Simon Pegg Q&A

Peggy tells us about 'Big Nothing', the black comedy in which he stars opposite David Schwimmer.

Dec  1 2006

'Shaun of the Dead' star Simon Pegg discusses his role as a blackmailing scoundrel in Jean-Baptise Andrea's forthcoming black comedy 'Big Nothing'.

What was it like playing an American and taking on that accent for the film?

It was definitely the most challenging thing I've done. Not only do you have to think about acting and the character but you have to constantly process your thoughts into a different accent. But we had a really good dialect coach who would listen to each take and say 'that's an excellent amount of vowels, now concentrate more on the acting'. So that helped.

Did you ever consider making the character English?

There was the option of making him British, but I thought why, just to accommodate me? I read the script and thought it would be more believable if he was American, because he's a Portland boy, he's a small town guy who's never been out of his home town. He's American, and he read like an American.

Was it fun working opposite David Schwimmer?

He was really supportive, especially as he was coming from a show where he had to battle among six funny people to give the best comic performance. He was quite happy to sit back and just be the moral centre of the film, the audience's way into the plot. He's quite serious and meanwhile Alice [Eve] and I are chewing up the scenery. It displayed an enormous amount of generosity on David's part.

Your first day with Alice involved a sex scene – what was that like?

Well, we got to third base on the first date! But what you don't see is that we were actually on a bed in a fake room in the middle of a barn doubling as a studio on the Isle of Man, surrounded by cows and a minimal camera crew. When you are an actor and you are faced with a challenge like that you just do it and it's unreal. It's very unsexy, certainly in the way we were doing it, which was comic. If you are really smooching with someone it might be harder to not respond physically.

What was it like working with Jon Polito – he looks like he might be quite mad.

He's just brilliantly eccentric. He was welcoming and friendly straight away, and he's just a bag of fun. I have a Rick James t-shirt he bought me on the last day of the shoot, that says Super Freak. He brought it from a little second hand shop he found. It was shut and he got the owner to open for him. To have this t-shirt bought for me by this actor who I've always really admired was a real treat.

Gus is a darker character than you usually play – did you enjoy exploring that side of your psyche?

I'm attracted to complexity and things that may take me down a darker road. It's interesting to have a character with layers and good dialogue – I enjoy the darker side of humour, the challenging side of it, not knowing whether to laugh or feel ill.

Was it nice working on something a bit smaller after 'Mission: Impossible III'?

Everything I've done since 'Mission: Impossible' seems small. 'Hot Fuzz' is relatively small even though it's twice as big as 'Shaun of the Dead'. I think there is a real future in movies around the $15-20million mark because the blockbuster is faltering and people are worried about them. Wages have gone up so much and you can't guarantee a return. There could be a lot of thoughtful, good, lower budget films coming out soon. You just have to be careful about the scripts you choose.

So you and Edgar aren't going to run off to America and make lots of expensive blockbusters over there?

While we were doing 'Hot Fuzz' he was turning down offers from his favourite directors to direct for them, but there's this myth that you go off to America and stay, but you can go there and you come back. It would be nice to try and cultivate British film and keep the industry alive because we have phenomenal technical crews here and a lot of very good actors and writers.

'Big Nothing' is released on Friday.

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