“We're going to the Winchester.”
“You've got red on you.”
“How's that for a slice of fried gold?”
There are few so eminently quotable movies in British history, let alone to have released in the last 20 years, as Shaun of the Dead. Two decades ago, it broke new ground as the world's first rom-zom-com — such was its widely used genre categorisation in the press — pitting two feckless layabouts against hordes of zombies in North London, after an overnight epidemic brings the capital to its knees. (Although, to be clear, we still don't use the Z-word.)
As his new period miniseries, Nolly, hits ITVX, we speak to one of Britain's best-known TV writers about all things soaps, his career hits (and flops), and his much-anticipated return to Doctor Who
The movie, which arrived as part of a wave of cinema reviving the dormant zombie genre, is an ode to enduring friendship. It's a film about really grappling with adult responsibility for the first time. Most poignantly, it's about moving on. All against the backdrop of a very British zombie apocalypse, and the two friends, Shaun and Ed, who take it on themselves to save the people they love. For Shaun, that's his ex-girlfriend, Liz; for Ed, it's Shaun's mum, Barbara. And how are they going to do that? By heading to the Winchester, having a nice cold pint, and waiting for this all to blow over.
It took a few years for Shaun to finally go into production, in May 2003. “I didn't know if anyone was going to see this film apart from my mum,” Simon Pegg tells GQ. It ended up being a hit, storming the States and taking almost $39 million at the global box office. More importantly, it turned Pegg, director Edgar Wright and co-star Nick Frost into Hollywood names, springboarding the genre-homaging Cornetto trilogy.
“I don't think we had any thought of what it would be do beyond the UK. And even that was like, please let it go down well in the UK… everything that came afterwards, travelling around the world with it, was a life-changing bonus,” Wright says.
On the occasion of Shaun of the Dead's 20th anniversary, the trio joins GQ to reminisce on two decades of cricket-bat-swinging and record-hurling.
Nick Frost: I saw a picture of us at the [Shaun of the Dead] premiere the other day, and it struck me that I'm now the age Bill Nighy was at the premiere.
Edgar Wright: No way.
Frost: Yeah, really. What was Bill? 50-odd? 54, 52? We're in that ballpark now. And it's funny, I'm doing a job with kids who're in their 20s, and it's like, I am their— I'm not Bill Nighy at all, but age-wise, I'm their Bill Nighy.
Simon Pegg: We used to sit around in Bill's trailer, just listening to him tell us stories about his wilder days. He was just like the Obi-Wan Kenobi of the shoot. It's crazy to think that we're that age now.
Wright: I think for us, as well, it's a strange thing where it both feels like 20 years ago, but it also feels like yesterday. I remember everything about it very vividly.
One of the big things was hearing from [zombie movie director] George Romero, who was the first person outside of our circle that saw the movie. And to get a phone call from him saying that he liked the film… it was like tearing a rift in the universe.
GQ: He was on holiday in Florida at the time, right?
Wright: Yeah, you're right. They found the nearest cinema to him and arranged for him to see it. But the detail that I always remember that really made me laugh, was that a Universal security guard was present for the entire screening. As if George Romero is gonna pirate the film himself. I thought, the one person who should pirate the film, and get residuals, would be George. It's funny that you're worried about him stealing it, when in reality…
Frost: We stole it from him. [Laughs.]
What do you remember about trying to get the movie off the ground?
Wright: Film4 came on board first… Me and Simon wrote the first draft in 2001. And then in 2002, Film4 went bankrupt, briefly, or they ceased operations. So that was then a very tough, tense period, because we had taken time off from doing TV and other projects to bank everything on [Shaun of the Dead].
In the lead-up to the movie, I was not taking other work, and I was properly broke. I borrowed £600 off Simon, which he's never let me pay him back because he wants to lord it over me forever.
Pegg: It's true. I want my leverage.
Wright: I remember specifically in the offices of Pathé in London, the receptionist saw who we were, and literally said out loud: “Oh, they'll give anybody a movie these days.” We were pushing up against this attitude of like, Who do these guys think they are, that they can make a movie?
Pegg: I think as a clueless actor I was far less aware of the machinery behind getting a film made. I just assumed that it would happen, somehow. And I think it was that sort of blind optimism-stroke-naivety, that kept me going through that period.
Wright: Nick, I hope you don't mind me saying this: there were some times people… didn't understand necessarily why Simon and Nick together was so important. There were a couple of times [where they said], “Ed is like the funniest part of the film. Why wouldn't you go with somebody bigger?”
Frost: I've always thought that.
Wright: It was literally that thing of, like, “Could you get an American in this part? Could Jack Black play this part?” And we were like, No, it has to be Nick.
Frost: I'm glad I was your rider.
Pegg: It's funny. Maybe if we knew more at the time — maybe if we had had a little bit more experience of the film industry — we would've been a little less gung-ho about it. We did go in with that proviso.
Wright: It's the power of naivety. You don't know the meaning of the word “no”. you don't know what the pitfalls are. I think a lot of people's first and second movies are supercharged by them not knowing anything, because they haven't been brought down to Earth yet.
There are lots of things in Shaun where I'm sure they probably thought we were insane. Like, shooting for eight weeks, which is not a huge schedule, but is more than most people would do for a British [indie] or a low-budget horror movie… I know behind our backs probably people were thinking, like, Who do these guys think they are?
Pegg: I think the deal breaker in the end was that Nick [would] be paid five pounds for the whole thing. And he got a backend of a further five pounds.
Frost: Which they're still paying me in tranches. [Wright laughs.] Every year I get 20 pence.
Wright: With the residual corridor, what year do you expect to make the full five pounds?
Frost: 2308, apparently. Which seems weird.
Were there any other albums that you wanted to destroy in the record-chucking scene that you couldn't include, for one reason or another?
Wright: The only other bit that we wrote, as far as I recall, is at one point we did David Bowie albums. I think it was like: “Hunky Dory, no. Ziggy Stardust, no. The Labyrinth soundtrack…”
“Throw it.”
Wright: I think we reached out to David Bowie's publicist, and I heard something secondhand that he was touchy about Labyrinth, so that was a no.
Pegg: Also, it's not as funny, because the Labyrinth soundtrack isn't bad. I listened to it when my daughter was young, and it's got some crackers on it. The Batman soundtrack was just…
More objectively questionable.
Pegg: Yeah, as is the Stone Roses' second album, which I am a fan of.
We had to clear the [vinyl] covers, so we couldn't actually show the cover of the Batman soundtrack, or of Dire Straits, despite the fact that I wrote a letter to Mark Knopfler asking him if we could, couched in such a way that it was a positive thing that we were throwing his landmark album at a zombie. It was like, This is actually quite a compliment. When really we both thought it was shit. [Laughs.]
Wright: The intro to “Walk of Life,” come on.
Pegg: Yeah, I mean, now I'm older. Now I'm in the right age range.
Wright: You're in the right dadcore bracket for Dire Straits.
Is it true that you cried after shooting Penelope Wilton's death scene?
Pegg: Everybody cried that day. We were all emotionally exhausted.
Frost: That was odd for me, because you know, never really wanting to be an actor, and then Spaced was one thing, and I got to do this. And it was like, acting. It was kind of weird having to emote, you know. And it was genuinely quite moving.
Pegg: Also, Penelope looked remarkably like my mum.
Frost: So we'd go off set and have a little cry at the end.
Pegg: We did, we did.
Wright: At that point, the film was being shot pretty much [chronologically], so there was something really traumatic about the shot of Penelope Wilton, where she's a zombie, just before she gets shot, is also her last shot in the movie. It was like we'd really killed Barbara. [Laughs.] It was like she was gone, because we didn't see her again until we were done-done. It was really emotional how the cast started getting smaller towards the end.
What are your memories from taking Shaun to the U.S.? You had all of these incredible responses, from people like Romero, Tarantino…
Wright: The thing that I'm proudest of — and this goes for Hot Fuzz and The World's End, as well — was a very British comedy doing well in the States, and we didn't compromise it for an international audience. People appreciated it more because it was British.
Frost: I think, also, what made me realise that Shaun of the Dead had been such a dramatic hit in the States, is when we did the Hot Fuzz press tour. They were similar tours, but for Shaun, we'd turn up to a screening, and it was a busy screening, it went down great, the Q&As were great, we'd get back in our van and go to the hotel. When we did Hot Fuzz, the screenings were just bonkers, because everyone had seen Shaun of the Dead and wanted to see what was next.
Pegg: It was like being in a band, because we were on tour, and we were staying in hotels, and everywhere we'd go we'd get welcomed. That's even with Shaun, you know. The turnout was always fantastic. We didn't know what to expect. It was very intensive.
The first day I turned up was for the screening at the ArcLight [cinema] in L.A. I got off the plane, straight to the ArcLight, and Edgar was sat with Quentin Tarantino.
Wright: And [Kill Bill's] David Carradine.
Pegg: And then we went and had an after-show in… what was the name of that pub?
Wright: The Cat and Fiddle.
Pegg: The Cat and Fiddle. And it was crazy. It was a bit of a dream, the whole thing. Suddenly being lauded and supported by these filmmakers that we'd long admired, [with] this little film that we had no idea would ever have this reach, even at that time, was amazing.
Wright: I've got to give a shoutout to Eli Roth, because he was also one of those people who saw it early on, and definitely told other directors, “you gotta see this.” I know that Eli told Quentin that, and Peter Jackson that, saying, “You've gotta see this film, you've gotta meet Edgar, Simon and Nick.”
That was the other thing, is that [those] people then gave us press quotes. George Romero was on the main poster, and then it was like: Quentin Tarantino, Stephen King, Sam Raimi, Guillermo Del Toro, Robert Rodriguez, Frank Darabont… to say “thank you,” we made them all Shaun's badge with their name on it. I once had the opportunity to be in touch with Stephen King, and I asked, “Did you ever get your Shaun of the Dead badge, which said ‘Foree Electric, Stephen’?” He replied by email: “Not only did I get it, I'm wearing it right now.”
Pegg: There's a picture online of Stephen King at an event, and he's wearing a Shaun of the Dead t-shirt. So if I'm ever talking to anyone, and they say they like Stephen King, I immediately go, “Oh, well, look at this!” And send them a picture of Stephen King with my face on his chest. [Laughs.]
Simon and Edgar, there have been reports that you've bashed heads on another film. What's the plan? When are you gonna get the gang back together?
Wright: We need to be in the same room and hash out some ideas. I mean, the idea of working together, the three of us, has never gone away. If we did something else, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a fourth Cornetto. In a way I feel sometimes, even when we were doing The World's End, having expectations of what it would be, or in some fans' minds should be, is sort of limiting. I think whatever we do next, we want to do something different.
Pegg: I think we need to actively attempt to disappoint our core audience. People always constantly ask us for Shaun of the Dead 2, or Hot Fuzz 2, whatever, or, Can we have another Cornetto film? And it's like, Well no. We've done that now, and we want to do something different, and surprising, in the same way Shaun of the Dead was something people hadn't seen before.
Frost: “You've done zombies. You've done cops. What's next?”
Wright: [Laughs.] On the Hot Fuzz press tour, it was like Chinese water torture, because we'd always be asked that question. Every single interview. “You've done zombies. You've done cops. What's next?”
I think part of the problem sometimes is that you don't want to jinx yourself. Early on, we learned our lesson by… I feel increasingly superstitious, in terms of talking about future projects, because you don't want to say anything that you then can't come back from. So we're always nervous about saying anything. But just another film would be the dream.
