New York City geeks were recently lined up around the block for five hours in anticipation of one of Geek Culture’s patron saints. Simon Pegg, star of fan-favorite films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek, and the cult-hit television show, Spaced, made an appearance at the Strand Bookstore as part of his U.S. tour to promote the American release of his new book, Nerd Do Well.
The book is an entertaining and insightful read whether you’re familiar with Simon Pegg or not. Part memoir, part comedic genre fiction, Nerd Do Well chronicles Pegg’s journey from being a young boy obsessed with Star Wars and zombies to becoming a man who gets to hang out with George Romero and be introduced to George Lucas. As Pegg puts it, it’s “about the idea of an adult fulfilling his childhood passions.”
Pegg understands what it is to be a fan, having been one all his life. So, rather than have the crowd gathered at the Strand sit through a reading and risk not having the time to get their books signed, Pegg chose to skip reading and go straight to the signing, determined to give every single person the one-on-one attention they desperately craved. It’s this kind of understanding that makes Simon Pegg so beloved in the Geek Community.
I was lucky enough to be able to speak with him several days later, as he continued his book tour across the country. It wasn’t originally his intention to write a memoir at all. As I said to him, it seemed a bit soon for this kind of a book, rather like getting a Lifetime Achievement Award when you still have so much left to do, but his original plan was to do a book about film, or even a work of genre fiction. It wasn’t until he met with his editor that he was convinced that it would be worth it to write something a bit more personal.
“Richard E Grant wrote a wonderful book called With Nails, which is all about his first five or six films in quite detail and talks about the story of making them and what was going on, and I thought that could be worth doing, because it felt more work-related,” Pegg says. “But I found that [I] couldn’t get excited about talking about work – as much as I love my job – it felt like something that would be boring to read.” He began to see that there were many parallels between his childhood and his adulthood that he thought would be more fun, both to read and to relate. “And I had to then get over the fact that I would be sharing – I’ve always been a very private person, I try to keep my private life out of my work – and this would necessitate me actually talking about my private life. So I wrestled with that for a while, and came to the conclusion that…this is the kind of stuff that I would share with friends down at the pub, and it was also coming straight from me, and not being filtered through anybody. So after going through that whole thought process (laughs) I finally thought OK, I’ll write the memoir.”
After writing the book, Pegg thought it important to get in contact with the people he mentions in it, to get their blessing. That, in itself, proved to be its own journey. “In some instances I found odd moments of closure where I didn’t realize I needed it or even wanted it,” he says. “And [I] also found an excuse to talk to people that I missed, whose company I’d fallen away from just through distance and time.” He even got in touch with Mrs. Taylor, one of the English teachers he mentions warmly in the book: “She’d written a comment after one of my projects about ‘Perhaps you can do this when you’re published’ and then to sort of, twenty-five or thirty years later to be able to say, ‘Well, now I am published, and here it is! And here’s your comment!’ That was a nice sort of circularity.”
As kind and thoughtful as Pegg was on the phone, there was also a seriousness about him that seems a bit surprising at first, until you put it in the context of his real-life close friendship with actor, Nick Frost, which has been immortalized in a fictionalized version in the projects they’ve done together. He’s the one who could stand to let go a bit more (like Nick Angel in Hot Fuzz) and Frost is the one who teaches him how to do that (like Danny in the same film). Their friendship, as well as the bromance in all its incarnations is a large focus of Nerd Do Well.
In fact, there are a several humorous as well as not-so-nice incidents in Pegg’s life that have involved other boys and men by whose inclusion I was surprised. It isn’t many actors of a certain caliber who openly discuss, for example, the times that they kissed male friends in a group for a laugh, or the times they briefly wondered if they were gay; but he believes such hesitance is unnecessary if one is secure in who they are. To Pegg, it’s just not that big of a deal.
When I asked him why he chose to include those anecdotes, he says, “I just wanted to be honest, really. My agenda wasn’t anything more than just telling it how it is, and everything else be damned. I don’t care what people think about me in that respect, I have nothing to hide. And I’m sure there were things there that lots and lots of people can relate to. Nowadays, particularly in light of my screen relationship with Nick Frost, there are guys being a lot more open about being friends and not being worried about… I mean, guys who worry about people thinking they’re gay are probably gay, and that’s the root of their insecurities, when it’s actually fine to give your mate a hug. It doesn’t matter, you know? And also there are things that a) they’re quite amusing, and b) they fed into my emotional growth, which is part of the book in a way. So, no, I didn’t worry about that at all.”
He tends not to talk about his baby daughter much, given his desire for privacy, but I asked him how he feels about the current Geek Girl movement as the father to a future geek girl. “I think it’s great,” he says. “It’s another moment of empowerment. Just as we’ve gotten to a point where guys can talk about the things they love without being ashamed of it, then women are feeling the same thing. And it’s great, because it’s creating a new layer of female geek output, you know? There are new characters, and new types of genre fiction that are tailored specifically for and created by women and that can only be a good thing. Cause guys can get a kick out of, you know “They’re here now! They’re here!” (laughs) Men can enjoy that, too! I love the rise of the Nerd Girl.”
Simon Pegg is a talented and funny actor/writer who is comfortable enough in his own skin to not be threatened by bromance or girls and women in the geeky clubhouse, and Nerd Do Well is a funny, entertaining, and honest read from one of geekdom’s greatest heroes. It’s available now from Gotham/Penguin wherever books are sold!
Words and photos by Teresa Jusino.
