Simon Pegg Teases ‘Mission: Impossible’ 7 and 8, Talks Mask Gags
229When Collider’s own Steve Weintraub hopped on a Zoom call to chat with Simon Pegg about his new movie Inheritance (more from that interview very soon), he had to ask him about the upcoming Mission: Impossible sequels, now dated for November 19, 2021 and August 8, 2022 respectively. (They were one of the first casualties of the coronavirus shutdown, as their first location was Venice, near Italy’s epicenter.)
Apparently they were very close to shooting, as Pegg introduced himself to new cast members while feeling like a hardened pro. “I remember walking into the trailer before we had to rearrange things and was talking to Nicholas Hoult. I felt like an old veteran. I’m four movies in, it’s his first one. I was hearing about him getting certain training regimes. I was like, ‘How come I don’t get one of those? I’ve done four of these! What am I, chopped liver?’ But it was funny to be the old hand,” Pegg said. “I felt like Ving [Rhames] must have felt when I met him on number 3. Now he’s 6 in.”
When Steve pressed him about how much he knows about the journey his character, techy-y IMF agent Benji, will go on across the two sequels, it turns out that he knows a lot, thanks to the generosity of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. “It’s become a tradition now. Before production McQuarrie takes me out to dinner and acts out the whole movie. And sometimes what he’s told me hasn’t transpired,” Pegg explained. “But with this one he has a much clearer idea. The reason we’re splitting it into two is because he’s determined to give everybody a proper emotional arc, a proper emotional detailed character arc. And instead of trying to cram it all into one film, he’s going to allow that arc to spread out over two.”
And spread out it shall be – Pegg said that there will be a brief hiatus between the shoots of Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 but that he’s in it for the long haul. “It was funny, when I met all the people that are going to be in the new one, we had what was going to be our kickoff dinner – but it turned out not to be obviously – but knowing that these actors are going to be my friends now because we’re going to work together for nearly two years, is always an interesting prospect,” Pegg said. “It’s nice to have that job security.”
Of course, what will make that shoot fun and, undoubtedly, totally exhausting is that he will be working with Tom Cruise, an actor and producer known for his perfectionism and commitment to the craft (also known for hanging off of buildings, jumping out of airplanes and riding his motorcycle through Paris without a helmet). “It’s always fun. He’s an incredibly generous performer. He cares a lot about everybody else. He’s always hanging out around the monitor … after hanging off an airplane, he’s worried about me doing a fistfight which isn’t particularly scary,” Pegg said. He also gets to see a side of the performer that we never will: the real person. “I like it because there’s a normal person there, there’s a regular person that people tend to never see, and he’s aware of who he is and what he’s become,” Pegg said. “I’ve always had a good experience with Tom. You know you’re working on something which is going to be executed with 100% committed and enthusiasm. It’s nice to have that as the standard.”
But would Benji get a mask gag in Mission: Impossible 7 or Mission: Impossible 8? Pegg isn’t sure. “That was one of the great things that McQ played the long game on, in terms of Benji. In Ghost Protocol, he wants to use a mask and in the end he can’t. In Rogue Nation, there’s a hypothetical scene where he’s wearing a mask but he never gets to do it. So there’s this running gag that Benji never gets to wear a mask,” Pegg said. “And in Fallout I wear two – I got to be Wolf Blitzer, which was really fun because Wolf was on set. We had this fake news gag which was ahead of his time. And then Benji is disguised as another character. I think it’s been done.”
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