This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
In a studio in north London, the air is pierced by drilling, followed by a sickening crunch and a scream. "Someone just got decapitated by the drone," laughs Simon Pegg.* (A false alarm: it's merely undergoing repairs.) After finishing Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's so-called Cornetto trilogy with 2014's The World's End, the British actor/writer/self-confessed super geek (his 2010 memoir, Nerd Do Well, contains a chapter of Star Wars fan fiction) is back saving the world in July's Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation. Then he'll be back aboard the USS Enterprise as chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott for the new Star Trek -- the screenplay of which he's also co-writing. Who better to host this year's Gear We Love issue? Here, Pegg talks about quitting Twitter, doing stunts with Tom Cruise and keeping up Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi legacy.
WIRED: When was the last time you fixed something?Simon Pegg: Never.
But in both Mission: Impossible and Star Trek you play the tech guy. That isn't true to life?No! The key to both those characters is that they're fairly light-hearted, which is my specialty -- or people assume that it is. I enjoy it, particularly with Benji in Mission, because I get to play with a lot of gadgets. Although ironically, the way product placement works, it's not always the stuff I think Benji would use.
**Are you the kind of person who buys new tech when it comes out?**I quite fancy a drone, because they look like spaceships. I also want to get an Apple Watch -- I'm an Apple whore and quite happy to admit it. It baffles me, the weird tribal animosity that exists between gadget aficionados. But I get along well with Apple products. And of course I'm going to get the Watch, just so I can go "Hello, darling" [mimes into his wrist] to my wife.
**It's Inspector Gadget come true.**Exactly! I recently started using my GoPro camera when I go snowboarding, and I was alarmed at the brilliance of the results. I ended up just carrying it so I could swing back the camera to look at my own face, just to prove that it was me. GoPro selfie. I remember when I started making home movies on video cameras in the late 80s -- they were gigantic, unwieldy low-definition monstrosities.
**It's interesting that GoPros seem to be pushing people to even greater extremes in search of footage.**Our relationship to our own experiences is becoming more and more abstract -- the need to record everything. There's a new set of snowboarding goggles that have a heads-up display in them, and they record your speed and your altitude. But it shouldn't be about how fast am I going, how high am I -- it should just be about: isn't this fun?
You quit Twitter last year. Why?A number of reasons. I don't try to be a celebrity in my real life, and Twitter is a kind of microcosmic, personal celebrity that you build, one person at a time. I suddenly thought, if I don't want to be famous elsewhere in my life, why should I actively seek it in that one arena? As an actor I think you need to hold on to a bit of mystique so that people are interested in you. I didn't like myself on it. It felt really good to let it go. I'm not on any social media now.
You don't even post anonymously?I have a Twitter account which is just a dormant reading account, so I follow a lot of the people that I followed before. I just don't tweet any more.
Are you glad you missed out on the whole Tinder thing?I didn't just miss it, I missed it by a long way! It's interesting -- it's an incredibly frank kind of social environment. I grew up in the 80s, and my social life was affected by AIDS, when there was a withdrawal from interaction. Even though it is still a huge concern, the fact that it's kind of been brought under control means maybe people are getting more relaxed. Probably unwisely. It's got a little bit like the 60s again; it's just this wholesale fucking everybody thing going on. [Laughs] Part of me is like, oh man, I missed that! But part of me is glad I avoided it.
**In Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation you're not just the tech guy, you're an agent.**We had this idea that when he helps Ethan [Hunt, played by Tom Cruise] get through Shanghai [in Mission: Impossible III] he gets this little taste for adventure and decides to enrol in the agent programme. So by Ghost Protocol [the fourth Mission: Impossible] he's out maybe on his second or third mission, and then by the fifth mission he's a bit more experienced and less wet behind the ears. But even then he's still very much in awe of Ethan. Ethan is, literally, Benji's hero -- which is really fun to play because it's also a little bit like that in real life. No matter how many times you work with Tom Cruise, you're always like: "It's Tom Cruise!"
He is known for doing his own insane stunts -- does that push you to want to do the same thing?He's incredibly safety conscious. We did a big car chase in Morocco -- we didn't have any stunt doubles in that sequence, because he drives brilliantly -- and if it was going to be him in the car then it had to be me sitting in the passenger seat too. The car was very close to rolling, and he was always careful to make sure I didn't put my hand out of the window, because if it rolls that's the worse thing you can do. He engenders a spirit of adventure and can-do. These days we just assume things are faked, so it's important for him that there's a bit of leakage so you know he's doing these things.
**There's a particularly crazy scene where he is clinging to the outside of an A400 cargo plane as it takes off.**I got on the plane for shits and giggles. In the scene I'm on the ground, but they said, "Do you want to come and have a little fly around?" I sat in the back so I could be near the cargo door when it opened. It was roaring, Tom was outside and he was just having a blast. He has an amazing team -- Wade Eastwood, our stunt co-ordinator, is a brilliant, conscientious stunt designer. I remember when we did the Burj Khalifa stunt in Dubai [for Ghost Protocol] -- going up to the 130th floor, or something -- and there's this hive of quiet industry, like, 22 stunt people all holding on to his wires. He never does anything gung-ho.
**It seems like he's fun to work with.**He is immense fun. The thing is, there's this dense thicket of mystery around him, which he just allows to grow. He's complex, but he's more ordinary than people assume -- he's just a very driven guy from Kentucky who wants to do shit right, you know? All the assumptions and prejudices people have about him are vastly off the truth.
**Do you feel you could go off and hold one of those franchises yourself?**I'm waiting for the Benji spin-off, absolutely. The last one, they were kind of grooming Jeremy Renner's character [William Brandt] to be the next Ethan Hunt, but Tom had such a good time that he was like, "You know what? I want to do a few more of these." So hopefully by that time Jeremy will be off doing his Bourne spin-offs and Avengers stuff and it will just be Benji: The Movie.
You took your daughter to the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. That must have been amazing.Extraordinary. It's like manifest destiny. That film is the reason I developed such a passion for cinema, so to be there watching it get made -- and in such a faithful and loving way -- was a real joy. I've never been so not bored on a film set. It was awesome to just sit around and talk to C-3PO and stuff.
What are your memories of Leonard Nimoy [who died in February]?Just a genuinely beloved soul. My favourite memory of him is of me, Chris [Pine] and him. We were shooting at the Budweiser plant in LA and we went back to our trailer one night, and Leonard fell asleep, sitting up, in full Spock gear. He's snoring quietly to himself, and me and Chris are sat there not wanting to make a sound because he's asleep, just looking at each other like, "there's Spock... and he's snoring." [Laughs] It's a highlight of my career, to act with a character I have known since I was a child.
You're writing Star Trek 3. What's it like to be given that responsibility?Terrifying.
**Does it make you consider the meaning of the Star Trek universe?**You're forced to bring into focus what it is that it's actually about. And it is a very human story, Star Trek. Writing for characters like Spock and Kirk, you're aware that it's literally 50 years of history there. You want to advance it, but at the same time you have to ground it in what's come before.
**The TV series was pioneering in how it dealt with contemporary social issues at the time. Do you have to pay attention to the news now?**I don't think you have to pay attention particularly, because those things emerge subconsciously anyway. Any expression of art always reflects the preoccupations and fears of the collective subconscious of the time. One reason Star Trek has become a phenomenon is that it's an inclusive universe. It's very idealistic, tolerant, super-integrated -- albeit still led seemingly by white human beings! But the thrust of it, [Star Trek creator, Gene] Roddenberry's desire was to make this future world where the notion of integration wasn't even an issue. I mean -- to have a Russian pilot ensign on board the Enterprise at the height of the cold war? That was such wishful thinking. I think Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss on TV. So I want to make sure we keep doing that, and keep Roddenberry's dream alive.
**Can you say what the film's about?**We're not at screenplay stage yet. We're still at story outline stage. Pretty soon we're going to have to start putting words in these characters' mouths, and it's daunting. We have three months. And we have production inevitably banging on the door saying, "What are we designing? What are we making?"
TheEnterprise?[Laughs] We can start with that: the bridge set. That's a given. But it's like, "How many spaceships are in this?" "Er, I don't know... five?"
**You're also working on a new film with Nick Frost and Edgar Wright?**We know roughly what it is. We've just got to find time when we can do it. We're going to have regular Skype chats and try and gather enough material so that we can hit the ground running.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is out on July 30
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
