Simon Pegg: mission accomplished

When Simon Pegg landed the role of Benji Dunn in Mission: Impossible III, he wasn’t entirely convinced that his casting — as a convivial British agent and a lovable gadget dealer for Tom Cruise — would go the distance.

“It’s been 20 years since I first went onto set and it’s been a long road,” Pegg reflects over coffee on a rainy April morning in Soho. “I didn’t really think this role was anything major when I did it. I thought it was a bit of stunt casting off the back of Shaun of the Dead, but here we are.” 

Here we are indeed. The job was Pegg’s first taste of Tinseltown and marked the start of a journey that would see him chalk up the kinds of jobs that — as he told Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs — his childhood self would look at with “utter amazement”. Spielberg regular? Check. A fan-favourite turn as Scotty in JJ Abrams’s celebrated Star Trek movies? Check. And a small cameo in Star Wars? You’ve guessed it…

But it is Mission: Impossible that marks the longest and certainly one of the most significant roles of Pegg’s career. Back in 2005, it was the first indication that this affable everyman from Shaun of the Dead was suddenly a big deal. Twenty years later, he has grown to become a major part of the franchise as Tom Cruise’s right-hand man on screen and as his friend off it. Cruise, for instance, christened him “Eight-Pack Peggles” after he showed off a ripped body transformation in 2019.

But as far as Mission: Impossible is concerned, there’s the palpable sense that all good things must come to an end. The latest instalment hits our screens at the end of May, and a sub-title like Final Reckoning doesn’t seem particularly open-ended. Similarly, you’d imagine that its gut-busting runtime of nearly three hours could tie up some loose ends pretty definitively. So, is it really the end? 

“It’s been five years working on these films [including 2023’s Dead Reckoning] because of Covid and strikes, so it was a long shoot, probably longer than Lord of the Rings, actually,” comes Pegg’s diplomatic answer. “But it’s been such a journey and, you know, the question of whether it’s the end or not requires quite a binary answer that would require spoilers, so…”  

That’s us told, then. The film’s secrets remain firmly under wraps and — in their ability to keep secrets while under duress at least — it seems that Benji and Pegg have a hell of a lot in common.

“I remember walking onto this prestigious soundstage on a prestigious lot for my first day and it was pretty overwhelming,” Pegg adds of his first day on the set of Mission: Impossible in November 2005. 

“The scope, the size and even the method of how the film was made was different from how me and Edgar [Wright] had worked together. I’ve obviously grown accustomed since, but it’s a different beast.”

“The thing I relish the most is being at home. I really love living in the countryside”

A different beast it certainly is. When Pegg first went to Hollywood, it felt like a victory for this down-to-earth Brit. Part of Shaun of the Dead’s appeal was that it dared to ask what a classic Zombie epic would look like if it was set in Britain and our biggest hope was a lovable and entirely relatable loser who sold tellies for a living. In many ways, Pegg’s successes felt like those of your best mate. 

Even though he’s now a bonafide Hollywood star in his own right, Pegg lives an ordinary life with his wife and daughter in Hertfordshire. In the best way possible, there’s always been the feeling that as far as Hollywood is concerned, Pegg has been an outsider looking in — with such detachment lending him a healthy dose of perspective.

“Hollywood is as much a kind of concept as it is a place, you know. I’ve only ever made maybe three or four films there, and you don’t need to live in Hollywood to work there,” he says. “All my family is here, and I wouldn’t want to uproot them. We’ve spent periods of time renting a house there and my daughter was born there.”

Pegg is also by his own admission a “homebody”. Take a look at Pegg’s Instagram stories on any given Saturday and you’ll probably find him walking his miniature schnauzers down a country lane. 

“The thing I relish the most is being at home, and the familiarity of dog walks on a Saturday is nice. I really love living in the countryside. It’s quiet, it’s beautiful and it’s normal.”

And it lends itself to a sense of anonymity unattainable for many A-listers?

“One hundred per cent,” he affirms. “I used to live in Crouch End before we moved here, and I was basically living on the set of Shaun of the Dead. Everybody was really nice, and I never suffered any hassle, but I felt visible, and I couldn’t really go into any shop or a restaurant without the feeling I was being constantly looked at, and that of course is a residual effect of doing a job which puts you in the public eye, and you have to be prepared for that. But you can also mitigate that if it gets a bit overwhelming, and going out to live on a road where no one else lives was a pretty good way of doing it.” 

Even if domestic bliss and dog poop is perhaps a million miles away from a film set, Pegg says the Mission: Impossible films have acted — as you’d reasonably expect after his 20-year stint — as markers of his life.

“It’s hilarious when you watch Ghost Protocol [2011] because I’d really started training and getting into the whole process that is required when you do one of these films and you happen to feature in the film for more than two scenes. And there’s an edit where I lose 20 pounds from when we were shooting in Prague to when we were in Vancouver, and you see my face become all cheekbones!”

He adds: “When I look back at that time, Ghost Protocol was just after I got sober, and it felt like a genuine sort of therapeutical experience for me, and it helped me to get myself centred again, and it was a very happy experience.”

Pegg, who has been sober since a spell in rehab 15 years ago, puts it bluntly: “I think I got back from Comic Con and woke up in The Priory,” he says. “It was like ‘OK, we need to get serious now,’ because I realised that I was just coping with emotional problems by using alcohol. I was using it as an anaesthetic when all I really needed to do is just get help. So that’s what I did.”

He has previously been vocal about his belief that he may have died if he hadn’t sought help, and has now marked 15 years of sobriety.

“You know, the universe just starts to give back in such a way once you cut anything toxic out of your life,” he reflects. “It’s amazing how things turn around and you realise how much you were sabotaging yourself, and it’s been a huge part of my personal growth in the last 15 years.” 

It helped too, he adds, that his now 15-year-old daughter was born shortly before he got sober. “Having a kid really helps you because it puts another heart beating in the world that belongs to you. That’s been everything and having Tilly was just a life-changing event for me. As soon as I got out of the weeds of that, the emotional quicksand I was in, it gave me a real anchor to pull myself out,” he says.

While Mission: Impossible has occupied a massive part in Pegg’s life, there’s a sense of restless creativity that emerges in our chat too. He might be sitting on a small fortune from potential Comic Conventions in the extremely unlikely event that his career did go south, but he’s now ready to draw a line under appearing in franchises.

“I would think very carefully about another franchise at this point in my career, particularly now in the way that franchises are made,” he explains. “You know how it is. There’s a film and then you have to go in another film which is related to that film. The idea of joining some sort of cinematic universe is not something I really want to do at all.” 

Go on…

“I don’t wanna play a fucking superhero. I feel like I’m too old anyway, and all that stuff to me just feels a little bit juvenile. I spent the first half of my career just making all my childhood dreams come true, but I’ve done that now. I’d happily make another Star Trek movie if that came up because I love those people, but I don’t find my own interests to align with those kinds of things anymore. The things I liked when I was younger, you know?” 

Instead, he tells me that he’s bought the screen rights to a popular book that he wants to direct and was meant to meet an actor who could lead the project today, before they came down with Covid.

“I’d like to do more dramatic stuff as well,” he adds at a separate point in our chat. “I never really planned on comedy as a career when I was at college. I wanted to work at the RSC and then I got into comedy at university as a way of earning money as a performer because I didn’t have an agent when I graduated. Comedy was something I enjoyed and could do, but I always feel like a bit of a fraud when I see myself referred to as a comedian because I haven’t been a comedian for 30 years. I just want to do interesting stuff, good script and work with great directors. There’s a play I’m looking at too that could be quite fun. There now seems to be this sort of odd preconception that it’s every actor’s ambition to be in a franchise, you know, and it’s not the case at all.”

“I was just coping with emotional problems by using alcohol. I was using it as an anaesthetic”

That desire to try new things extends to the Cornetto Trilogy too. Fans may clamour for a sequel to Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, but Pegg has previously been steadfast in his belief that new stories are far more worth pursuing than the cosy familiarity of those films making a return. He’s still sticking to his guns, but there could yet be a new film from the team that made those classics.

“We [Pegg and Edgar Wright] are constantly talking about it, or rather we’re constantly talking about thinking about it. He came over to mine and stayed for a few nights last year and we talked, but really, we just caught up because we see each other where we can but not often. I think we’re keen to do something different,” he says.

“I think we’re keen to not just do another genre take, and we both suggested we need to give people what they might not expect from us. Look at the Coen Brothers and look at the incredible spectrum of mood and genre they’ve covered in their movies. It’s incredible to think that the guys who made Raising Arizona also made Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing. So maybe we’ll do a drama. We both love our comedy, and we were also talking about trying to make a film which has the maturity of The World’s End, the joke count of Hot Fuzz and the impact of Shaun of the Dead. But we’re just trying to find the time too. Edgar is editing The Running Man, and Nick [Frost] has just landed the role of Hagrid in Harry Potter, so that’s him for the next eight years!” 

Would a film like Shaun of the Dead break through in 2025? 

“I don’t know. It’s not that small films don’t get made because look at the success of films like Anora, but it’s a question of whether they will go straight onto a streamer or they’ll get a theatrical exhibition, and I do worry that smaller, less spectacular films aren’t going to get a long life,” he stresses.

“Part of the cinematic experience is not just about seeing a film on the big screen; it’s about seeing it with a group of people you don’t know and having this sense of community, like a tribe. That’s what we’re losing and that’s what I’m worried about losing when you look at the decline in theatrical cinema. Covid taught us that it’s possible to enjoy movies at home and that’s fine, but when I was a kid, you’d have to wait years for films to get a TV release, and now there’s this window of maybe three months between the two. It’s insane.”

He points out the cost of cinema trips for a family but adds: “It is down to people actually making the effort to go to the movies and enjoy that experience. But the trouble is, as human beings, we like to take the path of least resistance…” 

Be that as it may, Pegg has become a bonafide part of British cultural shorthand. I tell him how I slashed my hand open on a broken plate earlier this year and the only consoling thing about it was that I was asked “Hello, Nicholas, how’s the hand?” — the classic line from Hot Fuzz. Then there’s the fact that “Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over” from Shaun of the Dead is wheeled out by the masses at the slightest hint of a national crisis. The point is that a nation of Cornetto lovers will be there to watch whatever Pegg does next.

“I think about when I was 16 or 17 and there were big cult movies that we all really loved. The idea that Shaun might be like that for some people, well, it doesn’t get better than that, you know,” he concludes. “That’s better than any award or box-office taking and the absolute pinnacle of achievement.”

Taken from the June/July issue of Rolling Stone UK, out May 29. Pre-order your copy here.