Running with Simon Pegg and Star Trek

Ever since he made Shaun of the Dead with his partner in cinematic crime, Edgard Wright, back in 2004, Simon Pegg has had an amazing run on the big screen. After small parts in the TV series Doctor Who and George Romero's Land of the Dead, Pegg landed a huge break in 2006 when director J.J. Abrams cast the British comedic hooligan in Mission Impossible III next to Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Since then, Pegg has gone on to find success with Edgar Wright with last year's action/comedy hit Hot Fuzz and can now be seen in former Friends star David Schwimmer's comedy Run Fatboy Run, which hits theatres on March 28.

While he waits for the release of J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Trek, in which Abrams cast him as Scotty, Simon Pegg recently hit the junket tour in support of Run fatboy Run. Luckily The Deadbolt was on hand to get the goods on what it was like to wear such tight shorts, the title of Run Fatboy Run, seeing Hank Azaria in the buff, his recent string of success, how he landed his role in the upcoming Star Trek movie and how he's handling the pressure of playing Scotty.

Simon Pegg on wearing tight shorts:

"I have incredibly well defined legs that no fat man could ever carry off, so I wasn’t worried about wearing the shorts. [laughs] I came off the back of a film where I actually did have to get pretty fit, so I had to wear a little fat suit to get across Dennis’ ponchier element. And so it was like dressing up, I love wearing tiny swimming shorts and running around North London at 6am in the morning. What’s not to love about that?"

Pegg on the "Run Fatboy Run" title:

"We didn’t want the film to be a fat joke, and that’s kind of done to death and slightly obvious. The point of Dennis is he is 'fat of mind' in a way. It’s like his attitude is inert and slothful and he’s not fit into his sort of life outlook. So the fat thing is less relevant, really, against the big picture. It’s not like Norbit, which coincidently Thandie [Newton] was also in, you know. It’s not about fat suits and jokes about losing your bellybutton, it was more about Dennis’ state of mind."

On his current string of projects:

"Work begets work and we’ve had a good run with Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, and other options are opening up and you just want to keep doing good work, really. I don’t really have a plan. I don’t really think I want to be here in five years or whatever; you just do whatever comes up next and fortunately for us we self generate as well. So we’ve always got things in the pipeline because we’re writing all of the time and Nick and I have just written another film together - Nick Frost and I and Edgar and myself. Edgar Wright will write another film together to close the trilogy that started with Shaun and Hot Fuzz. I think even if nobody was offering me anything I’d still be writing stuff for myself, which is fortunate. It means I keep working."

Pegg on what he finds funny:

"I’m a huge fan of comedy and I’m a big fan of American comedy. I’m a huge Simpsons fan, which made working with Hank Azaria on Run Fatboy Run a joy, because Hank will just do the voices for you without even complaining. But also shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development, which I think is a wonderful show that should’ve run a lot longer than it did. And also great American stand-ups like Chris Rock, who I went to go see recently, who is just so dynamic and so clever. I tend to consume as much comedy as I can. I like intelligent comedy; I’m less a fan of - you know, slapstick can be intelligent, but I’m less a fan of the sort of farcical spoofery that predominates now a little bit. We all say that Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz weren’t spoofs at all, they were homages if anything else. Obvious humor I don’t like so much, but there’s plenty of good stuff out there."

Simon Pegg on Hank Azaria being completely naked in the locker room scene:

"He kind of decided to forego the pouch that you wear sometimes when you’re doing a nude scene because it was going to save time. It takes a while to apply, particularly in Hank’s case [laughs]. That’s for you Hank. So he said, ‘Well, let’s just do it.' I was the only one that was going to be seeing it, I think. So, you know, you get changed in front of guys in the locker room all of the time, so what’s the problem? But I did have to do this scene when I was trying hard not to look at little Hank - I say that relatively - and it was difficult to act. And he just stood there. Hank’s amazingly well built, he’s got an incredible physic. He runs like ten miles a day, he’s really buff, and so it was quite sickening to have to stand there and look at this sort of Adonis type figure."

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