Simon Pegg Talks Benji Arc

In the summer of 2005, Simon Pegg arrived on the Paramount lot to film a supporting role for J.J. Abrams and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III. Knowing that the director and star-producer were fans of his preceding zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead (2004), Pegg thought his role as IMF technician Benji Dunn was just a way to satisfy their temporary curiosity. At no point did he think that he’d still be playing Dunn two decades later in the franchise’s eighth installment, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.

“I went to Hollywood for the first time, and I did my little bit on the Paramount lot. I then went home and figured that was it,” Pegg tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of The Final Reckoning’s May 23 theatrical release. “And a year or so after Mission III came out, I got an email from J.J. that said, ‘How would you feel if Benji was a field agent?’ And I think I replied, ‘I would feel good.’”

Christopher “McQ” McQuarrie’s fourth film as writer-director, The Final Reckoning, is now Pegg’s sixth Mission in total. It takes place a couple months after 2023’s Dead Reckoning, as the Impossible Missions Force must find a way to stop the Entity from successfully driving the world toward nuclear annihilation. The Ethan Hunt-led team has a slightly different makeup this time around, as the AI big bad engineered the tragic death of Rebecca Ferguson’s fan-favorite character, Ilsa Faust, in Dead Reckoning. 

Pegg, who became very close with Ferguson since her star-making franchise debut in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (2015), admits her absence was felt on The Final Reckoning.

“Rebecca was my buddy, and I love her very much. We were always there for each other when things got super crazy in the middle of this madhouse circus that Mission: Impossible can sometimes be,” Pegg says. “The one great thing about the [Covid] restrictions that were put upon us during Dead Reckoning was that the new cast bonded very, very quickly. So by the time we came to Final Reckoning … that soothed that particular loss a little bit. But it was a tough one with Rebecca because she’s an amazing actor.”

The Final Reckoning is the culmination of all the previous Mission films, but the question remains as to whether it’s going to function as the definitive conclusion. Pegg is currently uncertain as to the future direction of the franchise, but he stops short of calling this latest film the end. (That said, days after this chat with Pegg, Cruise told THR, “It’s not called Final for nothing.”)

“It feels like an end to me. McQ expertly went into the past and looked at the preceding movies, and he saw how he could find an origin for the Entity,” Pegg shares. “So that all wraps up in this film, and for me, it does feel like an end.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Pegg also discusses Benji’s gradual character arc across two decades and why he didn’t have to witness any of Cruise’s death-defying stunts on the Final Reckoning set.

***

Mission: Impossible III started filming in the summer of 2005, and here you are, 20 years later. When you walked off J.J. Abrams’ set, did you assume that was the end of your IMF tenure?

Oh, absolutely. I thought it was something that had happened off the back of Shaun of the Dead. Tom and J.J. really liked Shaun of the Dead, and as they were talking about the movie, they said, “Hey, why don’t we get him to do this little part?” So J.J. called me, and I was shocked and slightly overwhelmed at the prospect. I went to Hollywood for the first time, and I did my little bit on the Paramount lot. I then went home and figured that was it. I thought, “That was fun. I got to be on a big Hollywood movie, and now I’ll go back to making my little British comedies.” And a year or so after Mission III came out, I got an email from J.J. that said, “How would you feel if Benji was a field agent?” And I think I replied, “I would feel good.” So that was the beginning of it. I never knew that it would progress over six films; it was just a delight to be asked back the first time.

I remember when Mission: Impossible — Fallout’s broken ankle felt like the worst case scenario, but that setback seems almost trivial compared to what you’ve all endured on both Reckoning films. How overwhelming did things get at times?

Well, we always just held the line. We shut down in February of 2020 for obvious reasons, and we started up again in November, in Norway, with a very rigorous set of protocols in place to make sure that everybody stayed safe. That was challenging and it made things difficult, but we got through it. You just adapt. Every Mission: Impossible I’ve ever done has had a parallel Mission: Impossible running alongside it, which is making Mission: Impossible. The goals and the challenges we set ourselves always seem impossible in the outset, and yet we find a way to do it. With all the films, we just muddled through them. We put our heads down to meet the challenges, and we figured shit out. We were always going to get there; it’s just a question of how. 

With Dead Reckoning, there were challenges involved. The pandemic was obviously the greatest, and then the writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed the beginning of shooting The Final Reckoning, which was frustrating but necessary. We still hit the ground running [when filming resumed], and we were clear of everything that had held us back during Dead Reckoning. I felt [The Final Reckoning] was a lot freer. It felt more like a conventional shoot because we were free of the Covid protocols, and for me, The Final Reckoning was the most enjoyable shoot of all of the Missions that I’ve done. 

And I wasn’t even referring to the polar bear encounter in the Arctic. Did you say to yourself, “Yeah, this makes sense for Mission”?

(Laughs.) Absolutely! You can never underestimate what’s going to happen. You have to be ready for anything on these films, and a polar bear wandering through set just felt like another day at the office. 

Benji has the recurring line, “We’ll figure it out,” at least a couple times in The Final Reckoning, and that’s one of the behind-the-scenes mantras of Mission: Impossible. The majority of these movies are discovered on the fly. Do you never truly know what you’ve made until you screen the movie for the first time?

No, because McQ always has an idea of what the story is about. McQ writes on the fly, but like any writer, there’s a first draft, at least in his head, about the direction the film is going to go. It’s not totally improvised by any means. There are story strands and ideas we want to get to, and McQ likes to leave things to be figured out. He operates at his finest when he’s solving a puzzle. If you give McQ a sheet of blank paper, he’ll stare at it and frown. But if you give him something that needs to be fixed, he’ll fix it in a heartbeat because that’s his mind. He’s a brilliant technician in terms of figuring out problems. And as Tom always says, “Pressure is a privilege. Every crisis is an opportunity.” So it seems to be this crucible of creation. When you are up against it and things just seem impossible, that’s when your best stuff happens because necessity is the mother of invention. That is the real mantra of Mission: Impossible, I think. 

As much as I enjoyed Dead Reckoning, I’m still haunted by what happened in Venice. Was it strange to not have Rebecca Ferguson around on this one?

Yeah, it was. Rebecca was my buddy, and I love her very much. We were always there for each other when things got super crazy in the middle of this madhouse circus that Mission: Impossible can sometimes be. We were always there to hold onto each other and laugh about it all, but it was wonderful to have the new cast. The one great thing about the [Covid] restrictions that were put upon us during Dead Reckoning was that the new cast bonded very, very quickly. We were all holed up together in the same bubble, so we spent all our time with each other. We ate together, we played together, we worked together. And it just meant that a very strong bond formed very quickly. So by the time we came to Final Reckoning, the hole that was left by Rebecca was filled by Pom [Klementieff] and Tarzan [Davis] and Hayley [Atwell] and Esai [Morales] and Shea [Whigham]. So that soothed that particular loss a little bit. But it was a tough one with Rebecca because she’s an amazing actor.

Ethan embarks on a solo mission for much of The Final Reckoning, so he makes Benji the new IMF team leader. Was that a welcomed change of pace for you? 

Yeah, I am always in awe of McQ’s ability to play the long game. He never wanted Benji to become too much too soon. When McQ came in to fix Ghost Protocol, there was a scene in the [existing] script where Benji swung in on a rope with a machine gun and saved the day. He immediately cut that scene, and I remember being pissed about it, saying, “Hey, why did you cut that? That was a cool moment.” And McQ said, “Why did you like that scene?” And I said, “Well, I wanted Benji to do something cool.” And he said, “Okay.” He then wrote the scene where I save Jeremy Renner’s character, William Brandt, from the guy he’s fighting with by shooting him. And it was a much better, much more character-oriented moment because Benji was new in the field. He didn’t have much experience. So we saw him do something surprising, but it wasn’t unbelievable in that it exceeds the realms of his capabilities at that point. 

McQ then waited two films before Benji finally got to wear a mask in the field, and he always made it so that Benji never did something that felt out of character. And it wasn’t until this film when he was finally in a position to take charge of a team. Ethan told him, “You’re ready for this,” and it just felt honest and true. So I really loved that because it felt like I’d played a 20-year game here, and the reward was for Benji to be fully realized as an agent and as a capable and competent leader. It took 20 years, but he got there in the end, and I’m glad we took that long. 

And because Ethan is largely alone, were you spared from having to witness Tom’s dangerous exploits on this go-round? 

Thankfully, yes. It has always been a terrifying thing for me to be there, and I’ve been there for all the big stunts over the years. Weirdly, even if we had been able to be there when he was doing these stunts, we wouldn’t have been able to go up into the sky on the biplanes with him. Nor would we have been able to go underwater and see what he was doing. We saw the gimbal for the Sevastopol, which was the most incredible piece of film technology I’ve ever seen in my life. But there was no nail biting and terror like there sometimes is on set when Tom is jumping off something or hanging onto something or generally putting his life at risk in the name of cinema. 

Tom was onced asked why he risks his life doing stunts, and he responded, “No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’” It’s a valid point, but at the same time, Gene Kelly wasn’t risking his life doing the jitterbug. Have you figured out the why?

Yeah, he just cares so much about delivering an authentic and exhilarating experience for his audience. He eats, lives, sleeps, breathes cinema. It’s his life. He’ll tell you that himself. It defines who he is. He knows that if he pushes it that extra mile, or ten miles, then the audience will experience something truly, truly breathtaking in the cinema. You’re watching a character do something incredible, but in the back of your mind, you know you’re watching an actor do something incredible. 

For Tom, character is always the primary concern. It isn’t the stunts, it isn’t the locations, it’s about the characters. If you don’t have character at the heart of all that, none of it means anything. So for him to never have to hand [a stunt] over to a stunt professional, you are seeing the character at all times, and that, for Tom, is the key. 

The great example of that is in Dead Reckoning, when Ethan delivers a line to Benji in freefall. He’s jumped off the cliff, and Benji says, “Did you make it? Are you OK” And he says, “I’m trying to get away from this mountain.” Tom delivered that line in freefall, and being a joke, it required timing. So you could have never done that with a stunt person. You could have done it with a digital character, but it would feel hollow because you’d know it wasn’t really happening. So Tom just knows the assignment.

Have you ever seen him noticeably afraid of what he was about to do?

I’ve never seen him afraid. I’ve seen him nervous, I’ve seen him apprehensive and I’ve seen him in high concentration mode. But I don’t think he gets afraid. I don’t think he lets himself get afraid. He’s not reckless. He knows the parameters of what he’s doing. He knows the risks involved. He’s calculated them, and he’s trained really hard. So he gets nervous like you would, but I’ve never seen him afraid.

Lastly, is Final Reckoning the end for you and Mission?

I feel like The Final Reckoning is a really satisfying culmination of these films. It feels like an end to me. It wraps up so much of what’s gone before. McQ expertly went into the past and looked at the preceding movies, and he saw how he could find an origin for the Entity — and how Ethan’s refusal to ever sacrifice anything would impact the events that have led to this. So that all wraps up in this film, and for me, it does feel like an end.

***
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning opens in the movie theaters nationwide on May 23.