Bruce Campbell has had a remarkable career from starring as Ash Williams in the Evil Dead franchise to recently cameoing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as Pizza Poppa. FilmHounds had the opportunity to talk to Campbell about his latest voice role as President Richard Nixon in Dan Mirvish's historical fiction Watergate thriller-comedy 18½.
In the film, you voice President Nixon, but this isn't the first time you've been a president as you played Reagan in Fargo. If you could pick any other US president, who would you want to play and why?
A completely obscure one. Maybe Grant, you could just be all crabby and jump on cigars. Someone like that. Either a really famous one or just someone that makes people go ‘who?'.
Playing a president is a big role to take on, did you feel any pressure when you were stepping into the shoes of Nixon?
No, because the only pressure you feel sometimes doing a real character is that you don't want to overdo it. But Nixon is very difficult to overdo. Because if you listen to those tapes, when that guy gets going, he's a major piece of work. He's swearing, he's drinking, he's getting cantankerous, he's paranoid. So, yeah, that guy's like King Lear.
Do you have any memories, or do you remember where you were and how old you were when you first heard about the Watergate scandal?
I watched it live on TV when I was about 14, I watched the whole thing. For some reason, instead of going out and enjoying the summer like a normal Michigan kid, I sat and watched these hearings. I found it fascinating that something so nefarious was happening within our elected officials. I guess it was when I discovered how naive I was. And it was an interesting moment that stuck with me for sure. I was doing a play for the Franklin Village Junior Players, when we stopped the rehearsal to watch a TV and watch him resign and then we went back to rehearsal again, that was pretty funny.
Is that what attracted you to making this film?
I'm always a fan of independent movies and I knew about Dan (Mirvish) and I enjoyed the script. And he originally wanted me to play a different part but it was one of the roles where they get involved in a strenuous fight at the end of the movie and I had actually just had cataract surgery in my eyes, and I didn't want to exert any weird pressure because it's kind of a tricky surgery that you don't want to screw up. I said ‘Dan, I can't do that guy. But I did want to do Nixon'. And he went ‘okay' and that's kind of how that happened.
Dan mentioned how he wanted it to be Bruce Campbell as Nixon and rather than just you imitating Nixon's voice. What was that like getting to play such a big historical figure, but being able to put your own spin on it?
Oh I tried to stick as close to Nixon as I knew how to do Nixon. I wasn't trying to be Bruce Campbell. I was going for Nixon. I don't know, maybe Dan wanted something else. Well, we had a lot of leeway because Nixon never said those words, that we know of. So it's all trying to guess what might have been on those missing eighteen and a half minutes. I think it's a very compelling idea for a story.
In your career, you've done a mix of voice acting as well as physically appearing on camera. What are some of the things that appeal to you about doing a voice role?
Voice work is very clean, you don't really get your hands dirty. You're not getting blood thrown in your face, it's not freezing, you're not doing it at two o'clock in the morning on some abandoned highway, it's not raining. So there's a lot of advantages. And you can really focus on what it sounds like. You don't have to worry about what you look like. It's a very singular type of job and I like it mainly because I like the world of sound.
You recorded your lines over Zoom because of the pandemic, what was that like?
It was a really weird process where we had to download an app that was a recording app, so that you can record it on your phone. The good news is, that these lines were meant to be like a wiretap, so you didn't have to have that studio quality. But each actor downloaded the same app, and we were told what settings and what recording qualities to have blah blah blah. So we matched all that and did it in Zoom and they would then use the Zoom. And we had to have headphones so that we didn't bleed into the other actor's track.
They'd have a clean track, and they would use the Zoom session to re-sync it later. COVID did not make that process easy. Where normally you'd go into a studio, and you'd have the actual actor there and you'd even be with them in the studio and the director would be there too, and you'd kick around ideas. Here you had that horrible delay, a Zoom delay. So it was problematic but, you know, you do what you can.
Do you prefer being able to do it over Zoom from the comfort of your own home or going into a studio recording booth somewhere?
I think it's better when you can look at humans and have interaction. And you're hearing them more in real time without delay. Timing in my business is critical and when that gets thrown out of whack, everything's a little weird.
Recently, you've entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Doctor Strange and of course, you often cameo in Sam Raimi films, but could you tell me a bit about how this cameo came about? And more importantly, will we be seeing Pizza Poppa again? Is he going to be the newest Avenger?
I don't think he's going to be a new Avenger sadly. It came about because Sam needs me in his movies in order to improve the quality of his movies. And so, you know, he'll either call me or I'll hear about it and I'll stick my agent on him. I'll go ‘Where is it? Where's the role? What are we doing?' And, you know, we have a lot of fun with it so it's very nice to be able to still play in the sandbox 40 years later.
Do you have any say in what the character is or does Sam just say to you, ‘this is the role? Are you up for it?'
No, it's the same. You start with what they have scripted, and then you work with it from there. And Sam always likes to improve and improvise, so you shape it and mould it and then when you get to the set and you shape it and mould it even more and then you just shoot the damn thing.
You're very busy at the minute as you've also got Evil Dead Rise coming soon. How do you think fans of the Evil Dead franchise are going to respond to that?
They will react well because I've just spent a month and a half with Lee Cronin, the filmmaker in Dublin and Copenhagen working on the sound and I can say with great confidence, as far as Evil Dead fans go, they will be delighted. Lee, of course, is going to put his own spin on it, which he should do, but the fundamentals are all there and it's very cool. He did a good job. Lee's a good Irish boy and it's gonna have a Euro spin on the whole thing, which is kind of interesting.
18½ is available now on digital platforms.