Bruce Campbell is such an amazing actor. He’s mostly known for the character, Ashley “Ash” Williams, from the Evil Dead franchise. But if horror isn’t your thing, I’m sure you’ve seen him somewhere. He was in all three of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, Burn Notice, and Xena: Warrior Princess. In an interview with Collider, Campbell says he’s done with Ash.
During the interview, Campbell shares why:
I’m done playing Ash, so that determines a lot of where we go with the franchise without that character, but there are more stories. We’re doing it book-focused these days. That darn book gets around, and that’s how we play it. That book wound up in an urban environment with a single mom, so let’s see what happens. It’s fun to fiddle with it. There’s not gonna be any traditional form of Evil Dead anymore. Ash is gone. I’ve retired the character because I physically just can’t do him anymore, so why bother? Why do I do it?
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It’s time to hang up the chainsaw. But we still are filmmakers, we’re still producers, we’re still creative-type dudes, so we were like, “How do we keep this going otherwise?” Sam [Raimi] handpicked Fede Alvarez to do the remake a few years ago. He handpicked Lee Cronin for this one. These are Sam Raimi proteges that we hope will do a good job.
What’s Left To Tell?
When Campbell was asked if leaving the character, Ash, was difficult, he said:
No. Whatever the cliched phrase is, I left it all on table. I’ve got nothing else to give. The three seasons were the longest seasons of my life. If you saw the emails pleading with various directors that were like, “Hey, my knee’s not working right. Be careful about tomorrow. Let’s have the stunt guy nearby. Hey, I can’t run anymore.” It just was an endless physical struggle. I’m really glad we did it because we saw Ash’s home, we went into his bedroom, we met his girlfriends, we met his daughter that we never knew he had and that he never knew he had, and we met his father, played by the great Lee Majors.
Campbell Telling It Like It Is
I feel we really pushed all the buttons and he fulfilled his destiny written in that ancient book. He was the guy destined to defeat evil in the past, present and future, and he took off with a hot robot chick at the end to go kick in the future. What else do you need? We knew the ratings were bad. We knew, going into the last season, that we had to have an end because we didn’t think Starz was gonna re-up us and we were right. So, thank God we did that.
I’ve loved the Evil Dead franchise. Ash is such a great character and Bruce Campbell has done an amazing job playing him. But I can’t believe it’s been 30 years! I’m looking forward to seeing Campbell in Black Friday. I love horror comedy and Campbell kicks ass at it.
What do you think of Bruce Campbell being done with Ash Williams? Leave a comment below.
Source: Collider