,

means more, I think, than any other Star Wars character,

particularly Hans Olo or Chewdabacan or Luke Scrapwalker.

Ready Player One.

I love any chance I get to work with Steven Spielberg.

He is a fantastic director and a wonderful man

and someone who's shaped

my love of cinema and films generally.

So, yeah, to get to play Ogden Morrow was a treat.

Ogden Morrow was the co-creator of The Oasis,

with James Halliday, who's played by Mark Rylance.

I got to play Ogden at various stages in his life,

as a young man, as a middle aged man, as an old man as well.

And that was really good fun,

'cause I got to go into have aging makeup,

and that took about five hours.

But it was really fun to look in the mirror

and see myself as an old man,

which I do every day these days,

but as an even older man let's say.

And also do my old man walk,

which is to put my hand just here

and then walk a little bit like this.

I like to watch old men walking.

It's one of my favorite pastimes.

Often I'll get a nice position in the park,

put a rug down, get some sandwiches,

and just watch old men walking around.

It's quite easy to do 'cause a lot of them

are partially sighted, so sometimes I'll

pursue them for up to two or three miles,

if they can make it that far, and video them walking.

And I have a large library of old men walking around,

which I watch in the evenings as I'm having my dinner.

For me, it's always about the money,

and how much they're gonna pay me to be in these films.

No, you know, you look for complexities in characters.

You look for layers and interesting sort of subtext.

I love a character who has something going on inside,

which you have to communicate in subtle ways.