‘Bruce Campbell’ Returns as ‘Ash Williams’ in ‘Evil Dead’ TV Series

‘You know what? I got this. It’s also great to not have to change motors on a camera when you want to change film speeds. Bruce Campbell’s long awaited return as everyone’s favorite anti-hero was well worth the wait, as he’s back and better than ever in this hit new show. Bruce Campbell will be in it as one of the actors.

“I saw [the original movies] when I was 17”, she said.

Campbell: I’m thankful whenever we have input. They lack the energy and humor of Campbell’s Ash character.

“Generally, we’ve been doing a lot of character make-ups”, he says, “which have been a lot of fun”.

Campbell: Oh, I really didn’t know. Really. Because, you know, Army of Darkness bombed. At every other film promotion we’d do throughout the years, we kept hearing, “When’s the next Evil Dead film?” Meetings, boom boom boom, zip zap zoop, deal done, then we’re scrambling to start shooting in order to get it on the air by Halloween. “Yeah, isn’t that great?” Amusing thing is, by the time we got around to putting our heads into a TV show, it all happened so quickly. “But we don’t have to lie anymore”.

Lucy Lawless: That’s what it’s like being married too. We’re all storytellers, and all of it helps tell the story. I’ve worked on a bunch of comedies and a bunch of genre shows and I really love mixing genre. I think humans can relate to that more than relating to a monster. But that’s just a progression of make-up effects in general, and the fact that they were movies of their time. The big tent poles, where you should go, what Ash should be doing at this episode versus this episode. The answer was TV, and Rob had done gobs of TV.

And beyond blood, there were plenty of other gruesome items designed for the show.

Have new directors come in and really furthered or added to the Sam Raimi style? Investors gave certain amounts of money. Season 2 of the creepy-good French series “The Returned” finally brings us back to the small mountain town where residents who were presumed dead come back to life — without all the yucky zombie makeup. That shoot went from six weeks to 12 weeks. It’s not like we got any pleasure by torturing them for many years. But I have to say, it was really fun revisiting and working with the Grand Poobah again.

Campbell invited his co-star and longtime friend Lucy Lawless to play against him on Ask Me Another. He’s much older and worse for the wear, of course, but none of that will stop him from fighting the good fight (and bedding any distressed damsel he can find). “Here’s this new design for this”.

For example, when Ash spanks a woman with his wooden hand while making puns, you’re probably going to laugh. The pilot’s awesome. I think he’s downplaying how cool what he did is. I like to call it a big, jolly splatterfest.

Campbell: “Isn’t that wonderful term of endearment?” “I like working with Rob and Sam, my old cohorts”.

IGN: And I’ve always felt that The Evil Dead and the other films you just mentioned, one of their strengths always was that they could maybe really be happening because they do feel lower budget or have a little more “you are there” quality – which makes them more scary.

Sparing you the snarkiness (which was appropriate & further endearing), we’ll skip over questions about “Michigan Easter Eggs”, and whose choice it was for Ash to grab two condoms v. one. All these people had such a huge hand in making something that was special to me, and now I might be able to have a part in it. We were surprised we could make a sequel when we had to, when no one would hire us to do anything else. Would I be correct?

Campbell: Look, we don’t guffaw our way through the day. We are actually professional thespians. I loved it. We were trying to satisfy the fans through that. You know, oftentimes you’d say, “In this scene, Ash feels persecuted”.

Lawless: There’s no shilly-shallying. My question was more of a confirmation of what I had come to realize…

Campbell: None of that, none of that. Then we heard from fans, “Yeah, we really did like that”. We sort of missed that boat.

Campbell: Well, it might be hard. Are you going to try to make a few of those elements materialize in the series?

Q: They seemed to go in a new direction with the reboot.

Do you think that it was a little too much fan service or do you still feel just as connected to it?

More than anything, Army of Darkness is a tribute to the Ray Harryhausen adventure epics (Clash of the Titans, Sinbad, and the like) that Sam Raimi grew up loving. He said that fake blood is “chronic. Get yourself to makeup”. And I’ll get myself to makeup, I’ll get myself mic’d. “She’s stepping on set”.

Campbell puts it a different way, “What I like, is you don’t have to talky, talky, talk…” “The first time, [the Deadites] killed my entire family, and I’m blaming him, and I want to [put] him in the ground”. Okay, I’ll dick around and do stuff in my camper. “Okay, it’s 7:20. I’m going to do makeup now”. It’s just that simple. I look around like “you bastard actors, where were you ten years ago?” I did Knots Landing, that was my first television. Get out of my jazz.