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Status Anxiety

Toby Young

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

Disciplined, cheerful, humble and truly nice -— Simon Pegg is everything I’m not

It is a strange experience interviewing the actor who has just played you in the film of your life. Simon Pegg has been cast as yours truly in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People and the first thing he does is remind me that there is a scene in the film in which he makes a complete hash of an interview with a famous actor. That inevitably raises the question: if I mess up this interview, and the makers of the sequel want to include this scene in the film, who will be cast as ‘Simon Pegg’?

I may be getting ahead of myself here. It is a little premature to discuss the sequel before the original film has even come out. (It is released on 3 October.) I am trying not to let the experience of being played by Britain’s No. 1 box office star go to my head and, in that regard, Simon is a good role model. For instance, when I stepped out on to the red carpet with him at the Cannes Film Festival, and the flashbulbs started popping, he turned to me and said, ‘Don’t you just hate this?’

In all honesty, I’m not quite there yet, Simon.

Throughout the making of How to Lose Friends, I have always been a bit sceptical about these sorts of remarks. At first, I simply refused to take his apparent niceness at face value. He has such a loyal and devoted fan base after the success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz that he can green-light a movie at the click of his fingers. Indeed, it was only after he agreed to play the lead in How to Lose Friends that all the other pieces fell into place. But by the same token, he also has the power to sink the project simply by withdrawing his services. ‘Yes, he seems like a very decent guy, but don’t be fooled by that,’ I thought. ‘One wrong word from you and it’s curtains.’ It is almost like being in the presence of Zeus, who for a laugh is pretending to be mortal.

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