Ash is back to do battle against the ‘Evil Dead’
Bruce Campbell revives his cult classic role for Starz series
More than 20 years after his last Evil Dead film, Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams is back on screen to take on demons, decorum and his own decline.
In Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead, the arrogant monster fighter battles his demons — with Lucy Lawless ( Xena: Warrior Princess), who knows about iconic characters.
Don’t expect Ash, still a Michigan stock boy, to be humbler or wiser since he accidentally summoned demons and then battled the human bodies they possessed in cult favorites The Evil Dead
(1981), Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1993). “You find him in a trailer park. ... And he’s 30 years older,” Campbell says. He’s “just not the guy who should be saving the world.”
Director Sam Raimi, who reunites with Campbell and executive producer Rob Tapert, says fans lobbied for another Ash installment in the Evil Dead franchise, which includes comic books, video games and a 2013 film in which Campbell made a cameo. Starz already has renewed the series for a second season.
“Twenty years ago, I thought I was done” with Evil Dead, says Raimi, who directed the premiere episode in New Zealand. “They kept asking for more.”
The revival started as a film project, but the shift to a weekly TV series required more characters around Ash, whose weapons still include his chainsaw hand and “boomstick,” aka shotgun.
“You have to have a bigger universe. You have to have people Ash can talk to,” says Campbell, who plays Ronald Reagan in the new season of FX’s Fargo. “What is he like? How does he talk?”
“Like an ass,” Lawless says playfully during a joint interview.
Among Ash’s antagonists is Lawless’ Ruby, who thinks Ash is behind the death of her family.
“Ruby is going to be a thorn in his side,” says Lawless, who is Tapert’s wife. “I liken her to Jaws. ... She’s stalking him, stalking him, stalking him” before they meet.
“We’re going to get some stuff worked out,” Campbell adds cryptically.