‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ – Bruce Campbell Interview on Season 2, Lee Majors, and Lots of Blood

Ash vs Evil Dead Season 2 Bruce Campbell and Lucy Lawless
Bruce Campbell and Lucy Lawless star in ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ (Photo @ Starz Entertainment, LLC)

Starz is set to premiere the second season of Ash vs Evil Dead starring Bruce Campbell on September 23, 2016, and the new season of the horror series based on the popular Evil Dead films will find Ash (Campbell) heading home to protect his family. Lee Majors joins the cast to play Ash’s dad and in our interview at the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Campbell talked about having Majors on the series, what fans can expect from the second season, and how it feels to be able to latch onto Ash’s chainsaw for a weekly series instead of waiting years between reprising the role in feature films.

Bruce Campbell Interview:

Bruce Campbell: “What’s the buzz, fuzz?”

You look very dapper today.

Bruce Campbell: “This is the Super Bowl of Comic-Cons. If you’re ever gonna do it, this would be it.”

Every time you played Ash for a movie, you’d have three or four months of shooting and then years before the next one.

Bruce Campbell: “Decades. We did one in the ‘70s, one in the ‘80s and one in the ‘90s and then we skipped a whole decade.”

Doing two seasons in a row, spending more time with Ash than ever, have you gotten to know him better?

Bruce Campbell: “Oh, it’s awesome. I wish we could’ve done this a long time ago because that’s the only way you can get to inhabit a character. It’s not making a movie every decade. It’s doing him every day for weeks and weeks and weeks, season after season. I hope we get five seasons out of this because there’s so much I feel like we can do with the character.”

How much are you opening the world for season two?

Bruce Campbell: “Well, this season it gets personal. Ash has to go back home. The Evil Dead is like the mafia, they hit you where you live. They go after your family. So he’s gonna go clean up his town of Elk Grove, Michigan. Which is why we’re introducing the character of Ash’s father, Brock Williams played by the great Lee Major and Ash’s high school buddy Chet Kaminski played by Ted Raimi. Ted plays an idiot and he’s so good at it. I always use Ted because that way my acting looks subtle.”

How cool is it to have Lee Majors coming in as your father?

Bruce Campbell: “Nothing cooler. It’s the coolest of the cool. I don’t believe in luck but we got lucky getting him. Between Lucy Lawless and Lee Majors, what else do you need?”

Bruce Campbell.

Bruce Campbell: “Well, you already got me. I’m not going anywhere.”

Evil Ash seemed darker than the movie incarnations of Evil Ash.

Bruce Campbell: “Darkness has many shades.”

It was evil with no humor behind it.

Bruce Campbell: “No, because in the show we do have to treat the horror seriously. Weird sh*t’s going to happen. Before long, it’ll all go crazy on you but we have to treat the horror as real because otherwise it’s just camp. Then you’ve got a whole different show. That’s the fine line we’ve always rode. The horror is real but there’s comedy too.”

Do you think Ash will ever actually find happiness?

Bruce Campbell: “Why does he have to? He’s God’s tormented character. The audience would get bored if he did. The beginning of this first episode back is as happy as he’s going to get. You go, is that it? It’s going to be Groundhog Day all the time? How much beer can you drink? The answer is a lot but Ash is the chosen one. He’s actually more than that. He’s the average schmoe but he is foretold in the Book of the Dead. So there’s more to Ash than meets the eye. His job isn’t necessarily to be the guy lying on the lounge chair. His job is to be the guy to save the world.”

Can you top the amount of blood from the first season?

Bruce Campbell: “I think we did. Because there’s more characters to get it. Lee Majors had his first experience with blood and he’s like, ‘What the hell is this?’ You can’t predict what it’s going to be like if you’ve never done it before. I know what it’s like to get slimed so it was a big eye opener. So yeah, we had more characters, more opportunities to bloody them all, so we did.”

You already knew you had a season two before season one aired.

Bruce Campbell: “Yeah, nice trick, huh? That’s how good we are, man.”

Does it take some pressure off of season two?

Bruce Campbell: “No, not really. No, no, it’s worse actually because now there are expectations. It’s one thing to put out a show for the very first time. You close your eyes and go, ‘Okay, I hope you like it.’ You put it out and it was very well received. The fans were very nice to us and the critics were pretty nice to us too which is shocking because the Evil Dead movies don’t always get good reviews. So that was the big leap but now season two, they’re like arms crossed going, ‘Whaddaya got?’ Meaning, is it worthy of a show? Do you have enough story that you can tell? Where are you gonna go with it? Do I like the way you’re going with it? Do I like the characters you’re adding or how they’re changing? That remains to be seen but I think it’s a strong episode. I tore my hamstring. We worked our butts off this season so if you don’t like it, screw all y’all.”

Does the focus remain on more seasons of the show before considering another movie?

Bruce Campbell: “One feeds the other. The movies were dead. Now the TV show comes back, the movies come back to life. It’s funny how that works.”