Simon Pegg Answers The Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi, I'm Simon Peg,

and this is the WIRED

Autocomplete Interview. [graphic clacking]

[upbeat music]

I'd asked my daughter that actually.

She's a big fan of this, by the way,

the Autocomplete Interview.

When I told my daughter I was doing this,

she was very excited.

[upbeat music]

Thank you very much.

What is Simon Pegg's address?

New movie, it's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning,

the eighth installment in the Mission: Impossible series

and my sixth movie after 20 years of chasing around

after Tom Cruise, and what a movie it is.

I thoroughly recommend seeing it theatrically

'cause it's huge, gigantic.

When is Simon Pegg in Mission: Impossible?

All the time. [laughs]

I mean, really since 19, no, since 2005

when I joined for Mission Impossible 3 as Benji Dunn,

who at the time was a sort of laboratory kind of guy.

He was just in the labs at the IMF

analyzing the hard drives and stuff.

And then he decided to enroll in the field agent program

between 3 and Ghost Protocol.

I always say it's because he had such a fun time,

like, guiding Ethan through Shanghai,

and he kind of got off on the rule-breaking a little bit,

and he thought, Right, I'm gonna be an agent.

And then ever since then, I've been a secret agent,

no more so than in the new film, which, you know,

you see Benji get to a point

where you've never seen him before.

And that was extremely fun to play.

What, I mean, a crazy evolution from, I mean,

I was pretty tubby in Mission Impossible 3

through to being what Benji becomes

in The Final Reckoning.

That's taken 20 years, and it's worth the wait.

[Interviewer] What's the evolution of filmmaking like?

Mission Impossible has two lives.

It has the life where it was done by different directors.

You had Brian De Palma, John Wu, JJ Abrams and Brad Bird.

And then Christopher Macquarie came in

as a writer on Ghost Protocol

and then thereafter directed the next four films.

I mean, we were still using magazines

of film on Rogue Nation before we switched to digital.

The digital switch meant that the camera could be

so much more agile, you know,

we could have more complicated rigs

that didn't have to carry great canisters of film,

do stuff that we hadn't been able to do before.

Not least when Tom jumped off the cliff on the motorbike,

we had like cameras on the bike so that

as it cartwheeled away, it caught Tom falling behind it.

And then we had to go down into this valley

to retrieve the bike and the cameras

on the off chance they didn't kind of get broken,

and we got some good footage from that.

Where was Simon Pegg when the lights went out?

On Top Gear?

When was Simon Pegg?

I beg your pardon.

I was on Top Gear,

I think I did it like in the early 2000s.

Oh, I did it for Hot Fuzz.

And then I think me and Nick did it

maybe for The World's End.

I had had a blast doing the laps.

I broke the gearbox on two cars,

and that's why I'm banned from driving.

Is Simon Pegg good friends with Tom Cruise?

No.

Hate the guy.

Yeah, I mean we've worked together for 20 years,

and it's been a real pleasure to, sort of, I guess,

see behind the myth.

You know?

Tom Cruise is a mythic figure,

and he's very smart in the way that he kind of curates that

because it maintains a degree of mystery about him.

And in that regard, he feels like a movie star

in the old-fashioned sense.

You know, back before social media,

back before the kind of celebrity journalism

you have these days

when you only ever saw these people

at award ceremonies, you know?

It's been a pleasure to kind of see

behind the curtain, as it were,

and see a kind of quite a normal person, would you believe?

With just an extraordinary commitment to his craft.

Just 100% 100% of the time.

That's why he is where he is.

It's not a mystery,

it's not a, kind of, you know, it's,

there's no kind of secret code to how you become Tom Cruise.

You just do it the way he's done it,

and, oh, I couldn't do that.

I couldn't dedicate that amount of passion to one thing.

And he does it, and it's extraordinary.

I got to walk my dogs and stuff.

Well done, Tom.

Okay, here we go.

Does Simon Pegg live in America?

No, Simon Pegg does not live in America.

Simon Peg live...

I'm talking to myself in the third person.

I live in the United Kingdom, just north of London,

and I'm happy there.

My whole family lived there.

I've come over to the States

and, you know, rented a place for a while.

My kid was born here.

Tilly.

She is an American citizen.

She has an American passport.

But movies are made all over the world now,

and you can kind of be anywhere to make movies.

You don't have to live in Hollywood

to make Hollywood movies.

And I'm happy at home because, you know,

I've got all my nice stuff next to me.

As much as I a delight in coming to America,

I live in the UK.

Can Simon Pegg actually draw? [laughs]

Yeah, I can draw.

Not as well as the characters I've played.

The artists who did my work,

Jim Murray and Jason Brashill

mainly did my artwork in Spaced.

And Paul.

They're fantastic artists

and have drawn comic books and video game designs

and way better than me.

I can doodle.

I'm a much better drawer than my wife who draws,

I mean, it's incredible, when you see her...

Actually, you could probably hang her artwork in galleries.

It's that weird.

She draws a cow, it looks like a puddle.

It's very strange.

But, you know, I love her and partly for that.

What is Simon Pegg like in real life?

Boring. [laughs]

I don't know.

I mean, I'm just a, kind of, regular guy, you know?

I enjoy normal things.

I watch a lot of TV and movies.

Yeah, I try and keep things very normal in my private life

because things can be

so extraordinary in my professional life.

Not least, you know, being in Mission Impossible.

It's nice to get back to just regular things,

watering the garden, walking the dogs, just, you know,

having a cup of tea, watching a bit of TV.

I'd like to think that I'm nice.

I mean, if you've ever met me and I've been grumpy,

it might be that I was just having an off day.

I hope not.

I always try and be pleasant with people

'cause I know what it's like when you see someone

and you think, Oh, I know them.

It takes a lot of guts to go up and say hello,

so you try and accommodate that as much as you can.

But if I've ever gone, No,

I don't want my pictures taken with you.

It's because I'm having a bad day.

Come see me on a different day.

I might be nicer.

Simon Pegg Beatles.

This might be my Beatles impression.

I do a couple of...

Paul is, sort of, like this, you know,

talks like that.

And Paul came to the premier of,

the New York Premier of Mission the other night,

and I was walking down the stairs, and I heard,

Hey, Simon. [laughs]

I turn around and Paul McCartney,

who I've met a couple of times over the years.

He's this lovely guy and an idol of mine.

I love, love, love, love The Beatles.

And then there's, sort of,

George Harrison talks like this.

Bit, sort of, back there.

Ringo talks right at the front

of your mouth like this, you know?

And then John was more sort of contemplative, you know,

as he got a bit older.

I'm a massive Beatles fan.

There is no pop music without The Beatles.

They are the progenitors of everything that followed.

It's incredible to me that The Beatles existed

for about eight years.

When you look at the breadth of style and tone

and innovation that they, sort of,

brought the world in the short period

of time they were alive, it beggars belief.

I am in love with The Beatles and that's a fact.

Thank you very much, Caleb.

Was Hughie based on Simon Pegg.

That's Hughie from The Boys.

Yes, he was.

The comic book of The Boys,

which appeared in 2008, I think,

Darick Robertson, who's the artist,

drew Hughie as me for some reason.

I think he'd seen Spaced, our TV show,

and obviously thought I would never amount

to anything and sue him.

So he drew Huey as me.

And I found out about this and was delighted

and got in touch with Darick and said, Thanks.

I'd never, you know, had a cameo in a comic book before,

and then DC, who published The Boys at the time,

before they decided to walk away 'cause it was too extreme,

sent me a message saying Please don't sue us.

And it didn't even cross my mind.

I was like, Ah, that's really cool.

When they came to make the TV show of The Boys

and Jack Quaid, one of my favorite human beings on earth

and my television son now,

got the role of Hughie, Eric Kripke,

the producer, asked me to come and play Hughie's father,

which is why I am in The Boys and delighted to be so,

it's an incredible show.

For me, the definitive Hughie is Jack.

Where did Simon Pegg and Nick Frost meet?

We met on a balcony

in Cricklewood North London in 1994.

He was a waiter at a restaurant

that my girlfriend worked at.

She said, There's a guy at work

that I think you might like, and I did,

and we ditched her, and we ran away together. [laughs]

And then I started to write Nick into things

that I was making

because I just wanted to hang out with him more.

And Nick hadn't any plans to become an actor,

but obviously took to it like a duck to water.

So that is where that relationship was born.

And he was very on that night.

I remember he was...

I could feel that he was trying to impress me.

He was doing a lot of his bits.

The thing that impressed me the most

was that when I left the party,

he was asleep next to a gigantic speaker

holding a can of Red Stripe.

And I thought, This kid's got something.

Does Simon Pegg like Invincible?

Yeah.

I mean, back in the day when I...

I don't read comics so much anymore,

but I remember when we made Paul,

we put my character, Graham, in an invincible t-shirt

'cause I think I was reading it 'round about that time.

Robert Kirkman, of course,

same author as The Walking Dead.

We wanted Graham and Clive to be very, sort of,

up on what was cool.

Obviously this is way before it became a TV show.

We we're pretty much bleeding edge, me and Frost.

But like I say, I don't read comics so much anymore.

I'm old.

I'm 55.

How the...

How to meet Simon [laughs] Pegg?

I don't know.

I've started doing conventions here and there

'cause they're really fun.

I don't know, what's a nicer thing then

to spend a weekend getting loved?

So if you come to a convention and I'm there, we can meet,

and we'll have a little chat.

I'll probably charge you an exorbitant amount

of money for a signature.

That's not my decision.

That's what is part of the thing.

I'd do it for free.

Catch me outside on the way out,

just come up and we'll do it for free.

[card clacking]

What is Simon Pegg's [groans] best movie?

That's not for me to answer.

I mean, I think a lot of people would probably say

Shaun of the Dead in the same way that a lot

of people say Star Wars is their favorite.

Star Wars maybe 'cause it was like the first one,

and that was our first, my first time leading a movie.

Different people say different things.

Some people say Hot Fuzz, some people say

The world's End, some people say Paul,

some people will say Star Trek.

And it's hard for me to say

'cause it's such a subjective thing, you know,

whether you like films or not.

I have films that some people love

and some people hate, the same film.

What is the Simon Pegg trilogy?

Well, I mean, there's been a few.

The Cornetto Trilogy, which is Shaun of the Dead,

Hot Fuzz, and The World's End,

which I made with Edgar Wright.

We wrote together, and Edgar directed,

and I appeared in.

The Cornetto, for those of you here

in the United States of America

who don't know what a Cornetto is, and I pity you,

is an ice cream confection from the UK,

which is basically a sort of an ice cream cone

with a topper.

They come in like regular flavor,

which is like chocolate and nut,

or strawberry flavor, or mint flavor.

And now there are lots of other Cornettos as well.

When we did Shaun of the Dead,

Edgar was absolutely adamant

that the Strawberry Cornetto was a panacea for hangovers.

Like if you had a hangover, strawberry Cornetto,

a little bit of fruit zest,

bit of sugar, boom, you feel better.

So we had Ed, Nick's character in the film,

ask for a Cornetto the morning after a heavy session.

And at the premier of Shaun of the Dead,

we got free Cornettos.

And we were just a bunch of young filmmakers, you know,

we didn't know that you could get free ice cream,

and we were so blown away by the fact

that Cornetto had basically

provided us with a fridge full of Cornettos,

we thought, Let's put it in the second film

as a reference back to 'Shaun of the Dead.'

So Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman

are eating Cornettos in the car in Hot Fuzz.

Or Hot Fuzz at one point.

I think we repeated the,

One other thing from the shop line

from Shaun of the Dead.

So self-indulgent.

We realized after that we needed

to put a Cornetto in the third film in The World's End,

which you glimpse very briefly at the end.

We really played the long game with the reveal of that one.

And then they just became known as the Cornetto trilogy

because it is a singular thread running

through all three films.

So if you ever come to the UK, get yourself a Cornetto,

they're really delicious

and have a think about me when you're eating it.

There is also Star Trek,

Star Trek Into Darkness,

and Star Trek Beyond that I was in,

and I wrote Star Trek Beyond with Doug Jung,

shout out to Doug.

And I've been in six Mission: Impossible films,

which is two trilogies

and a quite a few Ice Age movies as well.

So they're not trilogies.

So I answered my own question.

What movie Simon Pegg things come true?

Oh that's, yeah, okay.

That's Absolutely Anything, which is a movie I made

with Terry Jones, who directed the Life of Brian,

one of the greatest comedy movies of all time.

And I was in with the other Monty Python team,

and Robin Williams was my dog in it.

And it's a crazy movie that Terry wrote about a guy

who is gifted the ability

to make anything come true that he wants to happen.

It's a crazy movie, and it was lovely to work with Terry.

He was a legend of British comedy

and someone I grew up loving.

And it's a bit daft,

but if you've got a spare 90 minutes, give it a look.

What movies are Simon Pegg?

Oh, I've missed this bit.

What movies are Simon Pegg together

and Nick Frost in together?

Okay, so Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz,

The World's End, Tintin, Paul.

I think we're kind of both in one Ice Age movie,

although not together, together.

TV show, Spaced.

So we work together as much as we can, Nick and I,

mainly 'cause it means we can hang out.

Particularly now.

We used to live together when I was young,

when we were both young.

We could see each other every day and that was great.

But then we got married, we had children,

we moved to different parts of the country.

We text every day, but we don't get to see each other much.

So making a film or a TV show

is the perfect way to hang out.

So if for nothing else,

we'll do it again for that reason.

[card clacking] [upbeat music]

That's all the boards.

That was a lot of fun.

It's very funny to see what people are asking,

but, you know, ask me in future

and I'll give you a straight answer.

Thank you very much, Wired, I had a blast.

[upbeat music]