Bruce Campbell Taps His Evil Dead Character to Deliver Fans Coronavirus Message

The spread of the coronavirus has had an impact on everyone’s daily lives, resulting in even busy celebrities having to take time to quarantine themselves, though Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell recently borrowed a page from his iconic Ash Williams character to remind his fans to lay low during the pandemic. Since the conclusion of Season Three of Ash vs. Evil Dead and Campbell’s public retirement from the role, this is likely the closest thing we’ll get to ever seeing the actor playing the character again, especially given that he and director Sam Raimi have confirmed that a new filmmaker will be taking over the franchise.

“Alright, you primitive screwheads. Listen up: there I was, minding my own beeswax on my back porch in retirement, and some goddamn, assh-le virus bullsh-t comes rearin’ its ugly head,” Campbell shared on Twitter. “Shop smart, lay low, don’t make me come back.”

With the video message being delivered through Apple’s Memoji video option, it’s unclear if Campbell was attempting to perform as Ash or merely as himself, embracing his character’s signature vernacular. When we last saw Ash, he had teleported to an apocalyptic future in which he likely didn’t have a porch, with it seeming more likely that Campbell was merely reciting some of his familiar phrases to cheer up his fans.

The original The Evil Dead debuted in 1981 and earned two sequels, a reboot, multiple comic books and video games, and three seasons of a TV series. Few horror franchises are as beloved as Evil Dead, thanks in large part to Campbell’s performance. Ever since 1992’s Army of Darkness, audiences have been hoping to see Campbell in another follow-up film, though the actor himself has regularly expressed how his TV series accomplished more than any film could.

“People should be kissing Starz’s ass, because it is the only outlet that would let us have a little bit of creative control, but also, it’s unrated,” Campbell pointed out to ComicBook.com in 2018. “This is uncut. We had to probably scale down for some countries who couldn’t take the full monty, but this is unrated television, and for the uber Evil Dead fan, man, it isn’t going to get any better than that. If this was on AMC, Ash would be going, ‘Gosh golly, what’s going on over there?’”

He added, “With a TV series, they commit to doing a full season, then another full season, and so, as far as page count, time spent with Ash, this is the only way to do it, and as an actor, now we can really dig at the character. You can spend time with him. With a movie, you got to tell the plot, they get very plot-oriented, but with a TV show, you can actually go, ‘Okay, Ash has a daughter. What the hell’s that like?’ He’s like the worst dad ever, but trying to be the greatest dad ever.”

Stay tuned for updates on the Evil Dead franchise.

What do you think of Campbell’s message? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!