Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg Confirms the One Joke Changed for American Audiences

Shaun of the Dead was fearlessly British -- except that one time.

By Russ Burlingame

When Shaun of the Dead came to America, it had already become a success in the U.K. The movie, written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, starring Pegg, and directed by Wright, hit theaters there nearly six months before it came to the U.S., and was instantly beloved. So it stands to reason that there wasn't much Pegg and Wright -- already famous in the U.K. for their sitcom Spaced -- would have changed for the U.S. audience. That said, they realized that a feature film was a big deal, and there was one seemingly small joke that they did change from script to screen.

Even there, it was for clarity, not to make the movie culturally more bland. In a new interview, Pegg says that there was one time the script said "pissed" -- a British euphemism for drunk -- and omitted it in favor of saying "drunk," assuming U.S. audiences might miss the intent and instead think the character was angry.

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"It was a vindication of our intentions, which was to make a film that was exactly that: very, very British," Pegg told The Hollywood Reporter. "We didn't make any concessions to sort of transatlantic-ism. A lot of the British rom-coms would do that. I remember watching Notting Hill, which is a film which I absolutely love, by the way. It's such a great movie. But it starts out – aside from all the whiteness of Notting Hill, which was a bit embarrassing – but the first scene, it winds up on a stained glass window of Beavis and Butt-Head. But we didn't want to do that. We wanted to make a film that was culturally specific. We made one concession. ... We never even thought that it would get a release in America. We didn't know it would get released in the U.K., if I'm honest. But I remember talking to Edgar Wright in the writing room, and it was the scene when Ed (Nick Frost) and Shaun [Pegg] discover Mary (Nicola Cunningham) in the garden – the first zombie they encounter. And she turns around, and you expect Shaun to say, 'Oh my God, it's a zombie.' And Shaun says, 'Oh, she's so drunk.' Initially, in the script it said, 'Oh my God, she's pissed.' And in America, pissed means annoyed. I remember saying, 'You know what, if people see this in America, they're not going to get that joke, and the joke is paramount to Edgar and I. Let's be a bit more literal about it, so that there's no mistake.' So it's not like she turns around and they go, 'Oh, she's really annoyed.' That's not funny. So in an optimistic moment, we changed it to 'drunk,' but that was the only concession we made."

In Shaun of the Dead, per the movie's official synopsis, "Shaun is a 30-something loser with a dull, easy existence. When he's not working at the electronics store, he lives with his slovenly best friend, Ed, in a small flat on the outskirts of London. The only unpredictable element in his life is his girlfriend, Liz, who wishes desperately for Shaun to grow up and be a man. When the town is inexplicably overrun with zombies, Shaun must rise to the occasion and protect both Liz and his mother."

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