Craig DiGregorio: You used the exact word that I've been using to answer this question, which is, initially, it is daunting. I think like, "Oh, these people have a friendship that's older than I am!" They have a very long and storied friendship that has created a lot of things and a lot of things people hold very dear. And that immediately melts away when you meet them. Like Sam and Ivan [Raimi], who worked with us in the room, Sam's brother, who's wonderful -- as soon as you start working with them you realize, "Oh, they're some of the most collaborative, welcoming, thoughtful and receptive-to-ideas-type people that you would ever meet." So you think about that sort of worst-case scenario like, "Oh my God, I'm going to walk into this, and they're going to hate me." It's like your first day at high school, and you're dealing with seniors. "I don't know what I'm going to do here," and then you walk in like, "Oh, this is great. Everyone wants to have fun." At the end of the day, they just want the best possible show that they want. You know, it's a very strange, fun show, so you're there sort of protecting what they want, this crazy, insane show. IGN: Sam has said Ash is what sets this series apart. That character is so beloved. So what is it like writing for that voice? Because he's a quip master. Everything he's said -- especially in the second and third movies in particular -- people quote. So when you're writing dialogue for Ash, does it feel like, "Okay, we've really got to deliver on that"?
DiGregorio: No. I mean, yes, he's a very beloved character, and he does have a particular way he speaks, but that actually makes it way easier to write him, because he's not just vanilla. You know how he speaks, so as you're writing his dialogue, you're doing that in your head and writing it as Ash -- hopefully. And then at the end of the day you have Bruce saying it, and if there's a little thing he wants to move here or there, whatever he wants to add or a phrase he wants to say, he'll do it. And we were all very open to that sort of thing. So you can't stress yourself out about that thing. You tell fun stories and try to get the characters voices the best way you can. But I think having such a defined character is easier to write than someone who you don't know what he'd say ever. With Ash, yeah, you can come up with a bunch of fun things for him to say. I don't think you go into those things thinking, "Oh, this is the quotable moment." It just happens. So hopefully you write enough good stuff that there are some quotable moments -- or not!
IGN: The films are pretty loose on continuity as it is. But still, should we assume you're taking into account, even if it can't be explicitly stated, that this guy went back in time?
DiGregorio: I think whatever happened to Ash in the past is definitely in Ash's head. We don't talk a lot about past things. Like we do say, yes, he did release things from the book way back when. He has been sort of hiding away from them for a long time. He re-notified them as to where he is, re-summoned them, and now we're back. We talk a little about backstory, but we don't dwell on the backstory. So I think all of the actions that have happened to Ash in the past are still there in his head, but we don't talk a lot about them. And that was directed straight from Sam. He's like, "I want this to be new. I don't want this to just be a rehashing of the old stuff." There are some old things that we go back to that the fans really want to see and maybe explain a little bit more about them, but we never dwell in the old stuff just to dwell in the old stuff. IGN: It’s a TV show, so there needs to be a supporting cast. What was your approach to creating the characters that were going to bounce off Ash?
DiGregorio: Well, when I came in, there was a pilot written that had Ash's sidekick characters. So the approach, when I saw that script, was sort of just fine-tuning them so that they'd be the best characters that Ash could play off of -- giving him someone who is the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, and then someone who's a little bit more realistic as to what this guy is. Ray Santiago, who plays Pablo, he sees something in Ash that maybe a lot of people don't see -- something special -- and I think you or I would be hard-pressed to see something special in a man getting on in his years working at a Value Mart who has like a wood hand. You'd be like, "Oh, this dude is a little" -- who comes at you from a weird angle all the time. You'd think he's a little bit creepy. That's what Dana Lorenzo, who plays Kelly -- she has that mindset toward Ash at first, and Ray has the opposite, where he's sort of Ash's Sancho. Continue to Page 2 as DiGregorio discusses Lucy Lawless’ character, Ruby, if Ash has changed at all, the blend of comedy and horror and more.
IGN: Let's talk about Lucy's character, Ruby. Where is she coming from, both literally and mentally?
DiGregorio: This is one of the characters that is connected back to the original Evil Dead world. So she's a Knowby, which is the professor's name of the person who found the book. She is Professor Knowby's only surviving daughter, and you'll learn more about her character as the series goes on. There's a bit more behind her than you initially see, but I feel like that's worth letting progress over the course of the series than sort of talking about that right now. But the initial thing you find out about her is, she is the daughter of Professor Knowby, that was the archaeologist who recovered the book. So she has a connection to the original features. IGN: The movies got increasingly more overtly comedic as they went on. With the show, obviously, there's going to be comedy, but do you veer back and forth tonally, or are there ever times where you're like, "Let's really play this for a scare"?
DiGregorio: Yes, for sure. At most parts we try to keep the horror scary. We try to keep the comedy funny and the horror scary. So I guess we tried to pick and choose all the best parts of the movies. I wouldn't say it's like Evil Dead 2.5. It's more like maybe some of the horror from one and two, but Ash progresses as a character through all the movies, so where did Ash end up after Army of Darkness as his character progressed and became more of the brash yet charming asshole that we all love? So it's all of those things. We tried to sort of pick and choose the best parts. So the horror should be scary. At times there may be a funny thing that happens during the horror. But at all times it's Ash onscreen, so he has his unique take on this, like you said earlier. He's very nonchalant about having to cut his own hand off. And he is a person who has a chainsaw on his hand. So you have to take a lot of the things he does with a grain of salt, and the world as well. But I feel like that gives us a lot of liberties with our storytelling. Like, you can be pretty crazy. IGN: How different is he from when we last saw him? Has he changed or not changed?
DiGregorio: He's learned and progressed almost zero -- or maybe [just] zero. This was one of the things that drew me to the project when I read the pilot, is you see a lot of man-child-type characters in TV that when they're 25 they're like, "I'm not going to get married. I'm not going to settle down. No way! I'm never going to buy a house and have kids and a dog." And then they're 30, and they're like, "I got married, I have kids. I never thought I'd get here!" This dude just stuck to it. Like, he was 25 years old and said that to himself, and now he's getting up there, and he just did it -- and for better or for worse. Sometimes that can be very lonely. You can see, even though he is charming and happy and going out and at bars and meeting women and doing what he does and just on the whole acting like a selfish, fun, charming jerk, he did stick to it. Like, he is still that man-child, and he has not progressed almost an ounce since 30 years ago. And that's great, because it gives us a place to go during the season.
He's also a man who has not had any meaningful relationships. He hasn't gone anyplace. He hasn't done anything. So it allows us to dangle stuff in front of him -- like maybe he does want to go somewhere. Maybe he wants to end up somewhere in his life that he never got to because 30 years ago he opened this book and now he's gotten to do nothing with his life. That's pretty sad when you think about it. And he's never had a real relationship with a girl or a guy or anyone. He's just never had a real friendship. So it's interesting to see a character like that open up over the course of a series too. So we don't play that for the most emotional things. Talking about it now, it seems like it's a straight-up drama, but it is under there. You can see him opening up to these people as it goes along. Whether you're watching for it or not, you realize that, oh, over the course of the season he has sort of made these amazing friends and sort of had friends. Maybe he starts to realize, "Oh, shit, I've never done anything with my life." And that's a pretty cool place to put someone, as realizing that they've never done anything. "What can I do about that?" And the way you get there is very cool too, because he's not just a character that will learn. He never learns much. So he may get to that place that he wants to go, but in a way that you'd never expect him to. IGN: Minutia question, but I'm just curious, why not S-Mart? Was it a legal thing too?
DiGregorio: Legal, yes. Straight-up legal. Yeah, I think we own the rights to the first two movies -- I don't know how much of this is known or not known. But S-Mart was only in Army of Darkness, and that's a different studio.
IGN: But, again, is it one of those things where, if unspoken, we can still assume in the past he worked at S-Mart?
DiGregorio: Yeah! I mean, he was Ash! He's still Ash. He's not a different guy. He went through all the stuff he went through, and he's definitely lived through a lot of bulls**t, and that's where you find him, having lived through all this stuff and maybe realizing he doesn't want to live through that stuff anymore. Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.