Simon Pegg And Nick Frost Talk ‘The World’s End’ With THN

The final part of Edgar Wright’s cult Cornetto Trilogy, THE WORLD’S END, is released in the UK this Friday (check out Matthew’s glowing four star review, here). To celebrate the film’s release, THN were lucky enough to sit down with stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to chat booze, Pub Fu and penguin cuddles. And don’t fear – this interview is completely spoiler-free.

THE NOSTALGIA AND INSPIRATION:

Simon Pegg: I was very much a goth from sixteen to twenty-one. The big names for me at the time, The Sisters Of Mercy, obviously, were around, Bauhaus, The Cure, The March Violets, that kind of deal. And a lot of hairspray, tight trousers, winklepickers. That’s the only thing about Gary, I wouldn’t have worn the Docs until a little later, I would have worn my very pointy, buckley boots. And tighter jeans.

Nick Frost: I was a raver. And it stays, it’s never left me. I mean, right now my fashion is different obviously, but the music, I still listen to that a lot. Is it nostalgia if you’re still into it?

Simon Pegg: Yeah, it was kind of nostalgic to go back and dress like that, I relished it. And I never dyed my hair black when I was young, for some reason I thought it might upset my mum or something, I don’t know why I didn’t do it. So to do it, it felt like I was putting something to bed that had been preying on my mind for twenty years! We just had this idea of this force which is trying to shape Earth into something it’s not in order to conform to a galactic idea of what the norm is. We saw parallels there between the high street pubs being taken over by chains and coffee shops being taken over by Starbucks, and this idea that it might make it better in some respects, it might make it more standardised and more comfortable, even, and make the prices more similar, but at the same time it’s taking away a certain individuality. And in a way that’s a theme we’ve always had, whether it was the zombies or the NWA. And we just had this idea over whether it felt right to force something to feel better or whether something should become better by itself, and that’s the big argument at the end.

Me and Edgar had like a two hundred song playlist that we were listening to during the process, and certain songs rose above the others – Loaded, obviously, was something that was integral to the story and the script, and stuff like The Happy Mondays and The Soup Dragons and The Stone Roses were things we were listening to. And then stuff like, you know, Kylie, we wanted to bring the pop end into The Mermaid, and Saint Etienne and stuff. And then The Beautiful South and The Sundays, we were both big fans of The Sundays, all those tracks, we wanted to have the music exist in a five-year gap from ’87 to ’92, specifically most of it between ’88 and ’91. So, with the exception of the Alabama song by The Doors, it’s all in that period. It’s a mix tape, it’s Gary’s tape, that’s what it is.

We looked at IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER, which is a Gene Kelly musical, we watched THE BIG CHILL and FANDANGO. But we decided not to do what we did with HOT FUZZ, which was to watch a lot of films, because we decided we didn’t need to learn any kind of language of cinema – we weren’t going to make any comments about science fiction or make any references to other films. Any references you might pick up on are unintentional or subconscious, there are no overt references in this film, even films you could possibly apply it being similar to, like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS or STEPFORD WIVES. We thought, let’s try and come from a social science fiction angle and look at like John Wyndham who wrote THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS and DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. So if there’s any influence there, it’s probably a literary one. But it’s certainly not a riff on anything; it’s a science fiction film, but it’s not a comment on science fiction films.

THE ACTION:

Nick Frost: It was fantastic! We got to work with Brad Allan who works with Jackie Chan, so, you know, you have the chance to potentially impress someone who is impressed by Jackie Chan! And he’s quite a serious man, Brad Allan. He knows his business and he loves his business and he stands and watches and says, “Okay guys, so maybe you should try this instead.” He’s that kind of real quiet bloke and you think, “What’s the deal with this guy?” But he’d murder you in a second; he’s a big ball of muscle. And sometimes you’d see him laughing at one of the monitors at something you did watching playback, and he’d say, “That’s great,” and you’d feel amazing! It’d feel amazing. But we did about four weeks rehearsal and we’d go in everyday and we’d fight with hit balls and bags just to kind of get us loose and limber, but those guys are so good, their skill is that we would come in and he’d have his laptop up and press play and say, “This is what we’d like you to do today.” And it was essentially the finished fight, but just him and his guys in the rehearsal room with boxes and bits of cardboard, you know, and that’s what we would work towards.

Simon Pegg: And he’d edited it together with music, so essentially we’d have bits of the fight.

Nick Frost: It was fantastic! But the thing that was great for us, because we like to get involved, is that we’d say, “What if we tried this?” and he’d say, “What do you think?” And then we’d work something out and he’d say, “That’s great, that’s great!” And then we’d go away and that would then be in the next day! We’d work toward that. And also, it’s a thing that evolves on set as well, and doing it in a rehearsal room is pretty different to doing it on set once you get there and realise, “Oh, this beam is here now that wasn’t there.”

Simon Pegg: Or the fake glass or whatever.

Nick Frost: Yeah, you know, you have to be able to kind of evolve and change it on the day, but it was fantastic. I got to fight ten men at once and didn’t get hit, which was amazing!

Simon Pegg: Also, we had an editor on set who was there to edit our video assist, which is when you do a take that it’s also got on video so you can play it back and see what you’ve shot because obviously you can’t watch the film straightaway because it has to be developed. So Paul would edit the video assist together so we could see exactly how the fight was developing, incase we needed a cutaway or something. And the fights are filmed very specifically, they’re filmed in like one continuous shot. It was great, every time we finished a shot, it’d go in and we’d watch like one minute and then two minutes and then three minutes, then five minutes and then suddenly it’d be eight minutes of fighting. It was amazing.

Nick Frost: Also, the thing I found doing the Pub Fu with the stalls is that, you know, if you’re having a fight normally with your fists, on camera you can cheat it a lot by where you put the camera and how you sell the punch. But with these things you couldn’t do it because there was just too much gap and you’d pick it up, so I kind of had to hit those men a lot for two days for eight or nine hours a day. And some are really kind of old, grizzled Hungarian stuntmen, but there was, like little Mark, he was only like nineteen and there were a couple of times I caught them quite hard.

Simon Pegg: A lot of brain cells died.

Nick Frost: I mean, I’m a big man who can throw a punch, you know, but they had to be helped up a lot. I think there were two or three times where we shot it and you can see that instead of hitting them I was kind of putting it on them and pushing them off with it. And it was that odd thing where the stuntman was saying, “No, no, you can do it, you can do it, just do it, no it’s fine!”

Simon Pegg: They were all sadomasochists, weren’t they.

Nick Frost: Yeah! I think they get paid by the nosebleed, so yeah, we did it a lot!

Simon Pegg: Yeah, those fight scenes are our dance numbers. They’re very well choreographed and you know, Brad invented this kind of Pub Fu thing which is stylised and it’s not like a real pub fight, it’s more stylised, but it felt like, in some respects, that’s what the film was like. You know, there’s a musical number in The Mermaid and then it stops for a dance, and IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER very much was an influence, just that seething tension that exists.

THE ALCOHOL AND THE LADS:

Nick Frost: Eddie Marsan was fantastic. You know, we had the best time on SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, so when we were kind of at an early point with this, I was saying, “You should look at Eddie you know, he’s fantastic.” And him, me and Toby Jones had the best laugh on SNOW WHITE, hanging around, you know.

Simon Pegg: Eddie is a master at playing bad guys, he really is. He refers to himself as ‘Rent-A-C-Word-Eddie-Marsan’, and we loved the idea of him playing a sympathetic, loveable character. And very early on after discussions, Edgar and I were thinking that Eddie was going to be Peter – Eddie was the only choice we ever had for Peter, and he plays the role so beautifully. There’s a bit in the film where he’s listening to one of the characters droning on about something and he falls asleep because he’s so drunk. It’s just pure Stan Laurel, you know? He just sort of wakes up and you see him think, “Where am I?” and he’s brilliant. We were so lucky with our cast, it was our dream cast, and we got it.

Nick Frost: We laughed a lot and we just hung out! I wish I could tell you a story where we all hated each other, but we just laughed a lot! A lot of the time we’d just sit there and watch Paddy, because Paddy left to his own would just dance around and say things inappropriately and you’d just sit and watch him, and that’s it, it’s amazing!

Simon Pegg: Paddy’s got a terrible habit of talking right up until the point of action, and the last thing he will say will leave you so when action is called, you’re left there trying to digest what Paddy’s just said and trying not to laugh.

Nick Frost: But after that scene in the bowls club, you know, that was the longest as far as we shot, it was a nine page scene, and it felt like proper acting, didn’t it? And Paddy would say, “It’s like fucking Donmar Warehouse! Who the fuck’s going to watch eight minutes of acting?” But he’s amazing, you know, he’s amazing to watch.

Simon Pegg: And Martin Freeman, he’s a dark horse, because he likes to crack you up, he likes to make you laugh and pretends that he’s not doing it. So you see him sometimes, he’ll do something – there’s a scene where he comes out of the toilets and he’d do this thing where he’s smacking his lips and he knew, he knew he was making us laugh, but because he wasn’t on camera, every time we’d go, “Fucking hell Martin, stop it!” he’d go, “What? What? I’m not doing anything! I’m not doing anything!” So that kind of banter and camaraderie was constant on the set.

Nick Frost: It also felt very supportive. We all have our moments in the film where we are angry or upset or sad or – it is proper actings. It’s not just goofing around and comedy, and I don’t think I’ve ever been on a set where we all did it to each other at different points, but you do that thing after cut where you’re standing there and thinking, “Okay, don’t cry,” and then like Eddie would come up to you and go (pats back), and Martin, and Paddy. And that happened all the time, and that kind of makes you feel so comfortable.

Simon Pegg: Apart from the ball-cupping.

Nick Frost: The ball-cupping was weird, I don’t know why Edgar started that… But it’s nice! It’s nice, when you do that thing where you get home and think – you have your shower and you get your bag ready for the next day, and you think, “I can’t wait to go in.” And that’s such a rare thing in any job that you fucking think that, so to have a cast like we had and a great script that Edgar and Simon had written and it was the third film, it felt special.

Simon Pegg: Rosamund Pike… Oh my God, what a star.

Nick Frost: We were very protective over Ros, weren’t we.

Simon Pegg: We used to give her penguin cuddles.

Nick Frost: Yes, we did give her penguin cuddles!

Simon Pegg: When it was cold outside, Rosamund would stand in the middle of all five of us and she’d turn round and round in a circle.

Nick Frost: And we’d sing this song (MAGIC ROUNDABOUT theme), and we’d turn round, and she’d turn round the counter clock thing.

Simon Pegg: It got boring at night sometimes! She gives as good as she gets, Ros, she really throws herself into it and she’s very confident and strong and brilliant, and in what is essentially a very boysy set she made herself heard and had a great time. And I went on to do another film with her immediately after that and we were really, really able to pick up on where we left off from THE WORLD’S END because we were playing lovers in the next film, so the friendship we already had we used to look convincing as a couple and it worked, you know, we were mates at that point. She’s one of the boys.

Nick Frost: We’re not really pub crawl people! We had one with Edgar a few years ago which lasted about three pints before Edgar went, “Eurdfrahhhssfdfllll,” and we had to take him home. We had a kind of pub crawl at your stag.

Simon Pegg: My stag. The last one was good.

Nick Frost: We had a kind of one at my stag too, but a friend brought a bottle of Absinthe shaped like the Eiffel Tower and that kind of put paid to that. But I think we’re the kind of people that, we found a beautiful pub in our younger days and we sat in the pub.

Simon Pegg: I had an epiphany today. I realised that a pub crawl is actually a way of justifying drinking too much. Because if you sit in a pub on your own, or you sit in the pub with your friends and you drink twelve pints, it’s a lot. But if you go from pub to pub it’s like you’re on a quest, there’s a reason! It gives a reason other than the drinking, when really all you want to do is drink a lot and have an excuse to do it. It’s a way of justifying abusive alcohol intake.

Nick Frost: I think the only way I’d do a pub crawl now is if it were in a beautiful walled Spanish city and I could stop and have some sherry and chorizo and move on and have some patatas bravas, you know?

Simon Pegg: I’d do a cafe crawl now. A bit of cake in each one, a cup of tea. We told props we needed a nonalcoholic fluid that we could drink a lot of that looks like lager but isn’t. So they concocted this brew of water and burnt sugar and cream of soda which looks like lager and that we drunk gallons and gallons of, but felt perfectly fine, very hydrated, everything was good.

Nick Frost: They had those weird things that you get from Argos to make a cappuccino at home, it’s like a (makes high-pitched frothing noise). And there’s foam coming out of that and then they’d come and spoon it on the top.

Simon Pegg: That was the only way we could get through it.

Nick Frost: But the shots were real.

THE WORLD’S END is released in UK cinemas on July 19th and US cinemas on August 23rd.