Scott Pilgrim Takes Off makes some awesome choices. Not only does the anime series from cartoonist Bryan Lee O'Malley and series co-creator BenDavid Grabinski take a major detour from the story presented in the beloved Edgar Wright-directed movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but also the voice cast is stacked with the film's stars, including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans, Kieran Culkin, and many, many more. Then, on top of all that goodness — plus a banging opening theme song — this Netflix series is peppered with cool cameos.
When Mashable sat down with O'Malley and Grabinski over Zoom, they shared some of their favorites. Did you catch 'em all?
On the set of the movie that Young Neil writes about Scott, there's a pair of bumbling security guards who might be an obstacle to Ramona's investigation. And you might recognize their voices from films like Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, which is comprised of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End.
Grabinski was cheeky when asked about Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's vocal cameos. "We know this guy who knows them a little bit, our executive producer Edgar Wright." he said. "I think he met them at some point, at some other time, like, in his career, and we asked him if he would reach out."
It turns out the idea to ask Pegg and Frost came from an inspirational character sketch. "Someone in our brilliant team drew a bunch of concepts of security guards," he explained, "and the two kind of looked like Simon and Nick." This reminded the team of Hot Fuzz, in which the pair play cops.
"And then Bryan and I were talking and thought, what if we just see if they want to do it and we make a kind of an homage to Hot Fuzz? And luckily, they said yes," Grabinski shared. "There was no point when we wrote that script initially where we ever thought about them. And then, you know, sometimes your artists just do something brilliant, unexpected, and it leads to that."
O'Malley added that since the dynamic duo shows up in an action movie-like episode, "those characters made sense to be in that world, in some kind of weird mirror world version of themselves."
Episode 5, "Lights. Camera. Sparks?!" is presented as a mockumentary of the Scott Pilgrim-inspired movie that never gets completed. While the episode tracks the love triangle on set and Ramona getting into stuntwork, there is a big cameo who doesn't get an onscreen character.
"Weird Al is the narrator for the mockumentary episode," Grabinksi told Mashable. "That was just a dream. Bryan and I go to his concerts every time he's in LA. We've even flown to Vegas to go to one. And we have always wanted to meet him but had been too nervous."
"Then we had this opportunity, where it just seemed like the funniest person possible to do that role," he continued, "and he luckily said yes. That was just one of the best things about this process is there's a lot of small new roles. And they have to live up to the movie cast that we have. You can't just half-ass it, and we took some really big swings and people said yes. Which was really a delight."
Other cameos to listen out for include The Tick's Griffin Newman as "Straight Wallace" (the actor who initially is cast to play Wallace in Scott Pilgrim's Special Little Life), Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard as Young Scott in episode 3, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle's Kal Penn as Matthew Patel's lawyer. But even the most eagle-eared among fans might miss who — or what — Stephen Root voices.
The celebrated character actor who has appeared in everything from Get Out and Office Space to King of the Hill plays the nanomachines in episode 8 of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.
"I think it is the best performance of the season," Grabinski said. "He came in, just did a bunch of fun Gremlin noises and was like, 'All right, guys. See you later.' Just, God bless him. He was there for five minutes."
"It was incredible to work with all those people," O'Malley concluded.
