Crave Online: What’s the weirdest celebrity encounter you’ve had?
Simon Pegg: That might have been with Jeff Bridges playing drums in his trailer on like the second day of us meeting. He bought some drums and he invited me into his trailer at lunch time to learn to play, and I did. He sort of taught me how to do it and then I was beavering away on it and he was teaching me to do the bending the note and then I suddenly heard a guitar strumming and looked up and he was playing his guitar along. We were kind of like jamming. So I went from not ever having met him to jamming in his trailer in twelve hours. It was quite bizarre.
Crave Online: What’s the most Hollywood experience you’ve had since you’ve been on this journey?
Simon Pegg: Oh God, probably another one with Jeff, actually, at the Iron Man premiere. I went up to say good bye to him and he stood with his brother and he was with Jon Voight. I kind of just went up to say, "I’m going," because he’s such an ever so nice man and we get along very well. And he said, "No, stay, stay." So I listened to Jon Voight tell an anecdote and I stood there with Jeff Bridges with his arm around and Beau Bridges just listening, three Hollywood legends just chatting and me on the end of it just looking like I’d snuck in. I think in Hollywood that happens every day. You’re constantly seeing bizarre things. We went to see Steven Spielberg, Edgar and I, on set recently and we were chatting to him, and it happened to be the day that Tom Cruise came to visit, so we ended up all sitting around a table talking about films. Edgar and I were very very cool and didn’t even break our stride. We just got on with it and had a good chat. Then I went on the 405 just going, "Aghhhh!" It was so kind of odd. Such a surreal situation to be in.
Crave Online: Can you still go around Hollywood without being recognized?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, of course!
Crave Online: Have you ever had any of those "Don’t you know who I am?" moments?
Simon Pegg: No, I don’t even know who I am, why would I? No, God no. Heaven forbid. People that do that misconstrue their place in the universe, enormously. They mistake, ass-kissing and over management for self importance. People don’t trust actors. That’s why they’re treated so well.
Crave Online: There’s a reference in the movie to Gollum. Was that your improv?
Simon Pegg: Gollum from Lord of the Rings? As opposed to Gollum from I don’t know what. Yeah it was, yeah.
Crave Online: Did you improvise a lot?
Simon Pegg: "I’ve got c*ck on my hand" I think is the only thing I improvised on the whole film. Occasionally there was some room for improv, but generally speaking, Peter’s script was really strong and neat and structurally intact so it didn’t really need anything added to it. That was nice in that respect. It’s nice to be able to hand the reins over to someone else and not have to have that production responsibility. I kind of prefer it when I do because I’m a control freak but it wasn’t necessary, really.
Crave Online: Did you make the decision to play Sidney more goofy than Toby is in the book?
Simon Pegg: No, I’m just a terrible ham. I must admit it was a nice change of pace to play the goof, rather than in my own movies I tend to write myself as the slightly more straight center to it and then cross to all the goofying around. That’s because I’m just so unselfish as a writer, I can’t help myself. That was irony, by the way. But in this I had license to just be an idiot and what better a way to spend the day?
Crave Online: Have you found your beloved Cornettos here?
Simon Pegg: I think they’re called a Drumstick here, the cone with the nuts around the top. We just decided to use this particular brand of ice cream in our first film and then we thought we’d bring it back for the second and now it seems to be a thematic constant in our work, but they’ve never given us any free ones.
Crave Online: Did you ever try to work in an upside down kiss with Kirsten Dunst in the rain?
Simon Pegg: No. I have it on good authority that I’m the best right way up kisser she’s ever experienced. Oh, why did I say that!? It’s not true, it’s not true. She never said it. I’m just joking.
Crave Online: What’s the funniest night out you’ve had recently in a Hollywood setting?
Simon Pegg: I don’t really do Hollywood. I don’t live here and I come here every now and again and I see my friends and hang out a little bit but I try not to exist in that world. I think it’s slightly dangerous. The minute you start going to those places where people photograph you, that’s the minute you start becoming property of someone else. You start becoming a person rather than an actor and it’s hard for someone to believe you’re playing an 18 century dock worker when they’ve seen you the night before at a bar with your trousers around your ankles. I have great nights here and I really enjoy Hollywood. For someone who doesn’t come from there it’s like a movie theme park of the whole place. You’re walking around and you’re seeing people and sights from films and these incredibly historic studio complexes which are just so thrilling to be around because what’s made there. I guess I’ve had my fair share of time at the Cat and the Fiddle with some of the ex-pats.
Crave Online: Your Spaced DVD had some impressive guests. Did guys like Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and South Park’s Matt Stone all have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show?
Simon Pegg: They’ve just been really supportive of us ever since Shaun of the Dead and I think they’ve gotten in Spaced retroactively and it’s very cool to have people like that on our side. We asked them if they wouldn’t mind doing that and they were all very amenable. Of course, Quentin is like a sponge. He consumes knowledge, of nothing else but films. But he is incredible. He has the most amazing recall and when him and Edgar I don’t even feel like a geek anymore. I feel like a jock because they know so much.
Crave Online: Do you plan to work with them soon?
Simon Pegg: I’d love to. I very nearly worked with Quentin this year but some scheduling problems got in the way. Yeah, any one of those guys, I’m a fan of all of them so you never know.
Crave Online: Was that for Inglorious Bastards?
Simon Pegg: Yeah.
Crave Online: Are you bummed?
Simon Pegg: Yeah but he promised to put me in the next one.
Crave Online: Weren't there plans for an American version of Spaced?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, they made a pilot and didn’t get picked up so end of story.
Crave Online: Were you secretly relieved?
Simon Pegg: Publicly relieved.
Crave Online: We’ve talked to some of the Star Trek actors over the year about how they’re paying respect to the original character although they’re doing their own thing. Scotty obviously was Scottish but what kind of voice are you doing?
Simon Pegg: My wife’s family. Kind of western Scottish, kind of Glaswegian, west coast Scottish accent, which is very different from the east and indeed, the north and south. But her family is from Glasgow and I’ve spent a lot of time in Glasgow so I’ve tried to do that.
Crave Online: How awesome is it to walk on that set that JJ built?
Simon Pegg: Oh, it’s boring. No, it was amazing. I remember the first time I stepped on set in my… whatever. I was sitting next to J/J/ and I did a very deliberate step onto the bridge and it was one small step for man, one giant leap for geek-kind.
Crave Online: How are the plans going for the third installment of the Cornetto trilogy?
Simon Pegg: We just got to sit down and write it really. It’s just a question of finally getting on with the nitty gritty, the hardest part really which is just starting from scratch. But we’re formulating good ideas I think. I think it will be pretty insane.
Crave Online: What are you doing next?
Simon Pegg: Holiday. I’d just like to take a break. This time for me is always dizzying and this is a very necessary part of the job and I think anyone who shirks it is irresponsible, really. You do have a duty to whatever you’ve done to make sure it gets seen and particularly when we do our own stuff, we have to get out there and take it to the people ourselves but with this I always feel this is the part you get paid for. This is the job of the job and the acting, that’s what you do for free because that’s just like messing about. It’s fun and this is a very necessary and important part of the job but for me it’s always difficult. So I’m going to take a break.
Crave Online: So what do you think of Toby’s perspective on media?
Simon Pegg: Well, Toby is a pathological self promoter and he kind of loves it. There’s something about it which he delights in. I think the whole thing in the film is the reason Sidney wants to tear it all down is because he’s desperate to be inside of it. He’s desperate to be part of it and because he isn’t he resents it and I think that represents probably a certain cross section of the media whereby this disdain and hatred of the very thing they’re reporting on because essentially they’re not in it. There are people who set up these websites that just say terrible things about people who are, for want of a better word, celebrities. Then those people end up being celebrities themselves because of their doing. It’s like a snake eating its tail.
Crave Online: Were you surprised by the success of Spaced in America?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, I was amazed. I was completely blown away by it. I think it sold 1.3 million copies of it or something which is for an obscure British sitcom pretty impressive. I was delighted and it was a nice vindication for us. We always hoped it would do well here.
Crave Online: What was your Comic Con experience like promoting the DVD?
Simon Pegg: I’ve only been there once before. It was more crowded. It was more insane. The first year I went there it was before Shaun of the Dead came out so I was able to move around freely. This year I had to wear a mask so I could get on the convention floor and see some stuff and that is the very heart of our demographic. Those are the people who would watch Shaun of the Dead and of course I would find it difficult to move around because they want to say hi, and once you start it’s very difficult to stop.
Crave Online: What was your mask?
Simon Pegg: The Joker. One from Batman. It was actually quite nice, quite liberating to wander around. Weirdly enough I was drawing looks but only because I was wearing a mask and not because I was the guy from that film.
Crave Online: What did you buy?
Simon Pegg: I bought an Ed action figure which they ended up giving me for free.
Crave Online: Did you lift up the mask and say, "Can I have that for free?"
Simon Pegg: No, I didn’t. I was just out there. Just to
