Bruce Campbell Talks About How He Can't Physically Play Ash in The EVIL DEAD Franchise Anymore

Over four years ago Bruce Campbell announced that he was retiring from playing his badass character Ash in the Evil Dead franchise. He’s confirmed this multiple times over the years, but during interviews, people keep asking him if he’ll one day return to play the role and the answer is always no.

With the new Evil Dead film coming out, Evil Dead Rise, which Campbell is producing, those questions are coming up again. In a recent interview with Collider, when talking about the upcoming film, he explains:

"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.”

Campbell went on to talk about the physical struggles he endured while shooting the series Ash Vs. Evil Dead, saying:

"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."

I’m completely happy and satisfied with everything that we got from Bruce Campbell in his time playing Ash. Sure, it would have been nice to get more, but I totally understand why he won’t play the role again! He gave that character everything and he was awesome.

But, the franchise will live on and I’m excited about the upcoming film Evil Dead Rise!