Actor, comedian and local hero Simon Pegg feels as though he just won the nerd lottery: he's in Star Trek! Blockbuster.co.uk's Marshall Julius reports.
An unapologetic, card-carrying nerd, and proud of it,
Simon Pegg is the ultimate fanboy insider, a genre-loving film and tv sci fi, horror and fantasy fanatic who, thanks to his writing skills, innate comic timing and infectious, geeky charm, is now a part of the world he grew up loving. A cohort of
J.J. Abrams since playing a small part for the writer/director in
Mission: Impossible III, Pegg is now living the dream in Hollywood, playing out his wildest fantasies in the role of iconic engineer Scotty in Abrams' latest and greatest screen sensation,
Star Trek's.
"Yeah, I was a fan of Star Trek as a kid," says Pegg as casually as he can muster, though the sparkle in his eyes betrays his excitement. "I watched the show since I was nine. I remember it being on BBC2 at 6 o'clock, teatime, and being utterly beguiled by it. The older I got, the more I appreciated the cerebral nature of the show. I completely fell in love with it.
"To become a part of it now, as a nerd, which is what I am, and I'm sorry but it's true, is extraordinary. And to do scenes with
Leonard Nimoy, who appears in the time-bending story to pass Trek's mantle on to Abrams' next generation, "was kind of weird, to say the least. Here he was, the legendary Leonard Nimoy, talking to me in character as Spock, a person I've known since I was nine, all pointy-eared and Vulcan, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to say my lines back without squealing and needing the toilet!
"Being part of the new Enterprise crew, going to work with Leonard and the others on a daily basis, was utterly fantastic," continues Pegg, 39. "I'd wake up, and have to pinch myself. I came slightly later to the shooting because it was a long process and everybody had already met each other by the time I got there, but when I finally came on board it felt so right and in a weird kind of hippie-ish way it felt like we already knew each other. We immediately clicked and the great feeling of togetherness that pervades Star Trek was very much there on the set. Have I gushed enough, do you think?"
Regardless, or perhaps because of, his breathless enthusiasm for the project, Pegg admits he was initially wary of playing the young Scotty in Abrams' back-to-the-beginning, origin tale. "J.J. e-mailed me, like he does, rather than go through all the usual rigmarole, and asked me, 'Would you like to play Scotty?' I felt I couldn't just say, 'Yes please!' That it would have been ridiculous for me not to think about it first, for at least a couple of days, but I was always going to say yes. How could I not?"
Abrams reveals Pegg's initial e-mailed response was, in fact, a rather more terrified, 'I don't think I could do that,' but that after the filmmaker replied, 'Oh well, next time.' Pegg shot back an anxious, 'Not so fast!' As nervous as he was about playing the beloved engineer immortalised by actor
James Doohan in Gene Roddenberry's original Sixties Trek, it was something Pegg simply had to do.
"Sadly James Doohan is no longer with us, so I didn't get a chance to meet him to talk about Scotty, but I met up with Chris Doohan, his son, and we had lots of chats about his dad. But I never went into this wanting to impersonate James. I wanted to pay homage to him and maybe give a performance he would like, as a viewer."
With the project long completed and both Trekkies and newcomers to the franchise equally ecstatic about the movie, Pegg is nothing but smiles. "You don't have to be a Star Trek fan but if you are there's a lot in it for you, a level of conversation between viewer and film that you'll really appreciate. You'll get lots of little bits and pieces and feel spoken to and acknowledged. Star Trek has a dedicated fanbase, they love their stuff and they're important, but what J.J. miraculously managed to do is balance the movie so that it appeals not only to the people who already love it, but also to a new viewership.
"Star Trek," available now on
Blu-ray and DVD from Blockbuster.co.uk, "nails it completely," says Pegg, wrapping up, "because you can watch it without knowing anything about the pre-existing history and love it for the sheer adventure, human story and all of its incredible ideas, but if you do know it well, if you're a nerd like me, it's utterly fantastic. I'm really very proud of it."