Simon Pegg on BB-8 and His Visit to The Force Awakens Set
Simon Pegg chatted with Collider about how he ended up writing Star Trek 3 and also briefly described his experience being on The Force Awakens set with his daughter. More after the jump.
From Collider:
Since you and J.J. Abrams are such good friends, what are your thoughts on Star Wars?
PEGG: I’m immensely excited, having been lucky enough to visit the set. I’ve never been on a film set where everyone has been so invested in the material because they are emotionally and intrinsically linked to it, as people who work in an industry that was informed by the original films. Suddenly, they’re back in those environments, seeing those sets again and seeing J.J. work with real physical things, and models and puppets and masks. Also, the new technology will, of course, be involved in it. The original films were always about the cutting edge. They weren’t retro movies. They were very forward-thrusting, technological masterpieces, and as such, there will be that stuff. It’s going to be extraordinary. I’m so excited for people to see it. It’s going to be everything that we wanted 16 years ago and didn’t get.
It’s so cool because it’s a combination of this vastly different technology with a franchise that makes you feel the wonder of being a kid again.
PEGG: Totally! I took my daughter to the set, and she met BB-8, the droid you see in the trailer. She sat with him for ages, and just talked to him. The guys were operating it, just off camera, and she was there. I said, “Come on, we’ve gotta go,” and she said, “I just want to spend some more time with him and have another hug.” It’s just a ball with a thing on it, but it’s a testament to that character, how much he’s going to impact on audiences because he’s so full of life. And that goes across, for everything. Also, to see the old staples again is going to blow people’s minds.
While Pegg never confirmed that he is part of TFA cast, there were multiple reports suggesting that he actually is.
Back in June IGN heard that “Simon Pegg is in fact playing a secret role in the film and was present on set to shoot scenes in Abu Dhabi.”
Later Anthony Daniels himself posted on Twitter that Pegg was at Pinewood (later the tweet was removed):
Chatted with Simon Pegg on set. He apologised for once having filmed a SPOOF of R2 and 3PO in the desert in Ep IV. Silly boy! Also a genius.
— Anthony Daniels (@ADaniels3PO) June 23, 2014
Also in July Benedict Cumberbatch said about Pegg:
“J.J. and I are friends, so yeah, possibly, but I think J.J. is very good at creating something original out of something known, and I think apart from his continuing use of Simon Pegg — and who can blame him, frankly — it made sense not to do it.”
To which Pegg responded:
Well, J.J. uses me in different roles, and we’re good friends. I feel like my face in Star Wars would pop people out of the movie. Look, I love Star Wars, and I don’t want people to watch and go, “oh, there’s Simon Pegg’s face”
Of course I visited the set. It’s amazing, and I love Star Wars. I want to see everything happening. It looks wonderful, and you need to believe those characters. Any type of stunt casting might just pop you out of the movie.
That last quote also fits with the rumor we’ve heard that Pegg is not going to show his face in the movie, but instead play and alien who gets his arm ripped off in a Cantina scene.
And finally Pegg was spotted on TFA wrap party (the pic above) together with the cast members. It’s worth mentioning that no other actors who visited the set (there were quite a few) were at the party.
Well, there you have it. After all these reports, I personally doubt that Pegg only visited the set, but who knows. What do you think?
Founder of SWNN, MNN and The Cantina forums.
Born on April 24, 1980.
He certainly deserves to be in it… for making a huge statement about the prequels! Ewoks look like shaft indeed.
tough little boogers!
Personally I think his nonstop prequel basing is annoying and he doesn’t deserve to be in it.
Thank goodness for people like Simon and Oscar who call out the Prequels for what they are – disappointing.
That said, TFA better deliver, or else they’ll have egg on their faces!
My old username on many websites used to be AnEwokThatLooksLikeShaft!
My opinion is the the prequel was awesome and loved the story of Anakin Skywalker. Your opinion is wrong. You are a biggot and doesn’t appreciate crap. You need to apologize to George Lucas for your opinion and delete yourself.
Nobody is bashing anything. Those movies were “meh” at best and generally cringe worthy the rest of the time. They are what they are, mediocre films that could have been made better.
I really do feel we’re going back to the originals. Everyone’s talking about the effects, practical effects, costumes, puppets… And no story. Star Wars is back!
You gotta love Mr Pegg. So pleased that things worked out for him the way they have. A boyhood dream come true.
I may have missed this somewhere along the way, but it sounds like BB8 is a male droid after all.
Droids for the most part are asexual. I don’t think the voices determine the gender really. I just think that calling it a he is something they just do with droids, like they call ships “she”. The ship isn’t actually a girl, but that’s just what they refer it to.
As I said before, C3PO is definitely a she. 🙂
3PO is not a she. He’s just gay that’s all, it’s not a bfd
Yeah, there seems to be “gender-ed” programming for most droids, but it could just be a generic pronoun thing. R2 and 3P0 are referred to as “he” and droids like jabba’s interrogator and the medical droid are referred to as “She”. Its really just for organic beings to feel more comfortable around them
So, they’re doing practical effects on this movie?
This will be a joke long remembered.
Dude, did you here? They’re doing REAL PRACTICAL EFFECTS and not CGI! Crazy
Oh Simon!
Poor fella.
He always makes me get all ROFL when he talks about Star Wars.
Because he doesn’t realize that is exactly what we did get with the prequels.
Real physical things, models, puppets, masks and everything as well as cutting edge, forward thrusting technological masterpieces that were extraordinary.
If TFA, the ST and the new movies can do the same as the prequels then bring ’em on.
So his feeling is that these won’t be “retro” movies whatever that means to him. He says “seeing those sets again.”
So that would indicate that there is some kind of retro in some form that he wants that obviously the prequels were not going to do.
There was 10x more practical in the PT that the OT. If anything it’s far more likely that overall the ST will have less practical VFX than the PT because of the absolutely mega super gargantuan enormous amount that were done.
So what it really seems to come down to is not the amount of practical effects that are being used overall but where some are being used in very specific areas that make some people feel better because in their minds it connects to said methods used in the OT.
Not a single scene in episode 3 wasn’t shot before a green screen. Not a SINGLE one.
Also there was not even one real clone trooper suit made for episode 2, all CGI.
In my opinion, CGI can be really helpful, as long as the background and the characters themselves are real, so I think the ST is going to at least look really good.
I feel Ryan here is living in some fantasy world
A Crumb, you are one of millions of prequel bashing OT worshipping dillusional, so just go to hell or at least try to make an argument about how Ryan is wrong in any way.
Since this is a SW site, if someone tells a person to go to hell, shouldn’t they instead say “go to Mustafar”?
Since Han told a rebel scout “Then I’ll see you in hell!” immediately before setting out to find Luke in Hoth, it’s a perfectly valid statement.
It’s pointless to try to have a mature conversation about the prequels with Ryan. I’ve tried many times and all I get is childish remarks like yours telling me I’m some delusional hater. I actually have legitimate reasons for why I don’t like the prequels. I’m not hating just to hate. I actually grew up with the prequels and the OT so I didn’t even have a bias for the OT in the first place.
“Not a single scene in episode 3 wasn’t shot before a green screen. Not a SINGLE one.”
Apart from being just false, how else do you think they would incorporate the actors and all of the model work?
You’re completely right. TPM has one shot without any CGI, it’s 10 minutes into the movie as they kind of tumble out of the vents. Every other shot in the PT has CGI in it, and not a lot of it holds up. So much of it looks like an LED TV at Best Buy, turned to that awful “vivid” mode.
Yes the OT had cutting edge special effects, but they were often based in aerial battle footage from WWII (escape from Death Star, attack on Death Star), while the Hoth and Endor battles borrowed from the tactics of Rome against Hannibal and his war elephants.
Hopefully, JJ can combine the feel of the OT and still add great action and war sequences like Lord of the Rings, Top Gun, and many other great action sequences we’ve seen as Well as propel film forward. And keep the lens flare to a minimum. God please let the lens flares be few and far between.
I don’t care that much if it’s done on latex or a computer, computers are pretty good nowadays.
The problem is Green-screen, and Ewan McGregor can back me up on this.
Sure the graphics are done old school, but the fact remains that the characters in ROTS just plain-out don’t look like they’re IN THE ROOM.
Sure, the OT had some sub-par blue-screen work, but they knew that, and had the good sense to build a set whenever financially possible.
Hoth Echo base is still more believable than Geonosis caverns.
Even the Ewok Village was believable, and that’s got nothing to do with CGI, it has everything to do with blue-screens. Green-screens are pretty good, but ask any actor and they’ll tell you, a physical room to interact with is still better.
The amount of Green-screen work in the Pt was just frankly lazy, and it kills me to say it, because i love miniatures and big-atures, i love the dedicated hard work involved, but it just doesn’t work to have the actors copy-pasted in front of that 98% of the time. I don’t know how you guys feel about it…
The Geonosis caverns were *models*, not CG.
Models with post-production work that made it look CGI
EXACTLY
That is my entire point!
Geonosis is unbelievable because the actors don’t believe it, the video-game-behavior bugs guys don’t help either.
My main rant is against exclusive use of the green screen. Again, CG or not.
Yea, there were tons of practical effects done during production, but how many of them made it into the final cut?
For example, Greg Proops was filmed performing his scenes as Fode in full make-up, but in the end what ended up in the film was a completely CGI animation.
But whatever. There were practical effects in TPM. We get it.
Ryan, I am not sure what kinda nostalgia is messin’ with your mind, but the prequels were utter garbage. The biggest cinematic disappointment is cinematic history (fact). No amount of fanboy denial can change that. Percentage of practical or CGI doesn’t matter, it was the design choices that doomed the prequels. The two headed announcer from Episode 1, or the Chinese-accented characters whose mouths didn’t even match their dialogue. I challenge you to even try to claim that the prequels were any good.
Please note than Simon began by praising the dedication and emotional involvement of the cast and crew, and only then did he move on to praising the use of practical effects. It’s not as if he suggested that TFA will be an awesome movie just because of the effects.
I do agree that the problems with the PT have nothing to do with effects (CGI or otherwise) and everything to do with the horrible writing, wooden acting, Anakin’s unconvincing fall/general bratty behavior and the movie’s blatant disregard for the OT (for me, especially, Luke’s conversation with Leia in RotJ).
There were good moments in all three PT movies, but mostly they feel hollow, cliche and forced. I don’t buy the love story for a single second … which totally sucks because Han/Leia is one of the best romances on-screen ever.
Personally, I feel that so many people talk about the practical effects of the ST for two reasons:
1.) It is tremendously refreshing for the actors themselves to be on a set that looks/feels real. Despite the PT’s large-scale use of practical effects, there was a LOT of green-screen filming. That makes it very difficult to remain in character or act in a convincing fashion.
2.) Nobody who worked on the movie or visited the set is allowed to say anything at all about the plot. They’ve all signed air-tight NDAs and been personally asked to keep silent about the details. But they’ve all been told it’s okay to harp on the use of practical effects, so they do.
^ I’m with this guy
“Not a single scene in episode 3 wasn’t shot before a green screen. Not a SINGLE one.
Also there was not even one real clone trooper suit made for episode 2, all CGI.”
A SINGLE scene? Maybe not. Depends on how you break things down between scenes and shots.
I don’t see what exactly would be the virtue of that anyway. Like somehow that actually means something? Some people seem to think that screen work denotes “CGI” when actually it denotes tons of practical VFX work.
What do you think they place in that green and blue screen? That is where the tons of miniature and matte painting work is placed to create epic backgrounds among other things.
The CLONEtroopers were CGI because they were ummm… clones you know. Different people in suits can’t be clones.
It would work if their helmets are on we wouldn’t be able to tell them apart like the storm troopers in the OT
Anon @17:23, using your logic, episodeIII was the worst of the PT because it used nothing but green screen… Wait, it was the best reviewed.
Episode III is still crap.
It’s mostly a boring CGI fest. The Clone Wars, which was supposed to be epic, was turned into a joke used to gain Palpatine power. The Jedi extras were worthless, the Senate members were fools, and Padme’s portrayal and death are an insult to women.
She’s supposed to be a strong female character. Why is she letting Anakin make all the decisions, and why does she die for no good reason when she’s perfectly healthy, has two babies to take care of and still believes there’s good left in Anakin?
Vader and Ben’s lightsaber fight at the end dragged on and certainly does not make up for the rest of the movie. Being the best Prequel doesn’t say much.
Not to mention Obi-wan figuratively [very close to literally] HIDING BEHIND A PREGNANT CHICK.
the PT taught me one thing. Obiwan deserves to be killed by his future Alec Guinness self… oh, also something about Anakin, but we already knew that… guess the tree isn’t that far from where the apple falls.
ROTS was, in fact, the worst of the PT, you silly mongoloid. Your tired, intellectually lazy “Rotten Tomatoes Defense” does not exist in this dojo.
Ep III was absolutely, unequivocally, the worst of the bunch. All of the (many) flaws that plagued the prequels were simply magnified in the final installment. The stilted, awkward dialogue… the wooden and lifeless performances… the cartoonish and overwhelming CG… the bland and stale cinematography… the silly, sloppy, contrived plot/narrative. All there in spades. And on top of all that, there was more riding on Ep 3 than its predecessors. In other words, there was more to f*** up. I.e. Anakin turning to the darkside… the battle with his mentor Obi-Wan… the death of Padme… the first appearance of Darth Vader (in the suit), etc. All were completely mishandled and poorly executed. Complete misfires.
ROTS was an abomination.
Amen!!!
The thing your not understanding Ryan, is that even the scenes were Pademe is talking on a couch in Episode III are green screened. There is a feeling when shooting on location that you can’t get from Playstation graphics.
That said while CGI used to much can be bad,such as the prequels. When used to accent the rest of the movie it can have a great affect on making everything more real.
There is a great documentary about people trying to phase out physical effects with CG. In it people like James Cameron talk about how everything should be done on a computer to save time and cost. The best thing I can say about that, is they should use what ever effects work best together to create the best movie possible. Avatar was made just to see how far CGI could go with no worry about the actual movie plot or story itself.
I feel like with the prequels,Mr. Lucas was not worried about making the best movie possible.What he seemed to be doing was making the most comfortable movie for himself, without being to stressed. He literally just sat in front of two monitors in a computer chair and drank coffee.If you look at him making the originals, there was much more care and investment.
So In my opinion it shows how much a person cares about their movie, by how much detail and time the person takes putting into the movie.
I think JJ has far more pressure on his back then George ever did with the prequels. It’s refreshing to me that JJ cares so much and is giving it his all. It is good to see people excited and positively supporting the director of this film. Think of how many different types of people like SW, then think about trying to make a movie that is good enough for all of them. It’s going to be tough. I for one am just glad that people still care enough to make more movies, Star Wars could have easily begun to step in to obscurity, after the prequels. We are very lucky
“The thing your not understanding Ryan, is that even the scenes were Pademe is talking on a couch in Episode III are green screened. There is a feeling when shooting on location that you can’t get from Playstation graphics.”
Sorry but you do realize what green and blue screen are for?
I ask this totally honestly. This is not a trick question. What goes in there in post is PRACTICAL VFX. Miniatures and matte paintings mostly with CGI enhancements.
I ask the same question to people over and over again. I assume that the OT movie you like the least is TESB? It must be because it has a few days of principal shooting on location then second unit work. That’s all. The rest was done in studio.
For some reason people don’t seem to get that there was very little location shooting on ANH and even less on TESB. ROTJ had more location work then both combined and yet is considered a lesser movie generally. TPM and AOTC also had more location work.
So what are you really saying?
Yeah, a green friggin’ screen for an actor to look at while they try to act. Actors need something physical to work with periodically.
CG is fine by me, as long as it’s fine by the actor. Remember, Gandalf, my all-time hero, broke into tears from having to act alongside thin-air, SERIOUSLY. That tells you something right there.
Comment of the day/month/year/century, I will follow you into battle any day, sir
Thanks man much appreciated. hopefully EP VII is awesome
“The thing your not understanding Ryan, is that even the scenes were Pademe is talking on a couch in Episode III are green screened. There is a feeling when shooting on location that you can’t get from Playstation graphics.”
Sorry but there is far more it seems that you haven’t looked into. I suggest John Knoll’s book:
Creating the Worlds of Star Wars: 365 Days
Of course the background into the view on Coruscant had a green screen on the set. The rest was a fully built set. One of the some 70 or so sets that were built which doesn’t include the various all screen sets which were mainly done during pick-ups.
What was the purpose of the green screen? So that you could place the intricate matte painting of Coruscant in the background enhanced by CGI with the ships flying around. That is a practical effect. If you think it’s Playstation graphic like then the fact that they are many levels above the OT graphics must mean that the OT is 80’s Atari graphics to you?
You seem to be under some misunderstanding of the amount of location work for the OT. Off-hand I think ANH had 2 weeks, TESB had 2 weeks principle then second unit (which of course took far longer to do because of weather) and ROTJ had the most so I think it was several weeks at least.
The point is that TESB had the least amount of location work of all 6 movies save ROTS which had no principle location work only second unit work for various plates. So by your logic then I guess you think that TESB is the least of the OT because it was virtually all studio for the actors? I guess that scene of Leia and Han talking on the couch in Cloud City really doesn’t work for you at all? Even worse it has less practical VFX in it then Padme’s apartment in ROTS!
You, sir, are a magnificently dense individual.
An ignoramus, even.
The amount of ignorance in Ryan’s comments is astounding…
Well I know off hand that the Dagobah shooting was at least 4 weeks by it’s self.They built the entire swap including Yoda’s house “basically everything you see in the movie”.And actually The Empire strikes back is my favorite movie ever lol.
But the main point I think you are misunderstanding, is that George Lucas was unfocused and did not properly use the tools available when making the prequels. Here is a video from behind the scenes on revenge of the sith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iAIOuCNc4E
While there were some small set pieces in place on the prequels,it is nowhere near the amount of scale and complexity that was used for the original trilogy.Also George can be seen with his coffee in hand sitting down, watching computer monitors lol.
Just because you have the power to get unoriginal people to work on single frames of light.It does not mean the spirit of the film will show through.Now once again I like the prequels for what they are.But i know how much work and love was put into the original trilogy, and the prequels never did and never can touch what the OT meant to the world.
Here is a link to some Empire Strikes back behind the scenes footage.The sound was sadly muted,but Surely you can see the difference. My reply is only meant to educate you on the truth of what actually happened.History is important and it can show us many different things.For me it is very easy to see the difference in the amount of care that was put into making each of these movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aS-HIgvANE
CG is pretty cool, my actual favorite film, closely tied with TESB, is LOTR the Fellowship of the Ring. Which is odd to me:
Upon reflection, I’ve recently concluded that on a technical level, LOTR and SW PT share almost all of each other’s attributes.
This realization perplexes me, as for a long time I hated the PT on three fronts: Bad Acting, Deviating/Shortcut-filled Scriptwriting, and Unbelievable [as in, not good] Effects.
The perplexing thing is the Fellowship on paper commits the same “crimes” as the PT – and yet I like Fellowship. Fellowship features A LOT of green screen, especially in my favorite sequence, Moria. It has rather odd creature animation [the way the Balrog just rises out of the ground and sort of flops it’s shoulders to give it’s growl never quite sat right with me].
Even some of the acting is pretty wooden [who IS that awkward dude who’s standing next to Galadriel? did she seriously marry THAT guy?]
Also the editing and scriptwriting is a little rushed towards the end where they go through a series of cross-fades and slow transitions in a successful attempt at making row-row-row-your boat gently up the stream look fast and urgent. Also the whole plot in LOTR 2 with Faramir being an ass diverts from the source material [and you can totally tell].
So why does LOTR stand as the better film?
I actually don’t know,
but I think it has something to do with Peter Jackson actually GIVING A SHIT.
I’m sure Lucas is heavily invested and cares a lot about Star Wars, but he wasn’t acting like it, and the film suffered in every respect for that.
I’m not saying SW should create 30000 suits of chainmail for extras, but they should do the next best thing.
PT just felt like they took the easy way out, whereas SW OT took the hardest, or tried to at least.
That’s the thing, OT has flaws because it was over-reaching what it had to work with.
PT has flaws because it had such great resources to work with that it abused its priorities. Now PT had A LOT of very talented people, but that doesn’t amount to much if their leader spends most of the time in his own head.
Peter Jackson is actually quite similar to George, I think, except Peter spent day and night making it work.
I never really got the impression that Lucas really had to break a sweat for the last 3 films, I’m sure I’m wrong, but that’s just how it comes across in the films.
Now the Hobbit has followed CLOSE in the footsteps on SW Prequels, to a degree that is sadly predictable.
I don’t have the answers, I’m just throwing this out there as food for thought [or hate].
There were much fucking more than just few small set pieces. Each one of the “prequels” used MORE practical effects and sets, than the ENTIRE “original trilogy”.
He’s in the movie…..I am an AVID Editor and Avid recently released a seminar video of the Bad Robot editors explaining what it is like to Edit Star Wars. One of the assistants accidentally revealed that Pegg was doing voice work and sending it to them on a daily basis (along with other VO from actors). So at least his voice will be in the film
If that’s true Minichimi that is very cool. I personally love Simon Pegg.
Come on, guys! There were PLENTY of practical effects in the Prequels! What, did you think the actors were sitting on green screen?
That being said I do like the prequels, I just understand how much better things can be by utilizing the best of both aspects.
The prequels DID utilize the best of both apects.
“It’s going to be everything that we wanted 16 years ago and didn’t get.” Yes yes yes yes yes yes!
Simon Pegg might get what he wanted to see 16 yrs. ago, and that still doesn’t mean shit. TFA might yet be the worst SW film to date, one of Abrams’ buddies opinion on it notwithstanding.
It remains to be seen if the rest of the world will agree with his sentiment come December.
really sick of this guy riding on the coat tails… you suck, you can’t act, you aren’t funny and star wars doesn’t need you. Neither did star trek. and no one cares what your opinion is.
Shut the f*** up.
He is a great actor. And no one cares about your opinion either lol That sounds harsh but I will say that Simon Pegg is one of my favorite people in show biz. There is a show called Spaced he was on that I highly recommend.
If George Lucas won’t finish. I don’t want anything too do with it. Because they wouldn’t finish it the way he wanted it too end. And who knows better how its supposed then the one that wrote it in the first place. So forget it. And you can send this too Disney for me
A not-too-bright, unfunny guy… and, apparently, a hypocrite as well. No, thanks.
The prequels were not as good as the originals.
Nobody of consequence disagrees with that statement.
That is an objective, factual statement, good sir.
This isn’t about the “prequels” being better or worse than the “originals” This is about the lies spreaded about how these films were made.
Oh, and by the way MILLIONS of people disagree with that statement.
Simon plays Naka, but you don’t see his face, just his arm.
Pegg is a complete a–hole. Who gives a —- what he thinks anyhow?
The bunch of retardet internet fanboys.
When I first watched ANH in theater 1977….I lived in Northern Quebec, Canada. The film had been dubbed into French. As I did not speak french….I had no idea at the age of 8 what they were saying. The visuals got me hooked. Take the star wars films for what they are…escapism. find something to like in each film and enjoy! Prequels or Originals all have good elements in them. We should be lucky. Had Disney not picked up the franchise from GL…..we never would have seen another film. As for Simon Pegg?? The guy gave us flippin Shaun of the Dead….coolest guy ever!! Cheers!