SIMON Pegg and Nick Frost talk about the making of their sci-fi homage Paul and how it reflects their own friendship and passions in some ways. They also talk about their creative process and whether it’s changed, as well as coaxing Steven Spielberg and Sigourney Weaver onto the production.

And they reflect on a surreal experience with a freight train in the middle of Utah during their own road trip in America…

Q. How close are your characters in the film to the real you?
Simon Pegg: I don’t know if we’re… people kind of assume it’s us. But it’s not really.

Nick Frost: I guess if you took a bit of every film we’ve done, essentially that would build our relationship at some point in our lives.

Simon Pegg: Graeme and Clive are a little less socially functional than Nick or I. We are geeks in terms of our likes and dislikes but we’re quite high functioning geeks. We’re not socially inept or anything. Graeme and Clive are not very confident with the outside world and the point is that Paul helps them to be more so. Whereas Nick and I are ballsy, quite brash… [Laughs]

Q. Is comedy easier to do when you have such a close relationship anyway?
Nick Frost: What makes it easy is the fact that we’ve known each other for years and love working together. I mean, that’s the easy bit. But the nuts and bolts of shooting a film and writing a film are still really difficult. But what makes it easier is the fact that you know you’re going to go to work with your best mate and people like Greg [Mottola]. I think we’ve been very lucky, or clever, in that we have worked ourselves into a place where – when we’re together – we just make films with our mates essentially.

Q. And Simon?
Simon Pegg: Absolutely. There are elements of Graeme and Clive… certainly their friendship and their closeness is similar to mine and Nick’s and the way they communicate. I’m a big believer in writing what you know about and playing to your own strengths and this is an idea we had a long time ago and it’s developed over the years since we’ve been going to Comic-Con and meeting more and more of these kind of people. It’s kind of our love letter to that demographic.

Q. So, is it getting more difficult to go to Comic-Con now that you’re famous?
Simon Pegg: Well, we started going for our films… it’s a long way away San Diego but we went over with Shaun of the Dead. Nick and Edgar [Wright] went over for Hot Fuzz, I went over for Spaced when it came out on DVD. So, we’ve been many, many times and thoroughly enjoy it. But we have found ourselves more and more unable to get around so easily since things have come out that people who go to Comic-Con enjoy. It’s kind of like the centre of our appeal is that crowd.

Nick described last year’s event as being like a Beatle at a Beatles convention. But it’s something that we’ve grown to really love. It’s a hive of enthusiasm. Much is often made of nerds and how crazy they are, but it’s a wonderfully positive place. It’s passion without cynicism, it’s the opportunity to be able to express your interests without anyone sort of sneering at you. They are very niche. It’s all science fiction. It’s like everyone is Clarke Kent for most of the year and then they get to spend the weekend as Superman.

Nick Frost: Last year, we just sat in our rooms watching films essentially [laughs]. I had a list of stuff that I needed to get on the floor and I found a map, and I knew the quickest way to get exactly what I wanted, and I was in and out in 10 minutes and that was that.

Q. How has the writing process between the two of you changed as you’ve become more famous?
Simon Pegg: For this, we sort of sat together in an office opposite each other and had the most amazing time. Sometimes, we wouldn’t start work for a couple of hours, sometimes we’d hit the ground running straight away and we had this idea that we were just building around… it was so much fun. We laughed so much. It was joyous. I got really excited about coming into work. When we hit our stride and the writing was really flowing it was the most fun I’ve ever had in an office environment – well, apart from that time with the photo-copier and the girl from… [laughs]. We had our disagreements, as you always do in a creative environment, but you get past them and you learn also to not… I mean, when you’re really good friends and you have an argument, it’s not very nice.

Nick Frost: But those days were some of the best ones we had. I’d get in sometimes and say: “How about this?” And he’d say ‘no’. So, I’d throw another at him and he’d say he didn’t like it. Eventually, we’d get to a point where I’d say: “What is your f**king problem today?” Then you have it out, we’d sit there in silence for 10 minutes, and then after a while we’d say: “Shall we have a cup of tea?” And then we’d sit down and say: “Alright, how can we get around this?” Sometimes we’d write an amazing joke and then go home, or go to the cinema.

Simon Pegg: But that teaches you that a disagreement isn’t the end of the world. It’s not personal. The trouble is, when you have three of your ideas turned down in a row you think the other person’s got it in for you. You know: “Why is it all your ideas and not mine?” But you have to move past that. And I love that environment… it’s away from all the glare of this element of it, which is scary when you have to give it away to people who don’t necessarily love it as much as you do, or who aren’t as invested in it like you are. You have to hand over your child to be vilified and it’s terrifying. But being in the office, when it’s just the two of us, that’s what I love about this job.

Q. Does the relationship change on-set?
Simon Pegg: Well, then we kind of put our acting heads on. You kind of keep our writing heads on, because you have to… we’d sometimes go off into little corners and revise things. The closer we got to shooting, the more notes came in from the studio about various details we had to go back to. Our initial vision of Graeme and Clive was that they were much more absurd looking – a kind of crazy serial killer look. But I think the studio was right to bring us into line a bit more and make them more accessible.

Nick Frost: There was a whole big beard thing. I grew a big beard from Clive and people were saying: “Well, beards don’t play well…” And then Zach Galifianakis did The Hangover and beards were trendy again after I’d shaved mine off!

Simon Pegg: But we just had fun, not just with each other but with our cast, who were uniformly great. I know you always hear this bullshit at press junkets about everyone being lovely, but we genuinely had a balls-eye with every single cast member. We got the person who should have played that part and got to hang out with the likes of Jason and Kristen and Sigourney.

Q. How was your Sigourney Weaver experience?
Simon Pegg: She came on set the first night and we were like [whispers to Nick and acts shy]. Often you meet people and you just assume they’re going to be this sort of aloof royalty, but she’s an actress and she’s a person and everything you want her to be she is. She’s funny and smart and willing to pitch in.

Nick Frost: We stood looking at her for ages. I was saying: “We should go over… Let’s go over.” She was sat with her people about 100 yards from us. So, when we went over she was just as kind of nervous and unsure about stuff, but was so up for having fun. She read the script and liked it, which was amazing. I mean, a lot of the time you write a script and it wouldn’t even get to her. But we chatted about her and then me and Greg [Mottola] went to have lunch with her in LA and I sat opposite her watching her eat a chicken Caesar salad… like amazed! That she would eat in front of me! But then she said ‘yes’ and we were blown away.

Q. And what about Steven Spielberg? How did you get him involved?
Simon Pegg: It was his idea, actually. We were doing Tintin and we would talk to him off camera about his films, because Nick and I are just massive fans. And Steven’s not so modest… if you say to him: “Tell us about Jaws…” He’ll go: “Oh yeah, sure!” And he talks about it like it was a school project. So, we said to him: “Look, we’re doing this movie about this alien and we had this idea that he’s had this hotline to you over the years and he gave you ideas for ET.” But he loved the idea and suggested doing a cameo and Nick and I were like: “OK!” But he came in one morning with no entourage… he just had his cap on, like you always see him, and recorded his line with Seth. He’s just been lovely about it. I think he liked the idea that he would be one of the few people that did have a connection to this cultural commentator that is Paul.

Nick Frost: We recorded his lines in LA and it was funny watching Greg trying to direct Spielberg. I think he forgot to say ‘action’ at one point. We would have been too scared to ask him if he’d not suggested it. I mean, simply the thought of having to ask him to do a line again if it really didn’t work. But he was game and he was happy to hang around.

Q. You did a road trip across America yourselves as part of your research? Did anything wacky happen during that to the both of you?
Nick Frost: It was freezing cold and it got down to minus 50 and we basically killed the RV… we basically destroyed it. We got to a point towards the end when we couldn’t switch if off because we’d never get it going again.

Simon Pegg: It was a brand new massive RV – like the one in Meet The Fockers. In fact, the guy that drove us – because we couldn’t drive it ourselves – did the big handbrake turn in that second Fockers film. He was a really accomplished driver. But even with him at the wheel it was dead by the time we reached Denver. So, there was no way that the RV you see in the movie, which is essentially like a 1978 old camper, would have made the journey. But I mean, in terms of wacky there was the night we pulled up next to the freight train and nearly got killed!

Nick Frost: [Laughs] We were terribly tired and it was snowing a lot and we were really frightened… and then this weird train came out of nowhere, didn’t it?

Simon Pegg: It was like we had this wacky five minutes… We were going over Soldier Summit in Utah, which goes down into Wyoming, and the road drew parallel to a train track, which we didn’t see in the dark. It was a blizzard, snowing like you wouldn’t believe, and visibility was probably about 10ft. And out of the darkness loomed this freight train that came next to us, with its horn going. We were like: “Where the f**k did that come from?!” Steve, our driver, was then saying: “I’m going to jump it! I’m going to jump the track [like you see in the movies]!”

Nick thought he was being serious and was pleading for him not to do it, and then Steve got the giggles. So, we had a man at the wheel who was paralysed with laughter, in 10ft visibility, driving next to a freight train in the dark! That was when we’d got a little bit stir crazy. We were in a country of 235 million people and we’d sometimes travel for an entire day and not see a soul. It got lonely. We were on the loneliest highway in the world.

Nick Frost: We didn’t have a phone for five days. There was no signal.

Q. And I guess thoughts turn to films like Breakdown?
Simon Pegg: Exactly. We started to imagine some weird hick would come out of nowhere.

Nick Frost: Like The Hills Have Eyes….

Q. Will there be a Paul 2?
Simon Pegg: I’d love it. You know, it’s been an incredible experience in terms of the fun of making it. It’s a really long process. We wrapped this movie two years ago… or at least the photography on it. It then took a year to put Paul in. But of all the films we’ve made together I think this film probably is the most deserving of a sequel. Shaun of the Dead was a story that ended and doesn’t need a sequel. Hot Fuzz… you could see the further adventures of Danny and Nicholas, but really that film was about them becoming those cops – being those cops wouldn’t be so interesting. Whereas, seeing Paul again I think would be quite fun.

Nick Frost: It would have to be good and we’d have to want to do it. We’d have to have a good script, essentially. We have discussed us going back to his planet.

Simon Pegg: But that would be like Crocodile Dundee 2! [Laughs]

Nick Frost: But I think one Paul cost us so much money that we couldn’t possibly afford to have a planet full of them.

Read our review of Paul

Read our interview with director Greg Mottola

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