Empire’s just come back from a nice chat with Jessica Stevenson and Martin Freeman about their new film Confetti (you can read all that in our Interviews section very soon) and as Martin had just hotfooted it from the set of Hot Fuzz - the latest film from the **Shaun Of The Dead **gang - it seemed only polite to ask him how it’s all going.
“I’m the first voice you hear in the film,” says Martin. “I’m quite anally retentive, slightly superior to Simon Pegg’s character, and I’m the one who tells him that he’s basically being moved from the Met to the country because he’s so good he’s making the rest of us look bad. But he doesn’t believe me so I get Steve Coogan in. He doesn’t believe Steve Coogan so then we’ve got to get Bill Nighy in and we’re all saying ‘Listen, you’ve got to go mate’ so eventually he goes. Then the hilarity begins.”
Unsurprisingly for fans of Shaun, and Edgar and Simon’s TV show, Spaced, Freeman thinks the story is a goodie. “I think it’s a very funny script and they’ve assembled a cast that is pretty tremendous really – myself excluded,” he says (ease up on the modesty there Martin). “It’ll be amazing, it’s brilliant. It’s got Simon and Edgar’s typical sharp eye and sharp ear. At the read through it was a really great group of people and obviously they all wanted to be there, attracted to the material.”
Seeing as Stevenson played ass-kicking zombie fighter Yvonne in Shaun and co-wrote **Spaced **with Simon, will she be turning up in Fuzz? “Absolutely not and I’m very annoyed!” she says (laughing, we might add). “It’s very boysy, I don’t think there are any girls, and if there are any girls then I don’t know who they are.” And just for emphasis: “I’m not doing a cameo, I haven’t been asked to do a cameo and maybe even if they did ask me I wouldn’t do it anyway!”
Confetti is released on May 5 and Hot Fuzz is scheduled for a February release next year: keep an eye out for more news coming soon.