The words ‘blind date’ scare many, but Man Up’s Simon Pegg sees it differently, writes Stephen Jewell
"If it's not broke, don't fix it!" Simon Pegg subverted the form by adding zombies to the usual love story with his 2004 breakthrough Shaun of the Dead, so it's easy to assume he is interested only in subverting the much maligned romantic comedy genre. But it was the traditional elements of Tess Morris' screenplay that attracted Pegg to Man Up, in which he plays the hapless Jack, whose blind date with Jessica goes awry after Lake Bell's Nancy turns up in her stead.
"The thing I liked about it was it embraced and didn't undermine what a rom-com traditionally is," he says when I meet him at a central London hotel across the river from the South Bank, where the film's opening scenes are set.
"People have even tried to reject the phrase 'rom-com' by saying that they're 'not making the usual kind of rom-com', but rom-coms are a really effective and enjoyable, tried and tested idea.
"It's a given that when people go and see a rom-com that they want to see two people fall in love but the important and interesting thing for the audience is how they get to that point."
The 45-year-old has been married to Maureen McCann for 10 years in July and he has no personal experience of internet dating, which has lately become an increasingly accelerated process with the advent of smartphone apps like Tinder and Grindr.
"It has cut out a lot of the mucking about," he says. "People are eager to meet the person they want to hang out with and don't want to go on endless dates with the wrong people.
Simon Pegg and Lake Bell in the film Man Up. Photo / Supplied
It's eliminated that preliminary 'do you like Led Zeppelin?' type of conversation.
"What makes Man Up interesting is that Jack thinks he's meeting someone that he kind of knows, as he has been given this spiel about who Jessica is and what she likes, and Nancy just riffs off of that."
Crucially, Jack and Jessica were introduced by a mutual friend and not through an online site, meaning he doesn't have the obligatory photographs that would have immediately exposed Nancy's subterfuge.
"The truth of the matter is what really connects them is them, and it's nothing to do with whether they like Black Pant Wash or whatever it is," says Pegg, referring to an item on Nancy's to-do list that Jack mistakes for one of her favourite bands.
"It's more about who they are as people, which truly is more about compatibility and isn't to do with what films you like or sports you participate in."
Revealing that Lake Bell "arrived in the UK in character and stayed like that for the whole shoot", Pegg was impressed with his New York-born co-star's apparently impeccable British accent. "It was a bit odd because I felt like I never really got to meet her in person," says Pegg, who adopted a Scottish brogue for his role as Scotty in the recent Star Trek films.
"But it really worked because what you have to do with accents is almost to run a programme in your mind, which can shut down all the other programmes you have going such as when you're acting.
"Sometimes when you see a really good actor doing an accent and they're not quite as good as they usually are, that's because part of their concentration is being taken up by doing the accent. But, if you do it all the time, it becomes like second nature and that enables you to act as well, which is what Lake wanted to do.
"It freed her up and allowed her to be a bit looser because the dialogue is very fast and was sometimes improvised, so she needed to be able to just think in and be British."
With the film mostly told from Nancy's perspective, Man Up initially seems an inappropriate title, although it is meant to be applicable to both genders.
"It's written by a woman, so it immediately has a strong female voice," says Pegg.
"It's basically an appropriation of a fairly dodgy patriarchal statement that in order to be tough you have to be male. To man up somehow equates masculinity with dominance and power.
"But it also has a dual meaning in Nancy's life because it's like Jack is 'the next man up' and he throws it back at her in terms of how she has to be a bit braver and stronger."
Although most rom-coms span several months if not years, Man Up occurs over the course of a single, fateful evening.
"That's great for costume!" says Pegg, laughing. "If you do a film that takes place over a number of weeks or days, you get to know what costume you'll be in. I just did Mission Impossible and there were so many costumes that I didn't know where I was. With this, it was just the coat, the jeans and the scarf.
"If you look at Four Weddings and a Funeral, there's a relationship there that simmers over time. But with Jack and Nancy it's a very concentrated burst, and it also makes the attraction they have for each other very intense and beguiling. They're really meant to be together because they connect so completely, so the fact it happens over one night really elevates that."
Pegg is reprising his part as Benjy in the imminent Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and is about to embark on his third Star Trek outing, which he is also co-writing. Featuring in more modest productions like Man Up could be perceived as a refreshing change of pace.
"I don't do it like: 'one for me and one for them', in terms of I don't do the big movies, so that I can do the small films,. I absolutely love Mission Impossible and Star Trek but I also enjoy doing these smaller films just as much.
"In the big movies, I tend to play a very specific supporting role but with a film like this, it enables me to at least share centre stage and to play a different kind of character with a different set of motivations."
