The legendary TV series Edgar Wright turned down: “My mother has never forgiven me”
These days, there aren’t many high-profile directors left who haven’t taken their talents to the small screen in the ongoing ‘Golden Age’ of television, but Edgar Wright is one of them.
Whereas Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh, and Guillermo del Toro have all helmed episodes of various shows, Wright has yet to join them, which might have something to do with the fact that, unlike those names, that’s where he began.
The 21st century has become synonymous with filmmakers who worked primarily on the big screen branching out onto the small one, but in between A Fistful of Fingers and Shaun of the Dead, Wright could exclusively be found on TV, with Spaced, Murder Most Horrid, French and Saunders, and Is It Bill Bailey? among his credits.
That doesn’t eliminate him from tackling a standalone episode, a miniseries, or something on streaming in the future, but turning down a legendary show that left his mother broken-hearted could play on his thinking, since his last potential dalliance with longer-form storytelling had his old dear devastated.
“I don’t think it’s something where you ever think, ‘Oh, I must do a TV show,’” he told Far Out. “I think it’s just got to be on what the subject matter is. If it’s something that I think is a great idea, and it could only be done in long form, or the start of a series or something, for sure.”
Straight from the horse’s mouth: he’s not against it. There might still be some lingering trauma on the Wright family’s part, though, since when the ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ mastermind was asked if he could ever be tempted to take the reins on Doctor Who, he dropped a shattering bombshell.
“I’m going to break your heart here, but I was offered the episode ‘Rose’ by Russell T Davies (the first of the new Doctor Who episodes),” the filmmaker shared. “And I could not do it because I was busy with Shaun of the Dead. And my mother has never forgiven me.”
‘Rose’ is without a doubt the most important Doctor Who episode of the modern era, since it rebooted the BBC staple for a new generation and introduced Christopher Eccleston as the first new iteration of the title character since 1996. Even though Shaun of the Dead had wrapped in July 2003 and ‘Rose’ didn’t shoot until July 2004, Wright couldn’t tear himself away from his breakthrough feature.
“I wouldn’t have missed the Shaun of the Dead press tour for the world,” he explained. “It was a simple no, even though it would’ve been great.” He knew where his priorities lay, but that must have been an awkward conversation with his mother, who clearly would have loved nothing more than for her sprog to direct a Doctor Who episode.
