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Truth Seekers' Simon Pegg and Nick Frost tell Comic-Con@Home how to make horror-comedy work
The truth is out there — or at least somewhere inside of Amazon's upcoming series Truth Seekers.
The paranormal horror/comedy show, from a pair of the crossover subgenre’s two most famous faces (Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), looks to fill a very particular gap left by the likes of the Edgar Wright classic, Evil Dead, and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Frost's Gus is a broadband installer/ghost hunter and Pegg plays his boss (on the broadband side, that is).
The comic British duo, along with co-creators James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders (both of Sick Note) sat down at their San Diego Comic-Con@Home panel to take fans behind the scenes — and debut the show's first funny trailer — as they talked about making their eight-episode ghost-hunting series.
You can watch the full panel below:
"He's lost and he's looking for some truth in many aspects of his life," Frost said of his character. "He gets put together with a lovely man from work and together they form some kind of wonderful, wonderful alliance and pick up friends along the way."
"You have to not make fun of the horror," Pegg explained of nailing the horror-comedy dynamic. "It's tempting with genre fare to kind of parody that because it's fairly easy to parody something that asks you to suspend your disbelief because you can kind of fold your arms and go 'meh.' But the key with horror-comedy is to take the horror completely seriously and allow the comedy to exist adjacent to it."
Serafinowicz said that show originated because the group had always been texting back and forth about their obsession with the paranormal. "Simon and I use to go ghost hunting quite often and imagine wouldn't it be great if we had a little ghost hunting gang and that's what we did as a job," Frost explained, "It's been building for a long time, really."
Citing The X-Files and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World as TV influences, alongside books like The Usborne Book of Ghosts & Hauntings, Saunders emphasized that the show — shot on lenses used on Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark — wanted to be more homage than parody. Frost also mentioned YouTube exorcisms as spooky touchpoints for the series, which has a main character who is also part of the DIY video community. He's also suffered a major loss of someone close to him, Frost teases, and her loss spurred on his love of the paranormal. The panelists' love of the paranormal is palpable during the panel, which should excite fans ready for the series - and their constant joking should prepare them for the humor.
And check out the show's poster below:
The show also stars Samson Kayo as Elton, Malcolm McDowell as Richard, Emma D’Arcy as Astrid, Susan Wokoma as Helen, Julian Barratt as Dr. Peter Toynbee, Morgana Robinson as Janey, Kate Nash as Mary, and Kevin Eldon as Jack.
Truth Seekers hits Amazon this fall.
Click here for SYFY WIRE's full coverage of Comic-Con@Home 2020.
