Simon Pegg Talks 'Terminal,' 'Star Trek,' 'Star Wars' Reveals & More

There’s a lot of buzz circling the Quentin Tarantino “Star Trek” project and your recent comments about not knowing if you’d appear in it.
I know absolutely nothing about it, but it is a Kelvin generation/timeline story apparently but we know absolutely nothing about it. They don’t tell us anything because we’re all so nice that we tend to constantly blab about whatever we know. Anyone really in a blockbuster movie should be put in witness protection to stay safe from clickbaiters.

On a similar note, a few months ago you mentioned that JJ Abrams had different ideas for Rey’s parentage following ‘The Force Awakens.’ What has the reaction been like?
Well, it’s annoying because it was a long time ago, way way before Rian [Johnson] came on board. I was just chatting the other day about how people have been so desperate for information and not just to read it but to disseminate it. It’s very difficult to actually do interviews these days because I don’t like to be rude and if someone asks me a question I don’t want to just go “no comment” because that’s obnoxious. All screenplays go through evolutions and that stuff was all just very long ago.

You mentioned you had been in some big budget type films before doing “Terminal.” With that, “Ready Player One” and “Mission Impossible: Fallout” coming up you have a very eclectic group of movies coming up followed by the indie you were mentioning. Is that becoming more purposeful, trying to find the breaks in between the blockbuster films or is it more of a choice on a script by script basis?
I don’t want to lose touch with the kind of filmmaking I started with. I am incredibly lucky to be in Mission and “Ready Player One” and I had a fantastic time on both of those films. Getting to work with Steven Spielberg is a dream come true and working with Chris McQuarrie again was such a joy. I love Chris, he’s such a clever writer and it was a delight to see him actually write and direct this time even though it was like, over 100 days due to Tom’s [Cruise] mishap. I also want to do smaller films where you have those sleeves rolled up and having the variety in characters. Often times in the bigger films I tend to be reacting to things you know, there’s something crazy happening and I’m dealing with it or telling someone how to defuse a bomb, so the film I’m making at the moment is great and a gift for an actor because it is small and personal and that is something im at pains to try and maintain as well.

I’m really excited to hear that, I suppose one of your last big featured leading role was as Gary King in “The World’s End.” 
It’s fun to play characters that are broken in some way and also I like in some aspects my character Bill in “Terminal” Is a little bit similar to Gary in that in terms of the audiences’ journey with them. With Gar,y you think he’s just a pain in the ass but by the end, you realize he’s an addict and in a lot of pain so that the feeling you have for him initially develops into pity for him. With Bill, you spend most of the film thinking he is a bit of a sad sap and then realize he might be fundamentally evil, and you have to change your opinion of him. I like the process of that where you can play a character that you can play one way and then reveal something about them that completely changes the audience’s opinion.

“Terminal” is in theaters and on VOD now.