Bruce Campbell Says He’s Done Playing Ash, Evil Dead Will Move Forward Without The Character

In an interview with Collider, Bruce Campbell once again said that he is done playing Ash Williams and that the Evil Dead franchise will continue on without the character. That begins with Evil Dead Rise, a spinoff that arrives on HBO Max in 2022. Campbell played the character in three films and the TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, which ran for three seasons on Starz. He also will provide the voice in the upcoming video game. Here are highlights:

On the future of the series: “I’m done playing Ash, so that determines a lot of where we go with the franchise without that character, but there are more stories. We’re doing it book-focused these days. That darn book gets around, and that’s how we play it. That book wound up in an urban environment with a single mom, so let’s see what happens. It’s fun to fiddle with it. There’s not gonna be any traditional form of Evil Dead anymore. Ash is gone. I’ve retired the character because I physically just can’t do him anymore, so why bother? Why do I do it? It’s time to hang up the chainsaw. But we still are filmmakers, we’re still producers, we’re still creative-type dudes, so we were like, “How do we keep this going otherwise?” Sam [Raimi] handpicked Fede Alvarez to do the remake a few years ago. He handpicked Lee Cronin for this one. These are Sam Raimi proteges that we hope will do a good job.”

On if he regrets retiring the character: “No. Whatever the cliched phrase is, I left it all on table. I’ve got nothing else to give. The three seasons were the longest seasons of my life. If you saw the emails pleading with various directors that were like, “Hey, my knee’s not working right. Be careful about tomorrow. Let’s have the stunt guy nearby. Hey, I can’t run anymore.” It just was an endless physical struggle. I’m really glad we did it because we saw Ash’s home, we went into his bedroom, we met his girlfriends, we met his daughter that we never knew he had and that he never knew he had, and we met his father, played by the great Lee Majors. I feel we really pushed all the buttons and he fulfilled his destiny written in that ancient book. He was the guy destined to defeat evil in the past, present and future, and he took off with a hot robot chick at the end to go kick in the future. What else do you need? We knew the ratings were bad. We knew, going into the last season, that we had to have an end because we didn’t think Starz was gonna re-up us and we were right. So, thank God we did that.”