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Spaced: Ten Years On...
Ten years from its debut, the show's creators reminisce
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Today, as revealed by Edgar Wright on his Twitter feed, Spaced – the ground-breaking, hugely influential and enormously funny sitcom that launched the careers of Wright (who directed), Simon Pegg (who co-wrote and starred), Jessica Hynes (who did the same) and Nick Frost (who made his acting debut as the deranged Mike) – is ten years old. Today. So, to celebrate, we’re bringing you, in full, the entire Spaced feature that ran in the September 2008 issue of Empire, featuring new and exclusive interviews with the guys and gal who made Spaced the most essential sitcom of the last decade.
We’re Just Mates Aren’t We? We’re Chums!
Edgar Wright: At the time of the first series, we were living Spaced. We were those people. I was 24, Jess was 26, Simon was 27. Simon was living with Nick and playing PlayStation all the time. Jess was in a similar mindset to Daisy and she’d been through all the squats and so on. I was living in a flat as big as this room and watching loads of films. So it was essentially just reflecting us in a mirror. Simon Pegg [Tim Bisley]: One of things that Spaced was, was a reaction to the emergence of these ‘youth sitcoms’ that were trying to be the British version of Friends, and usually were written by people 20 years older than the characters. I’d say specifically Game On and Babes In The Wood… Jessica Hynes [Daisy Steiner]: I wouldn’t say Game On was directly responsible for Spaced, but I remember watching it and thinking that there was nothing I could relate to at all. It felt like an older executive had crafted a show for
a younger audience.
 | | People that were making programmes for our age weren’t our age. So we thought, “Let’s do that,” and make a show that speaks very specifically to people like us. |  |
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Pegg: People that were making programmes for our age weren’t our age. So we thought, “Let’s do that,” and make a show that speaks very specifically to people like us. Jess went away and wrote this treatment that was the foundation for the whole show. Hynes : I didn’t want to write about the kitchen sink of Britain. I was groping towards some kind of imaginative realism. One of my first ideas was Daisy going back and travelling into her subconscious and memory, but also physically going into some kind of cavern where there were various things from her past. Simon was interested in creating a narrative that people could relate to, particularly about unrequited love in a modern setting. The referencing thing, that aspect of Spaced, was absolutely Simon. Pegg: People that were making programmes for our age weren’t our age. So we thought, “Let’s do that,” and make a show that speaks very specifically to people like us. Jess went away and wrote this treatment that was the foundation for the whole show. Hynes: I didn’t want to write about the kitchen sink of Britain. I was groping towards some kind of imaginative realism. One of my first ideas was Daisy going back and travelling into her subconscious and memory, but also physically going into some kind of cavern where there were various things from her past. Simon was interested in creating a narrative that people could relate to, particularly about unrequited love in a modern setting. The referencing thing, that aspect of Spaced, was absolutely Simon. Pegg: There’s tons of stuff we came up with that’s still on my computer. I remember we were going to add one episode where Mike gets struck by lightning and his moustache comes off. And then all his military leanings go away and he just becomes a civilian, because his moustache has burnt off. Hynes: Mike was really fun to work with. I really wanted to see his character in a sort of disco-dancing dance-off. Pegg: His sexuality was always interesting. He’s very asexual, and when we played with the idea of him dealing with girlfriends early on, we might have ended up getting him together with [Reece Shearsmith’s character] Dexter or someone like that. Or him just admitting he was gay. I’m Andy McNab, I’m Andy McNab, I’m Andy McNab, I’m Andie MacDowell
Nick Frost [Mike Watt]: I had never acted before, and there was no audition. Simon and Jess wrote Spaced, and Simon insisted that they had this character Mike Watt and that I would have to do it. Back then, Mike was older, an expert assassin who could remove a man’s blood and replace it with Tizer without him knowing. I had met Edgar and had been around at parties and stuff, but I was fairly quiet at that point and wasn’t seen as a performer or a stand-up in my own right — I was just known as Simon’s friend. Wright: The first time I met Nick was in a pub in Battersea. He just said nothing the entire night, he was just really, really shy. I was just worried, thinking, “This guy who’s barely said a word to me is playing one of the big parts in the show.” His first couple of readings weren’t bad, they were just quiet. It was obvious that he was very comfortable with Simon. But he really came into his own when we started filming the first series. Frost: I don’t think Edgar really wanted me to do it. I think he had said to Simon, “Do you think he can do it? Do you trust him?” And I kind of hated Edgar for that.
I think it was a big, big gamble for them to take, really.
Wright: There’s another actor called Nick Frost who’s been in The Bill. So I think Simon lied about Nick’s experience, saying he’d done stand-up when I’m pretty sure he hadn’t, and so on. So there was some subterfuge there, but it was all for the greater good.
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