Helen Mirren’s incredibly polite way of turning down ‘Shaun of the Dead’
In an alternate universe, we might have been blessed with the spectacle of Dame Helen Mirren rising from the dead and getting shot in the forehead by Simon Pegg. But alas, it was not meant to be. The comedy zombie movie Shaun of the Dead is now an undisputed cult classic, but when its script was being sent around in the early 2000s, it wasn’t an obvious home run.
Directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, it stars Pegg as a long-suffering salesman with a dead-end job who finds himself in a zombie apocalypse while navigating a complicated romantic relationship. Drawing on George Romero’s landmark horror movies Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, it is both an homage to old-school zombie flicks and a timely satire about the woes of capitalism. It also became the first instalment in the so-called Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, alongside subsequent genre spoofs Hot Fuzz and The World’s End.
When Wright and Pegg were looking for actors to appear in Shaun of the Dead, they had a particularly lofty ambition for Shaun’s mum, Barbara. As the director explained in an oral history of the movie for IndieWire, the studio wanted them to approach Helen Mirren first. The Oscar-winning ended up turning it down but took the time to respond with a charmingly flattering letter.
“She said, ‘I love the script, but if I was going to do it, I’d want to play the character of Ed because he has the funniest lines!’” Wright remembered. “As passes go, I really admired it! It came back around to Penelope [Wilton] who we always wanted. She passed at first, but we asked her agents if we could take her out to tea. She met us and came on board.”
Although it’s tempting to imagine Mirren in the role of Barbara, Wilton is, in fact, the perfect fit. If you had to describe Barbara in one word, it would be “apologetic.” She doesn’t want to be a burden on her son, and even avoids telling anyone that she’s been bitten by a zombie to avoid being a pain. Wilton is a master at portraying this type of Britishness, and though Mirren is one of the greatest actors of her generation, it’s hard to imagine such a forceful and magnetic performer achieving the same type of inexplicable hesitancy about even the most dire situation.
The more enticing angle is to imagine Mirren in the role she supposedly wanted – Ed. Played by Nick Frost, Ed is, as Mirren said, the funniest character in the film. No matter how high the stakes (and what could be higher than a zombie apocalypse?), Ed takes it in his stride and always has time to throw in a well-timed one-liner.
Frost made the character the film’s fan favourite, but imagine Dame Helen Mirren with the same script. Somehow, “Your mum rang back to see if I wanted to eat her out tonight” would probably be even funnier if it was spoken by an Oscar-winning Dame of the British Empire.
