Simon Pegg talks Mission: Impossible, Cornettos and not “sitting on his arse”

When Simon Pegg answers the Zoom call, he’s sitting in his Hertfordshire-based garden office on an unusually quiet day before the Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning press tour kicks off. “It’s absolutely baking,” he says, grateful to be out of the capital where the actor spent the first twenty years of his career. “It’s where I grew up — in the countryside, so it’s nice to be back in the greenery.” The Shaun of the Dead writer, though about to head off to promote the last iteration of the Mission: Impossible franchise in Tokyo, Seoul, Cannes, London and New York, is a self-proclaimed “homebody”. “I love making films and that’s what I want to do all the time,” Pegg tells me. “The hard thing about it at times is that it takes me away from home. I’ve got a family here — my wife, my daughter, three dogs. I’d happily work here if I could.” He tells me about a recent dream work gig, where he got to shoot a music video for Rick Astley in his garden. “He was rescuing a cat up a tree,” Pegg recalls. “It was hilarious.”

The day-to-day reality for Gloucestershire-born Pegg, however, is much less lax. Having harnessed a career that’s taken him from stand-up comedian to the star of ’90s sitcom Faith in the Future, to the co-writer of Spaced and beyond, the fifty-five year old has created one of the greatest legacies in British telly to date. I tell Pegg about my penchant for Spaced. “I don’t know if you’d have been born when that came out,” he says. “It’s lovely to hear that people like yourself have found it. That’s a testament, you know?” Yet, it is probably Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End that earned Pegg his real stripes in the industry. Even when the actor flicked through the Apple film charts this morning, he tells me, the ‘Cornetto trilogy’ (a throughline born from director Edgar Wright’s personal hangover cures and “a desire for free ice cream” at the films’ premieres) was ranked at “like number two”. 

Of course, though, Pegg’s career has by no means been confined to the UK film industry. His appearances in Hollywood span from quirky comedies like Paul to heavyweight blockbusters such as Star Wars and Star Trek. It is, however, his most recent endeavour, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning that we’re here to talk about. The actor’s portrayal of Impossible Mission Force member Benji Dunn dates back to 2006, and from his debut in Mission: Impossible III to the franchise’s finale, Pegg has encountered countless unique experiences from filming through Covid — “bubbles and testing and social distancing and all that kind of stuff” — to adapting to director Christopher McQuarrie’s “write as he goes” approach. “I remember the first time I shot in Venice on Dead Reckoning,” Pegg recalls, “I was driving a water taxi, and McQ was just sitting on the front of the boat saying, say this, say that. And I was like, why am I saying it? Who am I saying it to?” He’s by no means complaining, though — Pegg describes his time in Mission Impossible as “one heck of a ride”, and his experience working on The Final Reckoning was no different. 

Pegg’s standout moment of the finale? Filming in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost settlement in the Arctic. “It’s such an insane place — somewhere that human beings shouldn’t really be, you know?” the actor says. “It’s like forty and below. There are polar bears all over the place. You’re standing on the frozen sea, which is just water protecting you from more water. It’s the majesty of it.” Allowing for all that wonder, though, Pegg explains, were staff tasked with looking after himself and his co-stars. “We had to stop shooting three times because polar bears were walking through the set. We had a team of people protecting us with binoculars and rifles — never to shoot the polar bears, to fire above their heads to scare them. But it’s their place, you know? We’re just guests.” Another challenge was, of course, the minus temperatures. Simon tells me about the times when he and Hayley Atwell got so cold they “had hand warmers pressed on our faces and hair dryers blown in our faces just to bring the blood back.”

Plot-wise, The Final Reckoning sees Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, or “blanket man” as Pegg’s daughter calls him due to one year’s Christmas present), “accept that he might have to sacrifice his friends to save the world”. It’s fitting, then, that some of Pegg’s fondest memories of the franchise include those made with his co-stars. From playing cards in the icebreaker they lived on in the Arctic to driving trucks around the mountainous roads of South Africa, becoming “very close” with his colleagues was a real high point for the actor. He tells me about one particular evening when they finished filming earlier than expected. “Tom said, hey, do you wanna go shark diving?” he relays. “And we were like, yeah, okay. So he flew us out to this shark diving place and the five of us all got in this cage and went underwater and fed great big copperhead sharks.” The actor even finds humour in the more unsavoury parts of group living. “Everybody on the crew and cast got the shits,” he laughs. “ You know, you’re in a foreign country and that — something in the water. I don’t know what it was, but pretty much everyone went down with it at some point.”

It’s this same chemistry seen between the actors that has made Mission: Impossible one of the most popular film franchises to date. “McQ and Tom were always really at pains to put the character first,” Pegg explains. “You know, those big stunts that Tom does, they won’t have any kind of effect or weight if you don’t care about the people that it’s happening to — you’re not invested in the situation.” Thanks to this, behind all the gunshots and explosions, the finale of the franchise taps into both loyalty and friendship. “It’s about Ethan having to let go a little bit and let them arrive at their own destinies without relying on him,” the actor explains. “There’s a lot of interpersonal relationship stuff in the movie. And that’s what makes the stunts nail-biting — because you care about the people that the stunts are happening to.”

Now, with Mission: Impossible all done and dusted, Pegg is finding himself in an unusual situation. “This is the first time in, like, five years that my future has felt uncertain,” he says. “I knew I’d be in gainful employment as long as Mission: Impossible was shooting, and it’s been like that for a long time now.” He pauses. “What am I going to do in the second half of this year? I have no idea — I haven’t got any work lined up. And I kind of like that.” Nevertheless, the actor-slash-screenwriter probably isn’t going to sit still for very long. “I get to do my hobby for my job,” he says. “So not working for me is like not getting to do my hobby — I’m not someone who just wants to make a quick buck and sit on my arse.” 

For Pegg, not ‘sitting on his ass’ is currently taking the (top secret) form of adapting a book he “really, really love[s]” into a film. “It was given to me as a wrap gift when we finished shooting The World’s End like ten years ago,” he says. “I don’t want to be in it — I just want to write it. That’s my next big thing that I want to do.” And as for the cult-acclaimed ‘Cornetto trilogy’? Pegg has no plans for any sequels. Nevertheless, he and Wright are determined to work together again. “That’s something we’ve been talking about for ten years. But I don’t know when we’re going to do it because Nick [Frost]’s just been cast as Hagrid in Harry Potter, so he’s going to be busy for, like, eight years.” As well as learning about loyalty and friendship in Mission: Impossible, then, Pegg’s fans may also have to endure a lesson in patience. “If we come back together and make a film about, you know, sixty-year-old men doing stuff,” Pegg concludes, “that’ll be the way it is — the grey dollar. We’ll do our own version of The Best [Exotic] Marigold Hotel, or whatever it’s called.”